📄 Transcript [show]
People have powerful feelings about the traffic in Los Angeles.
It says something that local officials warned motorists about a temporary roadwork closure on the 405 last year by calling it Carmageddon.
Angelenos took the hint, and this weekend they're expected to steer clear of the latest 405 closure, named, of course, Carmageddon 2.
That's how it is in L.A., a snarl of overstuffed freeways and commuters who keep their cool, except when they don't.
KPCC's Steven Cuevas has this profile of a punk rocker whose music expresses the insanity of L.A.
traffic while extolling the virtues of public transit.
A couple of things you need to know about Eddie Solis.
He lives in L.A., loves the band Kiss, and does not own a car.
Being someone who's from L.A., born and raised, and, you know, having a few cars in my past, I saw the city much differently through a different perspective through the eyes of a bus rider.
Come on, just all the way to the back.
Line 18, Wilshire, Western Station.
Just steps from the front door of his home, across the street from a tortilla factory in L.A.'s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Solis catches a bus that connects him with the city's subway, and the commuter train he catches to his day job at an indie record label in Hollywood.
It just opened me up to, like, little neighborhoods, galleries, clubs, bars, just everything, just seeing what's out there, little pockets of the city.
Solis' journeys aboard L.A.
buses and subway cars informs a lot of the material on The New Los Angeles Part One, Through the Eyes of a Bus Rider, the latest release by the singer-guitarist band It's Casual.
The New Los Angeles No one has their choice In Solis' vision of a new Los Angeles, people abandon their cars, climb aboard public transit, and rediscover their communities.
One song extols the virtues of the L.A.
County Metropolitan Transit Agency's E-ZPass, and the urban underbelly it introduces to the rider.
And that's, like, a nod, an homage to, you know, the people who know what you can even go cheaper, and really beat the system, and really steer away from spending money on gas and oil profits and all that.
The New Los Angeles It's all it takes for me to witness racial tension, for me to witness illegal aliens.
It's not to paint a negative picture, it's just my perspective of what is seen.
E-ZPass I got a funny backstory.
Off the bus and back on the street, we make our way past a jazz saxophonist playing for pocket change, and down a long escalator to catch a train.
So, where are we now?
We're at the Red Line station, the Pershing Square station in downtown L.A.
And what's our destination?
We're going to go downstairs another tier, and in about five minutes we're going to get on the Red Line going northbound.
Okay, let's go.
The Metro Red Line snakes from North Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles.
It's the train that inspired its casuals' signature tune, and spawned a viral internet video.
It was partly filmed late at night.
E-ZPass E-ZPass E-ZPass E-ZPass That ties everyone together.
It's just like, be alive.
Don't be a victim of having a car.
An MTA spokesman said he couldn't comment on Eddie Solis' furious pro-metro message, but the redline video was a hit at the offices of Move LA.
Eddie's done a good job.
Thank you, Eddie.
It's the public transportation advocacy group headed by former Santa Monica mayor Denny Zane.
He liked the juxtaposition of Solis blissfully riding LA public transit in one scene, with scenes of the band raging against those notorious freeway jams.
Eddie is all frantic when he talks about highways, and so mellow when he's like grooving on a skateboard and on the bus.
On the redline, there's a metaphor for the transformation, you know?
From the, oh my god, I just gotta get out of the traffic, to, hey, this is cool, I can mellow out.
Or, you can blast the tune like too many people as you claw your way across Los Angeles by car, bus, or skateboard.
Los Angeles There's too many people I want them to go away Riven out and pink days are free Too many people could also be a motto for its casual.
Over the years, the band whittled itself down to a power duo of Solis and a rotating cast of drummers.
So you may think the burly, bearded punk rocker just can't get along with freeways, with people, or his native LA.
Not true.
I love it.
I love everything about it.
I've traveled throughout the U.S.
many times, and I could never look forward enough to coming back.
The weather.
The different cultures.
The landscape.
I was just like, you know what?
Now I know why everyone moves to L.A.
Solis will bring the love and the volume during a Redline mini-tour next month.
Its casual will play a different venue within walking distance of several Redline metro stops from Union Station to West Hollywood.
For the California Report, I'm Stephen Cuevas.
I was my driver back then.
I was my driver back then.
I was my driver back then.
I was my driver back then.
I was my driver back then.
The 210, the 605, the freeways are not so nice.
The I-5, the 210, the freeways are not so nice.
The 101, the 405, the freeways are not so nice.
The I-5, the I-10, the freeways are not so nice.
The 210, the 605, the freeways are not so nice.
The I-5, the I-10, the freeways are not so nice.
The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line From 10 to 6 or 5 The freeways are not so nice The I-5, the I-10 The freeways are not so nice The 101, the 405 The freeways are not so nice The 605, the 101 The 101, the 101 The I-10, the 210 The 605, the 101 The 405, the I-10 The freeways are not so nice The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line The red line Welcome back to the 85th episode of Los Angeles Nista.
It's a downtown Los Angeles episode with my in-studio guest, Mr. Gene Troutman.
How are you, sir?
I'm good.
Man, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, you trekked pretty far.
I wanted to...
All the way from Sherman Oaks.
The valley, right?
Yes.
And that's definitely, you know, geographically, it's not close.
No, not geographically, but, you know, everything's like 20 minutes away by car.
Without traffic.
Unless there's traffic.
Absolutely right.
You know, for a long time, I've, you know, seen your drumming, and I wanted to ask you, you know, for someone like you that's been drumming as long as you have, and have played with many different musicians, and have been on many different platforms around the world, I wanted to ask you, when did you commit to this instrument?
Well, let's see.
I was probably about nine years old, and there was like this sort of watershed moment on television.
I was a TV baby.
Yeah.
I watched TV all the time, and an only child.
Kind of a latchkey guy.
And there was this watershed moment where there was a lot of different entertainment specials.
Like there was the Carpenter special.
There was the Kiss Halloween special.
There was the Cosmos special.
Holland and Kiss, right?
Yeah.
And that all happened in 76, right around the beginning of the TV season.
So like September, October, November.
And so I saw Kiss, and that like, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
And then the next thing I knew, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be a part of this.
The Sid and Marty Kroff characters that were around that TV show kind of like took me out of my childhood and placed me in front of Kiss, you know?
Right.
And then the Carpenters had this special where Karen Carpenter was doing this drum solo.
You can YouTube it, actually.
Okay.
She's doing this drum solo on a soundstage, and she's jumping from xylophone to drums to congas to...
Whoa.
And she's a badass.
I mean, she has like amazing rhythm.
She's a really talented woman on top of her singing and songwriting.
And so seeing that, and then the Osmonds had like a special, and the Osmond brother that played the drums, I can't remember his name, but he was like, you know, if this was my show, I'd host it like this, and he's like playing drums and talking.
And it was all really kind of amazing to me, and I knew at that point somehow I was going to do that, and I didn't, you know.
So I told my dad, and he's like, well, you know, I'll get you a pair of drumsticks, and we can go down to the drumsticks, and we can go down to the drum store, and I got a catalog, and I looked at this Ludwig catalog, and I saw all these massive drum sets and started drawing them and visualizing them.
Wow.
I just, you know, just sort of in earnest would listen to the radio and play along on the sticks.
I mean, eventually they got me this Sears and Robux kind of tin drum set with those Tyvek tear-proof paper drum heads.
The paper drum heads, yeah.
And I pounded on those for a while, and that, you know, didn't last.
They didn't last for that long, and finally, you know, I got a pawn shop kit, and, you know, one thing led to another.
I started taking lessons and building it up.
And evolved, evolved.
Yeah.
I got to ask you, as a big Kiss fan myself, what is your favorite Kiss record?
As a drummer.
For me, as a drummer, I can't say that I have any favorites.
Not Creatures of the Night?
I love you, Peter Criss, but, you know, I guess, you know, Destroyer, you know.
The songs are great, right?
The songs are really great on Destroyer.
I think a lot of those songs aren't even theirs.
Like, they were written by other songwriters.
Well, they're all co-writers.
Ghost writers.
Yeah, there's a lot of Kim Fowley.
Yeah.
You know?
Right?
Yeah, yeah, we could give them to Kiss.
So, but I'd say that one and Alive were the two ones.
Like, Alive especially, because like it, what is it, 100,000 years or whatever.
With the drum solo?
Do-ga-do-ga-do-ga-do-ga.
You know, it was kind of like the, the In A Gunnery, you know, we got a DeVita of our generation.
Right, right.
The generation before us, really.
You remember your first band you played in?
Oh, yeah, let's see.
Yeah, I do.
It's all very embarrassing.
We were called, we were called Fuck Chuck and the Reefers.
Okay.
And the bass player's name was Chuck and he was always late.
So that's, whenever he'd show up, he'd be like, fuck.
Chuck.
But he, you know, was in the band because he had the reefer.
So, you know, that was.
He was holding.
Yeah.
There you go.
I don't know if we can, are we allowed to?
We could do anything we want here, so.
But yeah, so that was kind of the deal there.
And then like, you know, I was, I was always kind of playing with people that were older than me.
Wow.
And then I joined this band, The Miracle Workers, which was like, they were a bunch of 20 year olds and I was still in high school.
And.
We started gigging out and they were a Paisley Underground kind of band that we were doing covers by the Sonics and.
Nice.
Them and The Leaves and stuff like that.
And original material and stuff.
And that's what actually brought me, originally, eventually brought me down to Los Angeles because that, the band, we kind of started getting a little arrogant thinking that we were a little fish, a big fish in a little pond, you know, and we thought we'd come down to LA where, Yeah.
And we were kind of more happening.
You know, there was Bomp Records, Greg Shaw, the Pandoras were playing, Red Cross was going off, you know.
Right.
So we wanted to get involved in that.
We decided to record a record down here.
We got signed to Bomp, came down, did a recording.
And that was kind of like our, you know, we realized that that's where we had to go, is come down here.
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's where the industry is, right?
Yeah.
Even if you want any kind of music.
Yeah.
It's all here.
Now, when you had your first record, how was that feeling?
When you held it?
It was pretty amazing.
You know, I really thought, I mean, I was, I was pissed about the color of the record and I thought my photo was terrible.
So like immediately like, immediately like disappointed by the music business, but it was great.
It was so amazing.
Like it, it kind of changed.
It really kind of crystallized.
It was kind of one of those moments.
I don't know if that's where you're leading, but like definitely like that was one of those commitment moments, you know, where you had the record in your hand.
Right.
An anchored moment.
It was definitely like, you have that record in your hand and you're like, wow, I'm like, I think I'm famous now.
Right?
Like, oh my God, I've got a record.
And you were inspired from that.
Definitely.
And that filled you for the next, you know, few years until the next thing happened.
Yeah.
Right?
For sure.
How did you end up in Queens of the Stone Age?
Well, it was through that band, Miracle Workers.
When we moved to Los Angeles, we started playing regularly at Raji's.
Wow.
Which is in Hollywood.
I'm on Hollywood Boulevard, kind of across from, it's like, I guess it was, between Gower and Argyle-ish on Hollywood Boulevard, I think.
And there was a house sound guy there named Hutch.
And he's a great, really great sound guy.
And he was originally from Canada and had this background, punk rock background touring with DOA and stuff.
And so we were playing there live a lot and I'd got to know Hutch.
And he went to Europe with Miracle Workers a couple of times and we solidified our relationship.
And I got out of that band and different things happened and time went by, but Hutch, my relationship with Hutch continued and then he started doing sound for Caius eventually.
Mm-hmm.
And then that turned into sort of the Gamma Ray sessions and Dave Catching, I met Dave Catching through Hutch and Dave was playing in Queens of the Stone Age as well at the time.
And even actually before that, there was, the Gamma Ray sessions that Josh was developing for Queens of the Stone Age out of what cut, what was Caius.
And so I was kind of involved in a little bit through all that stuff, through, through Hutch and Dave, really like Hutch and Dave are kind of, they were my anchor points to get doing anything of any real depth and weight in music, I think.
I still credit those two guys as being.
That's great.
And Josh, eventually as a result of that, Josh Homme was really instrumental and, you know, any of the good stuff that I've had in my music career has been as a result of that.
That's great.
I mean, you know, for me, as a big music fan, I remember seeing you on stage on the Foo Fighters tour with Queens here in LA.
Oh, right.
At the Universal Amphitheater.
Yeah, that was a fantastic show.
That was a really great show.
And you guys played venues that size throughout the whole tour, really, right?
Yeah, we were really fortunate.
Dave Grohl gave us that, gave us that tour and that support.
Yeah.
I mean, he was, he was a fan, I think, of Caius even before that.
And there had even been talk, I think, of him doing some work with Queens as the drummer at some point for songs or some work on an album even before that, but he wasn't able to get on the Rated R record.
And so that's when later on he became involved with them as a result of the, during the songs for the Def record.
Right, right.
I'm really interested in hearing the music you brought today.
Oh, cool.
You're playing drums on this record.
A few songs we're going to hear, or a song.
You are in a new band and it's called?
Drag News.
The Drag News.
The Drag News, killer.
Let's hear a track from that.
There's a picture of it right there.
Yeah, there you go.
I love it.
And I think we're going to play, maybe we'll play Frankie's Bike, which is the second, should be the second song.
Let's do it.
We're using it.
Anybody Anybody Anybody Anybody Anybody Anybody Anybody!
Anybody!
Come on.
Come on.
Get up.
Come on.
It's a while.
Come on, my baby, come on.
Come on.
It's a while.
Come on, my baby, come on.
Come on.
It's a while.
It's real.
It's real.
It's real.
It's real.
It's real.
It's real.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
a way people could contact you?
Yeah.
People can email me at drumsonfireatmac.com.
Perfect.
And that's usually the fastest way to get a hold of me.
All right.
And I'd be happy to talk to them about that.
Well, that's a wrap, Gene.
Thank you so much.
Eddie, thank you so much for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
I appreciate you coming.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Okay, thanks.
All right.
Yeah.
Bye.
You can start the intro.
Bye.
