hello empty bottle thank you all so much for coming out to the chicago humanities festival this is james spooner everybody james spooner is a documentarian a writer an artist a tattooist a dad a bon vivant a man about town and he's an author of the high desert which is the reason for the season why we're all here today it's a great memoir that even as a midwestern kid who's maybe a little tiny bit younger than you i still i got it like on a very deep level james thank you so much for hanging out with us today right on thanks for having me and thank you all for coming yeah seriously for sure we've got we've got actual punk rock coming up but we're going to talk about punk rock for a while which is such always a worthwhile thing to do james uh you have been such a what's that should we play the train oh yeah let's play the trailer this this is a rare book that comes with a trailer uh it's like the mcu of graphic novel memoirs yeah um yeah so just to know what you're all here for and excited about that's you [Music] i've been punk most of my life strangely it all started in the desert [Music] i wanted to write a book about the first year i found punk but it ended up being about so many other things [Music] i had dreams like any other kid meet a girl be a rock star but there were a lot of roadblocks between the white racists and the black gangbangers my options felt impossible until i knew it's hot he introduced me to punk rock and changed my life forever is there anybody there [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i know i'm [Music] sound like nothing at all [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you just made a festival of the people who wrote blurbs for your book i would pay 85 [Laughter] what what what i know about that part of the country the high desert or just that part of southern california is pretty much caius and queens of the stone age and like coachella and uh those giant milly things that i'm positive or sentient at night when we're all sleeping but i cannot imagine living there as a black person even in 2022 but in the early 1990s i this paints a great picture but i'd like you to paint us all a picture of what it was like to move into that kind of environment okay well all the places you just mentioned yeah are like far more cultural than the little town that i lived in i lived in uh apple valley which is next to victorville and the only reason you would know of victorville is if you were driving from las vegas to l.a and you needed to get gas so um you know it was uh there were not it was not very there was not a lot of culture there there was nothing for kids to do besides like dirt bike and do drugs and uh so like you know when this book takes place in uh my entry into eighth grade i was like a new kid in the school and um and i was skateboarding but it was far too windy and sandy to like actually skateboard anywhere so uh you know and i saw like you just saw i saw this uh punk rocker who happened to be black and it was like that is what you know like i think we all have that moment where you you we can be like oh yeah that yeah what what that guy is that sounds you know and because he was black i was under the false uh like idea that uh this was like for everybody you know but i lived in this small town where all the rest of the scene were nazi punks and nazi skins so um you know even like the cool kids were also kind of racist like not even kind of racist they were like swastikas on their trapper keeper you know um and we just had to deal you know we had to like you know and if you remember back to what it was like to be 13 like oh it sucked you're well you're still also pulling in what is normal you know so um in this school like kids with swastikas on their trapper keeper was normal normal so i wasn't like oh god this is so offensive because i just internalized it you know something wrong with me yeah you know and at that age and you say this a few times in the book you didn't have the language you didn't have the emotional maturity to kind of unpack all of that yeah who does i mean not me not at my big age still but uh and and you came from a home where i think a lot of us can relate we were the first kind of like unparented generation our parents did the best they could but for the most part they were busy just trying to put food on the table and it's difficult to navigate this scene period as a new kid in school but it's definitely difficult as a black child of a white mother yes um my my parents were divorced my dad was um not really around and um so like my mom was left to do the best she could and uh you know i i'm critical of her in the book but i'm also forgiving because i'm there there are two voices there's what's happening in the in the moment and then in these black boxes is like me uh as an adult looking back you know yeah so um you know even my mom after reading it was like um you know that's fair you know i love a self-aware parent i was gonna ask how the people in the book have received it we talk about tai who we get introduced to in the the trailer your your first kind of i don't know peer mentor i think might be a good word we meet folks like melody who's you know the coolest girl you know at school we meet all sorts of people in new york city are you still in touch with these folks how did they perceive themselves yeah well so with the people in the desert i didn't i lost completely lost touch of them until i started writing this book because when i was them though my i i uh just for the sake of making things easier for the reader i call myself james in the book but back then i went by my government name and uh so people wouldn't even know how to find me on facebook or anything you know so it was when i made the book or when i started making the book i started reaching out looking for people and uh you know finding out that the people who left they turned out all right people who stayed not so much yeah and there were definite you know just because this small town happens to be warm all the time doesn't mean that it's not these kind of small town things aren't applicable across the states i think there were varying levels of desire to get the hell out of apple valley did the people who wanted to get to yeah i mean i think that though this book is called the high desert it's definitely um most i feel like most of america is the high desert you know it's like we're all living in these small towns except for those lucky lucky enough to live in the like six big cities you know so uh some of them got out you know and um some of them got out too late you know and uh i think it's even when you when you read the book and you see like who's kind of got their head on straight and who's like going off the into the wrong path there's nothing to save them you know and there's nothing that that's i was lucky i got out you know yeah yeah i want to hear some of it do you want you should you should hear some of it okay so um this uh so i'm just gonna like read a short section from the book um this is me entering uh school for the first the first day of school right the great thing about going to a new school is you get to completely start over no one had to know that i was a punching bag the year before whoa everyone's hooking up oof watch it buckwheat you bumped into me fresh start so overrated minutes later crips cuz you should join up nah i'm straight this school was different from the last one the kids the cup the customs the subculture were all hard to navigate so was the campus where the hell is bookit building c jesus troy i got my eye on you now leave that boy alone and go to class yo yo my man out of the way i couldn't yet appreciate the significance of this moment a gang banger calling me from one corner and this black punk rocker barreling towards me out of out of the other sorry dude ha ha monkey jump let a [ __ ] jump on me like that watching this brown-skinned spiky-haired kid jump on his friends like that stirred something in me his dismissal of the black status quo gave me a kind of permission i didn't know it yet but i was staring into my future yeah that's it this scene is very early in the book yes applause it's my first time reading it aloud so you know maybe i'll get voices later on you know getting an early draft this happens very early in the book this is kind of the first turning point that we get to see you go through and when you're in eighth grade whether or not you're in a new school or whatever you are trying to reinvent yourself you are just swimming blindly through adolescence just hormones and no i think that's it just hormones and everything seems so important everything seems so live or death at that point even the tiniest things especially when you're trying to figure out who you are skate culture lends itself to punk rock and you know later on down the line we'd get like skate hip-hop scenes and things like that but when you're here at this point this bridge from skate to punk what were you listening to what what were you you know kind of glomming onto culturally well so when i was uh a little bit younger than this i listened to hip-hop i listened to i mean hip-hop of the time commercial stuff you know run dmc the fat boys you know just kind of like very like easy digestible stuff um but when i heard um when i heard punk through skateboard videos it definitely like stirred something in me you know so uh those first you know my first records were like probably a lot of your first records you know it was a black flag and uh descendants and uh dead milkman you know um that's what was available at the sam goody you know and there's a there's a panel in the book where you're buying uh never mind the buzzcocks i think it is and bullocks thank you so much we just heard the buzzcocks on the thing um but you know and the the employee the record store employee is like hey nice pick is there a bigger compliment to like a 13 year old than the record store employee like giving you the seal of approval yeah i mean it was definitely like there's a scene in the book where i'm in the record store and there's like this is in venice beach and there's like some punks looking through the the record bins and i'm just like damn i wish i could ask them what to get but like you don't want to you want to be like a loser who's like oh i don't know anything about this even though you're literally a loser kids today have it so easy with the algorithm you know they just need to know one band and then they're you know i mean i very very much remember walking into a music land and uh handing over a copy of queens reich's operation minecraft and the guy behind the counter just being like are you sure this is what you do not want queen and i was like well both if you got them but i was looking for that kind of validation and never really got it were you ever confronted by that kind of confusion in your you know your adolescence trying to just absorb all of this stuff and people were just like are you are you sure this is what you want son yeah i mean i think the bigger thing that most like young kids are it's like you're you're fronting like you know what you're talking about until you actually do you know so and you don't want to like acknowledge that like oh um okay so there's this like amazing video while i was working on this uh this project there's there was a local band called um i can't even remember what they're called but uh i looked them up on youtube and there was one i looked them on google and there was one mention of them in the whole entire google and it was this youtube video of them performing at my the first time my first punk show like that you attended the first one that i ever went to so i was like holy [ __ ] like so i watched it and like five minutes eight minutes in the guy who's filming it gets bored of the band and starts walking around and he stops right in front of me and my friend and starts talking to us so this was like a fully like holy [ __ ] like proof of life i actually like i was really there you know and he says uh you know what are your favorite bands and it was like i'm literally like uh sex pistols or minor threat you know like i mean it's hard enough to do when you actually know about [ __ ] but when you really do on your own spot because the worst thing anyone can call you as a poser yes yes that's the worst so um yeah i mean i was gonna i was gonna think of some other pretty terrible things that people i mean okay maybe it's not the worst thing someone can talk yeah and i think we've probably both been called way worse things than posers in our lives but you know when you're at a show and you're trying to you know impress girls or not be lame to your friends your bandmates that's the they're throwing the p word around come on now that's not cool and we're just all learning we're just all learning and then you went on ahead and joined a band in a very punk rock way in that you had no idea how to play your instrument before being recruited to yeah i mean isn't that everyone so it's just like hey you want to be in a band uh yeah yeah you know um okay well i have a guitar you play a bass and i'm like okay like i don't i don't know what the difference is but yeah i love the the chapter where you go to a music store like a music instrument store and are just looking for something in your price range you're like what about that and they're like honey that's a guitar yeah that's not what you're looking for and that's i mean that's the punk rock ethos right like [ __ ] it let's do it yeah and i came to that ethos as a filmmaker and as a graphic novelist it was just like that very same thing you know like you hear the ramones and you're like i think i could do that you know i read a graphic novel and i'm like i think i can do that yeah i was gonna ask why a graphic novel when you're very you know verbose and great at talking and great at writing we've seen you make movies we've you know read your words and things before why why was this something also this seems really hard like not just writing but now you're drawing the whole thing i'm uh i'm sorry to your mental health over when during this process lockdown was the best for me like i i nailed it we've got some more slides here to show folks and i want to i want to make sure that everybody gets what they need out of this because this is such an amazing journey that you're taking us on thanks all right well okay so let's try this with some voices all right oh do you want any background it's so windy okay for generations black folks have uh been filling in all the historical emissions for public school education and deconstructing the nightly news at barber shops and salons all while setting countless trends and creating uh political statements with their hair none of this was happening at the victor valley mall supercuts so tai and i began a weekly ritual that later connected to the larger black american experience what are you guys doing in there nothing god [Laughter] dude your mom needs to loosen up tell me about it hey it's totally working yeah man either this or a perm do you ever worry about people thinking you're a poser you know because of being black those rednecks yelling at us in the street and stuff whatevs my sister took me to red hot chili peppers a few years ago and fishbone opened i don't care how big they are fishbone blew them the peppers away yeah who do you think started rock and roll my dad used to say they're all playing chuck berry riffs i never thought of it like that whatever man you gonna do this or what later afro hells yeah so punk i was shocked to find out that elvis the king never wrote an original record some of led zeppelin's biggest hits were plagiarized and the first rock and roll songs were written by a queer black woman sister rosetta tharp rock and roll is a black american legacy punk rock is black music amen i think so many of us have that light bulb moment where we are just like wait a second those guys were [ __ ] i mean of course as an adult it makes sense that this art form was was stolen from black folks because they all are but as a kid when you don't see anybody who looks like you but maybe a couple of folks it's really a revelation yeah and also fishbone does blow the chili peppers away still to this day still to this day there's such an important relationship here in that last slide i'm not talking about the one between you and your mom or you and ty i'm talking about the relationship between black people and their hair yeah and the act of defiance that it sometimes feels like to straighten it or shave it off or turn it into something other than how it just grows out of your head naturally is it's a journey for everybody that we all all go through until you know the lord says we can't have hair anymore sorry about it brother got a lot of hats yeah i mean you know i think it is it is a there is like this love-hate relationship that uh many black people have with their hair um it's not like a you know a new conversation or anything um and i found it to be like a really poignant moment in my uh late 20s when i finally just like grew out my hair like i didn't have dreads i didn't have a perm i didn't have any color i just like had the hair growing out of my head yeah and i was just like at one point it was like it was curly and it was long and it and i was just like oh like i have like that like mixed girl hair i didn't even know the detangling is just running itself so smooth yeah like i just i didn't i just didn't know because you know because i had a white mom so i was just like brushing it back like into this like poof with no product and uh and then i got into punk rock you know so it was like straightening and perms and and color and dreads and all this [ __ ] and uh yeah so i had like a good like year and a half or two with uh like the hair that grew out of my head and then i like started losing my hair you know god's cruelest joke well eventually you get to make a trip that changes your whole outlook your whole life really yeah check it out christmas with dad in new york city yeah so uh just to set this up my dad lived in new york and uh you know i got to go out there i was like all amped to like i hadn't seen him for many years and i was like you know gonna be this it's gonna be this moment with where we connect and really he just like like did what his normal routine and i was just at home you know like watching tv and then um my mom kept telling me like about the village you know greenwich village the village and so i asked uh him to take me there and uh i had like a hundred dollars i got for christmas and i was like dead set i was gonna get some doc martens you know so we went to the village we buy the boots and uh and this guy who worked at the store who's black he was like yo you know if you want to hang out until after we get out of work like we could hang so my dad just like left me with this guy with green hair that was the whole thing that i mean i'm not a parent myself you are and the answer is no yes but um so anyways so he was he was still at work so i had like a few hours i had to kill in the east village uh in 1990. so um so i'm just walking around and i meet another punk and then she just is like laying down the uh laying some [ __ ] down on me so this is what this is about um do i do this like this yeah okay people get so caught up in their personal politics you're black so you care about civil rights but you're a man so feminism goes over your head those gay dudes over there care about equality for us queers we probably don't get two shits about my dominican family they're gentrifying out of this neighborhood it's all connected if one's oppressed we're all oppressed that's why i include animals in my politics animal agriculture slavery the prison system unbridled capitalism is designed to crush who it can you just need to connect the dots punks have been pushing intersectional politics since the 80s exemplified by the diy venue gilman street's front door that reads no racism no sexism no homophobia punk positioned me to listen oh and don't follow women on the street you're a threat i'm not you got a dick yeah you're a threat know this sorry about just be an ally okay so i get what you're saying but like was martin luther king what do you call it vegan no he but he probably would have been if they didn't assassinate him in 68 but i get your question obviously there's a disconnect that's why equality is coming so slowly we gotta dismantle all oppression come on that's the end of that i mean hands together for that woman who took a 13 14 year old boy and was just like listen kid here's how the [ __ ] it is yeah i mean this this uh meeting her was definitely like a light switch moment in my punk rock journey and definitely took it from like you know this nihilistic breaking bottles like you know [ __ ] yeah like sid vicious to like oh this can actually be applied to life and and uh you know kind of set me on the journey on like set my course for really for the rest of my life i wish that we could i don't know i don't know how we would do this logistically but if we could get every 13 year old boy in the world to talk to this lady it would be a much better place to live for all of us and that's such an important point in your life you're a sponge yeah and if something like that that you learn in new york and you can bring it back to the small town in california and if one person listens to you and gets it well i mean i think that i mean that's the the thing is this book is like really my love letter to punk and all of those people who really did that for me because i can in turn do that for other people you know what i'm saying and that's what i did with afropunk and that's what this book aims to do is like uh you know reach into it i mean it's it it's positioned as a as an adult as a book for adults but like my 12 year old read it and when she was done she was like relatable you know do you think it also kind of you know i don't know explain some things about her dad to her made you more relatable yeah i mean i you know that it's a whole other story but i definitely you know i mean i i'm definitely in a better place um in her mind than i than my parents were in mine you know like she can actually ask my opinion about stuff and i can tell her about bands i can also like tell her that like every human with a penis is a threat you know and she can um you know that's that's information that will be useful as she grows up oh yeah i think the 13 year olds now are smarter somehow than we were they have all the information at their fingertips and i feel like every time i've tried to like talk to one of my nieces or cousins about things that i wish i'd known when i was their age they're like yeah duh okay well let me shut up we've got uh one more slide here that i want to get to um that really has you leaning into it this was my one of my favorite scenes in the book okay so this is uh actually before just before i go to new york so we did a little out of order but um basically uh my band is about to perform at a at a party um first show ever first show three songs [ __ ] go and uh but it's a party like you know it's a bunch of like squares and you know like the regular kids normies and um so okay so and there was this one girl who uh had a crush on me and in turn like she liked me so then i guess i like her but um her friends were like not having it you know they could not you can't [ __ ] with that guy because he's weird all right one second okay sorry my friends are being such [ __ ] and derek that guy there's derek he's not that bad you seem cool what's their problem anyway i don't know i guess they just think you're weird i'm sorry good a wave of defiance washed over me i was weird i was different it finally clicked there wasn't anything wrong with me in fact maybe there was something wrong with them i am weird i loved that for you i was internally cheering so i was reading this book in bed and i didn't want to wake up the dog but i was internally cheering for you getting to this point the struggle to self-acceptance is is real and when your acceptance finally starts to outweigh this internalized everything hatred then i think that's a that's a huge win for a kid or anybody for sure hopefully we've all gotten there but hopefully we've all gotten there i i and that's the kind of thing that in 2022 we're so much more accepting of i feel like in mainstream society the weirdos are taking over we've got one of the biggest television shows in the world is about drag queens that never would have happened back then we've got you know comic-con comic-con everything geek culture is is huge kids are allowed to be themselves in a way that we weren't yeah and i love that for them when you got to this point before you went to new york did that change how you were able to kind of receive new york well you know i mean they say that like uh well i don't know what the saying is but it's basically like you know things come to you when you're ready for them right they might come to you you're not ready for them so you don't even see that they're there right um so the fact that this happened and then i go to new york and i meet um blanca who like just blows my mind with like politics and like you know introduces me to zines and all this [ __ ] you know it's like yeah i was ready for that you know um maybe prior to maybe at a different point in my evolution i would have been like you know still thinking it was funny to call girls [ __ ] and whatever you know what i'm saying is like um and you know and i think that like that's like when i think about all the the different people i've met throughout my lifetime who challenge me to like think beyond um you know for example uh martine who's whose band is playing tonight like when it in the 90s when i was like seeing krudos i remember walking with this white girl after a show and she's just like why do they speak in spanish they would like you know and i was just i hate her [Laughter] and you know and she wasn't like some dumb karen like she [Music] was jenny really confused she was just like they would really reach people if they spoke in english you know and i'm just like maybe they're not trying to reach you or me you know what i'm saying and but it was it's having those experiences that like i think that when i said that to her it was like it was one of these kind of blanca moments for her where she was like oh it's not about me you know and yeah that's what we're i i'm hoping you know i mean that everyone in this room is here for that experience you know or or or has had that experience and that's why they're here you know so i mean that's the the beautiful i'm going into a love of punk rock champs so rant well i mean we're all here because of our love of punk rock and we've got three amazing bands that are about to play but before they do i want to make sure that everybody knows how they can get their hands on this book there are books available to order at the merch table out in the front room we can say okay hold on oh yeah no go ahead so last i looked there's like six copies seven copies over there if you don't get one um two things can happen you can order one from the bookseller um or whoever like let me know and uh we'll they'll they'll ship it to you for free um but let me know and i'll give you some like uh like my zine or i'll give you something so that it's like you know you're not leaving empty-handed yeah because we were supposed to have more books and they just didn't arrive you know blame it on the u.s mail or supply chain i've been blaming everything on supply chain you know whatever it is whatever it is it's not happening but there are a few here so grab them and uh what else i think that's all the info that you all need besides the fact that this is gonna be a [ __ ] awesome show yeah i'm really stoked um so thankful to chicago mahaniti's and uh empty bottle for uh bringing me out and supporting me and helping me like let me curate i mean put this show together and stuff's rad and um also over at the merch table i have a bunch of like prints and stuff from the book um these are things that like are only available in person so if you know if you're so inclined feel free to uh you know talk to me about grabbing one and uh and also if you're in the greater los angeles area and need a tattoo done by a great tattoo artist james spooner is i do tattoos as well she's trying to get you paid young buck all right we've got some great music coming up for you thank you once again to the chicago humanities festival the empty bottle and each and every one of you let's open up this [Applause] you