The Rip Offs’ Greg Lowery on their enduring garage punk legacy ahead of Ship show
The Rip Offs. // image courtesy the artist
Greg Lowery formed the San Francisco garage punk band The Rip Offs in 1993, and while they were done by 1995, their shows became the stuff of legend, bolstered by the catchy and ripping songs recorded for their sole full-length, Got A Record, released on Lowery’s own Rip Off Records. That label would release albums from Lowery’s previous band, Supercharger, along with the Marked Men’s self-titled debut, hastening in another era of lo-fi, high-quality garage punk.
The Rip Offs would eventually reunite in 2007 and have played off and on since then, easily outlasting their original run. One of their rare shows happens this Friday, September 18, when the Rip Offs play the Ship for DJ Bazooka Joe‘s birthday, alongside Carbondale thrift punks Pet Mosquito and the return of Kansas City’s own Wet Ones, so we hopped on the phone with the Rip Offs’ Greg Lowery to discuss reunion shows and more.
The Pitch: What made you decide to come to Kansas City for this gig–is it your relationship with Joe?
Greg Lowery: Yeah, it’s his birthday, and he asked us to play, so, of course, I asked the band if they all wanted to do it, and they said, “Yeah, sounds like it’ll be fun. We’ve never played there.” Really, that’s as simple as it is.
The Rip Offs have been around for 30-plus years now, and you’ve been reformed for 20?
Yeah, you’re about right. Yeah, I think our first reunion show was around 2007. We always played Europe or Japan, so yeah, we don’t really play in the United States too much, anyway. Whenever we could play here or there, and we get offered the right amount, we’ll sometimes do it, just as long as it works out for everybody.
How do you determine what you’re gonna play, when you only play so often?
Of course, it’s the money, number one, and also if it sounds like an interesting play in some place that we’ve never been. A couple of years ago we played Gonerfest, and that was a blast. It really is if it’s an interesting show, and we can all do it, then, and the money’s right, I think that’s as simple as it is. We’ll do it. We love playing, and just wanna have fun.
How do you put together a set list when you’re only playing, in this case, two or three shows a year? I assume that fans travel for this, and everybody has what they wanna hear.
We try to please, basically. We try to play all the hits, and yeah, we try to do what we can. Hopefully everyone who comes sees us will hear a song they like. It’s all fun. We’ve been using pretty similar sets for most of the reunion shows. Actually, this time we’re trying to add a few different songs that we never really play live, so we may try it just for Kansas City. Deep cuts, man. Deep cuts.
The Rip Offs. // image courtesy the artist
You all perform in ski masks, and I’ve heard the stories from The Mummies and stuff about just what happens when you have a stage outfit like that. I have to imagine it’s nice to be able to wash those, as opposed to what it was probably like when you were touring as a going concern.
I’ll stop that misconception right now, ’cause I’m not a moron when I came up with the gimmick. It was not ski masks. They’re nylons. We started with just cheap nylons, ’cause they’re nice and thin. The funny thing is now, in this day and age, you can’t really find cheap nylons anymore. They have to be, like, tights now. So yeah, they’re women’s tights that we have to put on over our heads.
But they never were ski masks, ’cause that would’ve been too stupid. I’m not that dumb. They’re pretty much disposable, so whenever we go on tour, we bring a few extra ones, and yeah, they’re not too bad. They don’t smell. They breathe. Ski masks would be bad.
The Mummies, though, yeah. Their setup and their gimmick is … yeah. I’ve been on tour with them back in the old days in Supercharger, my first band, and those things, they had in a suitcase, and every time they opened it up you could smell it from afar. It was not good.
The label hasn’t really put anything out in a good long while. How do you approach Rip Off Records in conjunction with the band these days?
I started Rip Off Records in ’93, literally about a month or two before my band went on tour. Supercharger went on tour with The Mummies in Europe, and Supercharger imploded over in Europe. And I was coming back on the plane, and I came up with the whole idea for a new band basically, ’cause I started Rip Off Records, and it was a ripoff basically of what Trent [Ruane], the singer and keyboardist of The Mummies, was doing.
He had a label called Pre-B.S., and he would do one-sided singles, really cheap-looking, and so I said, “I’m gonna just try to copy that and just make it like that.” I called it Rip Off Records, an obvious tongue-in-cheek thing, ripping them off. My first single was The Statics.
On the plane ride back, as I was dreaming up of band members and my whole gimmick with the nylons over the head thing, when I touched down, literally the first Statics single was waiting for me. It was almost simultaneous; Rip Off Records and The Rip Offs were born almost around the same time. I haven’t done anything with Ripoff Records in 20 years. I had a nice good run with it, and for me, you could say the same thing for bands, but people seem to like The Rip Offs, so we keep getting them back together.
Yeah, a record label–for me, it’s always been a finite time anyway. It’s like, things peak and then they start going down, and I didn’t want my label to be just putting out records just to put out records. So I decided to end it in 2006, about 20 years ago.
The label and the band both have such an amazing discography, and it’s a sonic portrait of a place in time. How does it feel to have gotten to be part of documenting what Eric Davidson from The New Bomb Turks refers to as “gunk punk”?
Yeah, whatever. He can come up with anything he wants. I just did what I did and what we did in The Rip Offs, and it’s just rock and roll. Just music. We wanted to record our own recordings ourselves. We didn’t wanna go into a studio, and we wanted it to sound raw and dirty, and to me, that’s the essence of pure rock and roll.
That’s all it is. You can call it whatever you want. People call it lo-fi and all that. I never called my stuff lo-fi- because it’s just music, so yeah, you can put all these labels on it–budget rock, gunk, whatever–it’s people just making stuff up to fit a narrative. I think it’s just music, whether you like it or not.
On this show, you’re playing with Wet Ones from KC and Pet Mosquito from Illinois. How is it for you getting introduced to newer bands when you play these shows these days?
It’s always fun to see, of course, the newer bands and stuff like that, see what they’re bringing. At the same time, we’re there to have fun and do what we do and see how the opening bands are. Yeah. It’s always a blast.
What are you doing these days, other than playing the occasional show?
I have a band that’s been around for about 10 years called the Control Freaks, and we have four albums out, actually, so that’s what I’m doing in my own personal life. I got that going on. We’ve been playing a lot of great shows, and hopefully we’ll get to Japan next year.
In fact, Joe was the one, when he worked at Slovenly, he approved our first record and said, “Yeah, let’s put out the first record.” Slovenly put out the first two Control Freaks albums.
I’ve always wondered about the whole Japan thing and its relationship with garage rock, or whatever you wanna call it. They just seem to make it so appealing for bands like that to go over there. What is that experience like for you as a musician?
Yeah. I could tell you a story back in the day. When the Ripoffs just finished our album, in August of ’94 or September of ’94–it literally just pressed–I started sending them out to distributors, and we were set to go to Japan, I think, in October of that year. We started playing our first shows with some of the now-legendary bands–5.6.7.8s, Guitar Wolf, all these great bands–and here they are opening for us.
I just remember singing one of my songs, and I just remember the background vocals seemed extremely loud, and I was, like, going, “Man, the band is really loud.” I looked around, and I saw the crowd singing back to me my song that I wrote in my bedroom. It was really loud, and it was the first time I got confirmation.
I was, like, shocked, ’cause our album just came out, and they were all singing it back to me. So for me it was really like, “Wow, this is why people love Japan. They’re just really into it.” And yeah, it’s a lot of fun. Bottom line is, if your band sucks, it’s the same all over the world. Even in Japan, they know what’s real and what isn’t, so if it’s genuine, they’re gonna seem to like you, and so that’s really what it is.
I imagine that’s kinda gotta be the appeal of playing these one-off shows here and there, because people are coming out to see you, rather than just being like, “Oh, it’s another Thursday night show at the bar,” and instead it’s, “This is an event.”
Yeah, it’s a band from 30 years ago. We’re fortunate that we’ve gone down in history, cultishly, and as part of the ’90s San Francisco scene. Yeah, you’re right. It’s fun. We played Gonerfest, and there were young kids in the front row. Obviously, they weren’t born when our record was out, but their parents knew them, and these kids were singing my songs, and I was like, “Wow, that’s incredible.”
Makes you feel old, but at the same time, it makes you very proud that your music has stood the test of time.
The Rip Offs play the Ship on Friday, September 18, with Wet Ones and Pet Mosquito. Details on that show here.
