NOTHING haunts a broken-up rock band quite like the question of what could have been, as Dean Carrico discovered in 2005. Co-founder and drummer in the iconic San Jose ’80s punk band Preachers That Lie, he had just played a hugely successful reunion gig before moving to Hawaii, where he found himself sentenced to six months in Punk Rock Hell, also known as Hot Topic. His blue hair got him the job, but he didn’t realize he’d be spending every day staring at posters of his friends who hit it big.
“There’s nothing more depressing than looking up at the wall and realizing you know six of those people personally, and you’ve shared the stage with 10 of those bands,” says Carrico.
A staple of Berkeley’s Gilman in the late ’80s and early ’90s, PTL gave Green Day their first gig, opening up for them. They played with Bille Joe and company more than a dozen times after that, although eventually it was PTL opening up for Green Day. PTL was on the Can of Pork compilation from Lookout Records with Lagwagon and the Mr. T Experience, making their song “Whiners” from that album the only one that crowds would know all the words to when they toured outside of the Bay Area. They played with Bad Religion, NOFX and other punk bands that would go on to superstardom.
“I look back at some other bands that made it and I think what would have happened if we’d kept it together,” agrees lead singer Rich Foster, who continues playing locally in the band Flames. He acquired the nickname “Stinky” —allegedly because he always smelled like cigarettes—for “The Stinky Show,” the popular punk program that ran on KSCU from 1993 to 1999.
PTL played their last show in 1995, after a nine-year run, before imploding while on tour in Colorado, when bassist Brian Snapp literally walked away from the band, ditching them at a hotel. Now they’re getting together for another reunion show, at the VooDoo Lounge on Wednesday, Dec. 23, and prepping a best-of disc that may finally get the band its due. (Foster and Snapp are still not on speaking terms, so Dover from Whiskey Sunday will be filling in on bass, as he did at the reunion shows in 2000 and 2005).
So there’s the question of what could have been, but on the other hand, maybe PTL didn’t do so badly for a punk band that started when 15-year-old Foster and Carrico met at the dollar theater (famous for its Rocky Horror screenings) that used to be in Oakridge Mall. Mixing the circular drone of the Germs with the heavy guitar of the Black Flag and the acid wit of the Dead Kennedys, PTL went from singing jokey, Dead Milkmen–type songs about girls and sex to anti-conformity social anthems and attacks on conservative types and Christianity.
“We always liked testing the audience’s limits,” says Foster.
Ultimately, their vicious humor cost them with the Gilman crowd, and crippled their chances of breakout success. Amazingly, it wasn’t their song “If You Don’t Want Me to Fuck Your Mother, Keep Her Off the Street” or even the Gilman-baiting “I’m Not From Berkeley,” which became a favorite there even though it called them close-minded whiners in a “punk rock Disneyland” and asserted that “riot grrrls are lame.” “I think Berkeley people just liked it because it said ‘Berkeley’,” says Foster.
Nope, it was finally a song about big breasts that got PTL blacklisted, despite the fact that the girls they were singing about helped write the song. “By ’92 or ’93, Gilman thought we weren’t PC enough,” says Foster.
While South Bay audiences seemed to love the band’s die-hard irreverence, “we brought our attitude up to Berkeley, and Berkeley wasn’t having any of it,” says Carrico. “People could not take a joke.”
Still, he wouldn’t change the band’s attitude for anything, even if it means he has to do another stint in Hot Topic. “The best bands in the world are the ones that can make you laugh or think,” he says. “If you can do both, nothing can stop you.”
His current bartending gig in Honolulu landed PTL an upcoming gig, after he offhandedly laid out the bizarre history of the band for a guy who turned out to be booking the Misfits.
“It’s the best time in your life, so you never stop talking about it,” says Carrico. “We do these shows, then we go back to being our drab and boring selves.”
PREACHERS THAT LIE performs Wednesday, Dec. 23, at 8pm with fellow reunited bands the Curbs, Ill Blooded and Hairy Italians at VooDoo Lounge, 4 S. Second St., San Jose. Tickets are $5. (408. 286.8636)
