At The Drive-In — “One Armed Scissor”

For a brief moment in 2000, At the Drive-In were the best live band in the world—then they broke up. This week, Rob tracks how the El Paso post-hardcore outfit burned so bright so quickly with their complex, politically-charged tunes that made for some of the wildest shows in rock. The band then suddenly flamed out after it became clear that their intensity wasn’t sustainable when they struggled to contain an unruly, “sheep”-like crowd at Big Day Out. Later, Rob is joined by journalist Suzy Exposito to discuss the herculean task of covering “One-Armed Scissor” and the politics of the pit. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Suzy Exposito Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s (00:00) Intro: “Ice cream-eating motherf–kers,” Big Day Out 2001, and how to wrangle a mosh pit (31:09) This week’s song: “One-Armed Scissor” by At the Drive-In (32:17) ATDI’s formation amid tragedy (38:11) The band’s ferocious, dense lyricism (57:45) “One-Armed Scissor,” as performed on various late-night shows (66:42) Interview with Suzy Exposito (94:58) Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it.

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  I discovered this cool underground, totally unknown rock band on a cassette tape called Spew. S.P.E.W. Spew, like, bleh. What a rad, tough, vulgar, super 90s album title that is. Spew, awesome. This is 1993. This is Spew IV. To be precise, the fourth edition of the esteemed Spew Sampler franchise. Super cool and obscure. Okay, fine. I got this tape out of a cardboard box of free stuff at the Camelot Music in the mall, but it's still at least medium cool.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed, I have discovered Jawbox, the great noisy, brainy, Washington DC post-hardcore band Jawbox. I have discovered this band's modest breakout alternative rock hit, Savory, which will appear on the 1994 Jawbox album For Your Own Special Sweetheart. I am entranced by the crawling, malevolent narcotic

• 2:30Speaker 01

  death jangle of that one electric guitar. I am entranced by the blunt slashing of that second electric guitar. I am entranced by the noisy, brainy, confrontational lyrics about angels framed to be consumed. Comodification, exploitation, unrealistic predatory feminine beauty standards, et cetera. I am entranced by this song's sublimely acidic deployment of the super 90s word, whatever.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  You protest your complicity. That's a rad phrase, verbally and melodically. Jawbox singer and guitarist Jay Robbins, capital J dot Robbins, he did an interview with Kerrang in 2020, talking about writing the lyrics to Savory, how he wanted to write a song that sounded more sexual. He apologizes for using the word sexual. That's a very underground, post-hardcore thing to apologize for. But Jay says he was also thinking about a highly dysfunctional relationship he'd been in. And he says, quote, "By that point in my life, I was forever trying to couch my personal struggles in these kind of grand analytical terms." End quote.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Me too, bub. It's called being a teenager.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  See you faint surprise. The trash compactor crunch and pulverizing density of this Jawbox song, Savory. The musical and intellectual density of Savory. I listened to this song and felt myself getting smarter. I was 15 and I was very much not getting smarter, but I can still recall the exhilarating feeling of thinking I was getting smarter and being mistaken. And so I do the thing you do in 1993 when you flip for a random song. I buy the whole Jawbox album For Your Own Special Sweetheart on CD for $16.99, probably from the Camelot Music in the mall. Support the scene.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  This song is called Cruel Swing, and yeah, I don't feel smarter anymore. I don't know why this dude starts out screeching the word clean like that. I don't know what the lines, "Marshall rhythm's been locked in, the king is hound's tooth clean" mean. Would you guys mind just dumbing this down for me for just a second?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  All right, now we're talking. There's 15-year-old me procrastinating over a five-page sophomore English paper due tomorrow about a book I ain't finished reading yet. I gotta pretend like I've actually read Weinsberg, Ohio, or whatever. But no, as it turns out, the page wants to stay white. Oh, hell yeah. I listen to cool, tough, obscure, underground, post-hardcore bands now. I listen to bands that use words like cauterize.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  That's a Jawbox song called Reel, R.E.E.L. And it's the juxtaposition of the ugly, pretty guitar riff there with the pretty ugly lyrics. Cauterize, wounds you hide, burn them clean, show no way inside. I dig this band, Jawbox. Man, I dig this cool, unknown underground band I discovered on a free cassette tape called Spew IV. By the way, it turns out that Spew is a series of samplers put out by Atlantic Records, very much a major label, featuring very much not obscure major label bands tons of people are already familiar with. For example, I picked up this tape in the first place because it ends with an acoustic

• 7:45Speaker 01

  version of Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah. Once again, specifically, this is a two-man acoustic version of Plush, performed on the life-changing MTV program Headbanger's Ball in 1993. I dig how endearingly non-rock star-like Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland looks in this video, man. His weary, thoughtful aura, his unbuttoned button-down with a t-shirt underneath. He looks like me 30 seconds after clocking out at my teenage job bagging groceries. I loved Stone Temple Pilots in 1993 because of course I did. I pulled a tape literally called Spew out of a cardboard box solely because I loved

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Stone Temple Pilots. But as a consequence, that tape was the first time I ever heard Jawbox and The Melvins and Yola Tengo. Then fast forward to August 17th, 1994, at the Nautica Pavilion, a lovely outdoor venue in picturesque downtown Cleveland, Ohio, where I got to see Jawbox live, opening for Stone Temple Pilots.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  That's a Jawbox song called FF = 66. FF = 66. There's a lot of Jawbox songs I love now, but the Jawbox fragment that usually gets stuck in my head is just, brr, spliced in, brr, spliced in. Yes, Jawbox, The Meat Puppets, and Stone Temple Pilots, live at Nautica Pavilion in downtown Cleveland, in the flats, in the storied booming Flats Entertainment District. We got bars, we got a Hooters, we got everything. Yes, I'm there primarily for Stone Temple Pilots, and anecdotally, so is everyone else. But I'm super psyched to see Jawbox also, because I really dig the song that goes, "Just

• 10:12Speaker 01

  one way not to be what gets sold to me."

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Of course, it will take me many years to grasp the poignance of Jawbox singing the line, "Just want a way not to be what gets sold to me" on track one of their major label debut album on Atlantic Records after they'd previously put out a bunch of rad stuff on the super-ultra cool and independent Washington DC label Discord Records. The scene politics, the spiritual ramifications of Jawbox jumping from Discord Records to Atlantic Records, I did not grasp any of that at the time. I had a Weinsberg, Ohio level of obliviousness to that whole deal. I do, however, remember Jawbox playing FF=66

• 11:19Speaker 01

  that night in Cleveland, and I also remember when the crowd were being dicks to Jawbox and Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland personally appeared onstage during Jawbox's set to yell at us.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Regrettably, I do not have audio or video or anything of Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots yelling at us during Jawbox's opening set at Nautica Pavilion in Cleveland, Ohio on August 17, 1994. So I tried to find the angriest slash most accusatory slash most Jawbox-esque Stone Temple Pilots song I could find, and I settled on "Army Ants" from the 1994 STP album Purple, which I owned on CD also because, to paraphrase Wayne's World II, "If you lived in the suburbs, you were issued purple by Stone Temple Pilots." Fall into those single file lines like Army Ants. I can see Jawbox singing that. I can

• 12:35Speaker 01

  see Jawbox thinking that about the knuckleheaded and mostly teenage citizens of Cleveland, Ohio. I don't remember precisely what happened here, but Jawbox are onstage in Cleveland with a hooters within throwing distance in front of a bunch of Stone Temple Pilots fans who mostly aren't as cool as me. And so, like many opening acts, Jawbox are greeted with broad crowd indifference, with impatience, with perhaps isolated hoots of derision. And finally, Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland himself emerges from backstage in between Jawbox songs, and the whole crowd sees him and goes, "Woo, yeah!" And then Scott

• 13:18Speaker 01

  grabs a microphone and he goes, I'm paraphrasing, "Hey, fuck you guys. Be nice. I like this band. You guys are assholes." And the whole crowd goes, "Ooh." And Scott stomps back offstage, and Jawbox play the rest of their set, and then they get the hell out of Cleveland, and I feel bad. I remember thinking that was tremendously sincerely cool of Scott Weiland to stick up for his opening band like that, but mostly, I remember feeling terrible on Jawbox's behalf and feeling embarrassed on Cleveland's behalf. We blew it. I'd never been yelled at by a band onstage at a rock concert before. I did not like it, though I suppose this sort of thing happens all the time.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Hey, don't fucking kick people and don't punch people. I'm talking to you right there, all right? I'm talking to you and you. If you want to fucking do that shit, get the fuck up on the football field, all right? I'm talking to you. Yeah, I'm talking to you. Yeah, that's right. No, I don't have, it sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves, but there's other people here too, all right? So try to be a little more kind.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Okay, here we have a slightly more famous incident involving rock stars berating an unruly crowd. Here we have Ian McKay of the immortal, beloved, inimitable, but lots of bands tried, Washington DC rock band Fugazi, the flagship band on their own label Discord Records, former home of Jawbox. It will take teenage me years, plural, to connect Fugazi and Jawbox because I'm busy with other stuff. But so here, in audio taken from the fantastic 1999 Fugazi documentary Instrument, here we have Ian accosting a couple misbehaving

• 15:07Speaker 01

  skinhead-type dudes in the crowd at a hometown Fugazi show on August 9, 1993 at Fort Reno Park in DC. Fugazi, one of the greatest punk bands, post-hardcore bands, underground bands, alternative bands, rock and roll bands, whatever bands of all time. Unbelievable. Ian McKay of Fugazi has identified, in the Fort Reno crowd this summer evening, two troublemakers who are kicking and punching and moshing and semi-accidentally pummeling their fellow concertgoers. Ian ain't having it. Ian McKay is famous for many reasons, but one reason he's famous is that he ain't having it ever. But did you hear, right at

• 15:52Speaker 01

  the end of Ian's speech, did you hear a quiet second voice onstage go, "The bald guys?" And Ian goes, "Yeah." This part. Listen to this again. It's really quiet, but this is really important.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  But there's other people here too, all right? So try to be a little more kind.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  I never really noticed this part before, but the handoff here, "The bald guys?" Yeah, is really fantastic. The singular Titanic camaraderie of the four dudes in Fugazi is really fantastic. Ian is tapping in. Ian is handing the baton to his bandmate, Guy Pachoto, Fugazi's other famous, beloved singer and guitarist. It is Guy's turn now to castigate the two kicking and punching troublemakers in the crowd. And so, Guy delivers the instantly world-famous "ice cream eating motherfucker" rant.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  You know, I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, "Those guys aren't so tough. They're eating ice cream. What a bunch of swell guys." I saw you eating ice cream, pal. Oh, don't you deny it. You were eating an ice cream cone. You were eating an ice cream cone. Oh, you're bad now. You're bad now, but you're eating an ice cream cone, and I saw you.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Fugazi are hilarious. Legitimately hilarious. As terrifyingly intense, as ferocious, as dauntingly unfailingly principled. Only playing $5 all-ages shows, no t-shirts for sale, no major magazine interviews, certainly no major label flirtation, et cetera. As philosophically intimidating and didactic and unyielding as Fugazi can be, these dudes are hilarious. Guy's lethally jocular vocal tone throughout this whole ice cream rant is just phenomenal. "Those guys aren't so tough. What a bunch of swell guys. Oh, you're bad now." And maybe most importantly, that's that shit you can't hide, you know?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  That's the shit you can't hide, you know? You got your fucking shit, but you eat ice cream. Everybody knows it. The whole fucking place knows it. Ice cream eating motherfucker. That's what you are.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  But of course, my all-time favorite line will always be, "Ice cream eating motherfucker, that's what you are." Holy shit. So if you're a punk or hardcore or post-punk or post-hardcore sort of person, this is an all-time great cataclysmic event. The Fugazi Ice Cream Eating Motherfucker rant. This artist named Evan Keeling once did a painting that looked like an old paperback novel cover for a fake book called Ice Cream Eating Motherfuckers. This gets more incredible the more I look at it. We got the title, Ice Cream Eating Motherfuckers, in huge white letters, and Guy Pachoto's huge handsome pale dazed space alien-looking

• 18:50Speaker 01

  face, plus the titular Ice Cream Eating Motherfuckers glowering in the lower-left corner, holding vanilla cones, and looking like Eminem's pissy, indignant, illegitimate children. This band is hilarious. You know my current favorite moment in a Fugazi song? It's in the song "Public Witness Program" from their 1993 album In on the Killtaker. It's the way Guy goes, "Ugh," during an instrumental break, like he just roundhouse kicked somebody in the face, or was himself roundhouse kicked in the face.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Hilarious. Awesome. Anyway, have you ever wondered exactly what kind of ice cream the ice cream eating motherfuckers were eating? I have. I don't know the answer. How would I know that? Probably they were eating vanilla or chocolate cones, right? That's the boring but probably correct answer. For the answer that's almost definitely incorrect, but way more amusing to me personally, join me now as I Google "good humor ice cream truck menu 1993" and I pull up a totally reputable site called dinosaurdracula.com that provides images of more exotic circa 93 good humor

• 20:24Speaker 01

  menu items. You could get a bubble-o bill, a Neapolitan ice cream-looking gentleman with a mustache and a gumball for a nose. You could get a fat frog, that's green ice cream with two gumballs or sweet tarts or whatnot for the frog eyes. You could get a great white popsicle that kinda looked like a shark, sure. You could get a ghoulish black cherry adjacent popsicle called Vampire's Deadly Secret that actually impressively looks kinda gross. You could get a WWF superstar ice cream bar featuring Hulk Hogan, or Macho Man Randy Savage, or Brett the Hitman Hart. Or, and this is my favorite, you could get

• 21:06Speaker 01

  a Flintstones push-up. A sherbet-type situation you slowly pushed up from the bottom. Available in such flavors as yabba dabba doo orange, bedrock berry, and lime rock lime. Do you mind if I spend the rest of my life pretending that I know for a fact that the ice cream eating motherfuckers were eating yabba dabba doo orange Flintstones push-ups before they almost ruined a Fugazi show? I'm gonna do that. Anyway, this is a world historically famous onstage tirade because Fugazi are a world historically great live band.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Here, for example, we have Guy Pichoto onstage with Fugazi in 1988, hanging upside down from a basketball hoop at the YWCA in Philadelphia and screaming the opening lines of the song "Glue Man." For a super skinny dude, Guy has phenomenal core strength, I must say. This iconic footage also appears in the great 1999 Fugazi documentary "Instrument," directed by Jem Cohen. Are people on the internet still using the expression "he didn't have to go that hard"? Is that still a thing? I doubt it. But Guy in the basketball hoop

• 22:38Speaker 01

  is "he didn't have to go that hard" incarnate. Same deal with Fugazi playing Waiting Room at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, also in 1988. Even if you're not watching this, I genuinely think you can sense the collective ecstatic intensity in this room. The huge teeming mass of bodies slowly pulling into focus here. I would pay like $5,000 to have been in this room, even if I very probably would have passed out in this crowd.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Those two clips might lead you to believe Fugazi peaked in 1988, but in fact, the best Fugazi album is their last album, which is called "The Argument" and came out in 2001. This song is called "Epic Problem." It's the way the band stops playing every time Ian McKay goes "stop" until the band gets fed up and refuses to stop, even when Ian goes "stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop."

• 24:21Speaker 01

  And lyrically, it's the malevolent bureaucratic formality of "we regret to inform," the antiquated telegraph diction of "stop," the mixture of antiseptic and gloriously overheated tones. "Epic Problem" is the best. "The Argument" is the best. Fugazi are the best. Now, I do believe I've played you both of those video clips before: Guy in the basketball hoop and the whole packed sweaty crowd bopping to Waiting Room in the Fugazi episode of this program regarding their fantastic 1990 song "Merchandise," though we didn't have video back then. But both those clips are once again necessary here to illustrate how

• 25:03Speaker 01

  intense, ferocious, intimidating, and exhilarating Fugazi are live, and what effect that ferocity has on a crowd. Guy screaming "Glue Man" while hanging upside down from a basketball hoop, he's a solitary figure having a rapturous experience, like rapturous in the biblical sense. And then the Waiting Room footage is about the crowd, about the masses, about the teeming but singular organism, about the extraordinary power Fugazi wield over a live audience. Even if one consequence of that extraordinary power is that Fugazi are also famous for having to constantly yell at individual audience members who are

• 25:46Speaker 01

  moshing or thrashing about or generally just beating up everyone around them. With great power comes great responsibility over some of the most annoying people you've ever encountered in your life. Fugazi knew that in 1993, and these fellows knew it in 2001.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Here we have the phenomenal, combustible, too awesome and volatile to last El Paso, Texas rock band "At the Drive-In." They are onstage in Sydney, Australia, in January 2001 as part of the gargantuan Australian multi-day, multi-city rock festival Big Day Out. "At the Drive-In" are newly extremely highly regarded as one of the most pulverizing and electrifying live bands in rock and roll. And here in Sydney, they've gotten three songs into their set, and it's already a disaster. We got an epidemic of moshers, slam dancers, crowd surfers, and various other flavors of ultra-violent steakheads. One issue

• 27:07Speaker 01

  here evidently is that right before "At the Drive-In" started playing, the Peoria, Illinois new metal band Mudvayne had just finished their set on a nearby stage. And so a ton of Mudvayne fans ran over, and I am going to use the word "infested" the crowd for "At the Drive-In." In the event you are unfamiliar with Mudvayne's vibe, this is Mudvayne's vibe.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  You heard me. These fellows are from Peoria, Illinois. Here we have Mudvayne performing a song called "Minus One" live that day at the Big Day Out Festival in Sydney in 2001. If you're not watching this, be advised that Mudvayne are all wearing scary, garish, ultra-violent Joker-type clown paint. They look like if Slipknot went to art school. And the first like eight rows of dudes in this audience are just leaping straight up and down. This is an objectively disquieting, but also, sure, potentially lovely and cathartic scene. But Mudvayne's set ends, and pretty soon "At the Drive-In" start playing nearby and

• 28:27Speaker 01

  find themselves contending with a sudden influx of super aggro Mudvayne fans. Hence the slam dancing and crowd surfing and kicking and punching and really not at all accidental pummeling. It's getting ugly and vicious and legitimately dangerous out there. And "At the Drive-In" singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala ain't having it. So now, three songs in, Cedric lambasts the crowd for only being able to express themselves through slam dancing and also for being typically white people. And then Cedric points at one specific steakhead crowd surfer in the front row, and he lets the dude have it.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  You learn that from the TV. You didn't learn that from your best friend. You're a robot. You're a sheep.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  I have a microphone and you know, you're a sheep.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  As a presumably improvised devastating insult, I have to say that is a stupendous, furious, withering, derisive sheep impression there by At The Drive-In frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala. That is brutal. If Cedric ever pointed at me and went nah, I would spontaneously combust. And then At The Drive-In just walk off stage. They end their set after three songs and justifiably so. Their fans are getting mangled right in front of them. There is no use trying to exhort the steakheads in the crowd to be a little more kind. There is no use trying to further shame the steakheads via ice cream-based or even sheep-based insults.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  There's a great book, came out in 2021 called Sell Out, The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo and Hardcore, 1994 to 2007, written by the great critic and friend of the show, Dan Ozzie. There's a whole chapter devoted to At The Drive-In and several pages devoted to the Big Day Out fiasco. And At The Drive-In guitarist and occasional singer Jim Ward, he talks about walking offstage and then, quote, "Everybody got in the little golf carts to go to the dressing room, but I walked. Between the stage and the dressing room, I decided what I was gonna major in in college. I thought, I'm fucking done. We're over. This is totally out of control.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  This is impossible to do. There's no way we can survive in this setting." End quote. Jim, as it turns out, is not wrong about everything being totally out of control. He's not wrong about the circumstances being impossible. He's not wrong about his band's chances of surviving. An awful, senseless tragedy will befall the Big Day Out festival later that day, while another super cathartic rock band is onstage, just hours after Jim's bandmate angrily bleated at the crowd. And that tragedy will hang over At The Drive-In even though they weren't there. As it turns out, At The Drive-In explode and implode nearly simultaneously.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  At The Drive-In collapse the distinction between exploding and imploding. But for an ultra-brief, terrifying, exasperating, chaotic, magnificently unsustainable moment, these guys were the hottest and wildest and best rock band in the world, even if their songs themselves made it clear that it couldn't possibly last.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  My name is Rob Harvill. This is the 54th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cold and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "One Armed Scissor" by At The Drive-In from their 2000 album, Relationship of Command. There's a hyphen in "Drive-In." Cutaway, cutaway. I used to think this band's lyrics were super cryptic, but I suspect I was once again mistaken. Let me answer your first question. Yes, At The Drive-In are named after a line from the 1986 Poison song, "Talk Dirty to Me."

• 33:06Speaker 01

  And I think that's awesome. Ad break. Let's all go to the lobby and grab ourselves a snack.

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• 34:44Speaker 01

  Splendid. You ever watch the 90s El Paso public access TV talk show, Let's Get Real with Bill Lowery? Are you familiar with that program? No? Eh, that's all right. Bill Lowery himself is not always super familiar with the bands he invites to perform on his own show.

• 35:05Speaker 05

  But anyway, they're a local band and they're going to play for us tonight. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Here they are, The Drive-In from El Paso.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  They're called At The Drive-In with a hyphen, Bill. Bill is sitting behind his talk show desk in a full suit and tie. He's got an American flag behind him. He looks remarkably like the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and he does not look particularly psyched as young, scrappy, insouciant and quite loud El Paso punk rockers At The Drive-In make their television debut. It is 1994, the same year the band self-released their debut EP, a three-song jam called "Hell Passo." This song is called "Grand Mox Turkin." It's a Star Wars reference, basically.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And here we have ludicrously explosive At The Drive-In singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, pointing at his head and staring down the Let's Get Real camera as he belts out the line, "We were born to self-destruct on birth row." Birth row is only the first of this band's many, many malevolent bureaucratic formality-type turns of phrase. Anyway, then Cedric attempts a karate kick and falls over, or at least he briefly falls out of frame. Then guitarist and occasional backup shouter Jim Ward briefly enters the frame to shout something. Cedric's got buzzed and dyed blonde hair at this particular time.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  He does not yet have the voluminous Afro for which he will become famous. Also notably, Cedric has appeared on the El Paso public access talk show, Let's Get Real, before, playing drums in a band called Foss, F-O-S-S, with future Texas congressman and presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke. Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Jim Ward form At The Drive-In in El Paso in Texas in 1994, inspired by underground punk and hardcore and post-punk and post-hardcore bands like Jawbreaker and of course Fugazi, as well as the 1984 music documentary, Another State of Mind, which followed the young Southern California punk bands,

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Social Distortion and Youth Brigade on an early tour. There is a great deal of continual lineup turmoil in At The Drive-In from the very beginning and a great deal of harrowing tragedy as well. The band's original drummer Bernie Rincon takes his own life in 1995. That year, At The Drive-In released their second EP, Alfaro Vive Carajo, named after a left-wing guerrilla movement in Ecuador. Here is a live performance of a song called "Ludvico Drive-In", which is a reference to a clockwork orange, I think.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  This is At the Drive-In Live in El Paso in early 1995. I'm not saying this clip has rhapsodic, shirtless, fugazi waiting room energy, but I dig seeing a little bit of the crowd here. I dig feeling a modest but promising amount of energy flowing between the band and the crowd. I dig hearing and seeing the potential. On backing vocals there, going "Take It Like a Man," far stage right, we got the band's friends, Laura Beard and Sarah Riser, who'd played with Cedric in another El Paso punk outfit called "The Fall on Deaf Ears," which is a fantastic name for a punk band, and I assume an extra fantastic name for a punk band in El Paso, Texas.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  These early At the Drive-In EPs are splendid and scruffy and bursting with "Get Me the Fuck Out of This Town" type punk rock energy, but I'm biased toward even this band's earliest, rawest live performances, because At the Drive-In will eventually be regarded as one of the most pulverizing and electrifying live bands in rock and roll. And it will take At the Drive-In many years to generate that pulverizing and electrifying vibe in a studio. The first full-length At the Drive-In record is released in 1997 and is called Acrobatic Tenement. Your new bassist is Omar Rodriguez Lopez, a crucial part of this band going forward, though he won't be playing bass for very long.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  In that sellout book, Jim Ward admits that the guitars on this Acrobatic Tenement record sound rough and out of tune and not super distorted, because Jim thought he was just laying down rough, scratch guitar tracks and he'd get to record the real guitar tracks later. He was mistaken.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  This song is called "Skips on the Record," and no, yeah, okay, that's not the most muscular guitar tone you'll ever hear in your life, but more importantly, At the Drive-In are also developing a quite startling and disquietingly gnarly lyrical style that mixes medical imagery and political trauma and stultifying suburban apathy. C is for contraction, 30 minutes apart, umbilical agendas and the coup d'etat. C is for the cul-de-sac, T and N men reverse, parking all the grandeur in the backseat after birth. Awful, sensuous, personal tragedy continues to be another crucial element of At the Drive-In, spiritually and lyrically.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  This song is called "Ibrolio" and is dedicated to Julio Venegas, an artist and close friend of the band, who took his own life in 1996. The guitar sounds, the overall audio quality, the melodic sophistication, none of that matters much. When Cedric is singing the words, "There are no words to express the loss I feel since you've been away. You made a typical sad song, a physical classroom, where I learned nothing, just flashes of your face."

• 42:23Speaker 01

  There is a profound, devastating, but inspiring heaviness to this band from the very beginning. This song, "Ibrolio," also features an early example of another At the Drive-In staple, which is just to gloriously hammer at one lyrical phrase. Less as a chorus in a pop music sense and more as a battle cry in a guerrilla warfare sense. The battle cry this time is "It's all a facade."

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I used to think facade was pronounced "facade." Like, I thought it was "facade" back in college, and everyone made fun of me when they found out, and so I still kind of feel embarrassed now whenever I hear that word, facade. It's French. At the Drive-In are touring like crazy at this point, initially in a 1981 Ford Econoline van they bought for $800. Per that sellout book, the entire recording budget for the Acrobatic Tenement album was $600, which of course further illustrates that the live At the Drive-In experience takes precedence over the recorded At the Drive-In experience until somebody figures

• 43:42Speaker 01

  out how to make the records sound as bonkers as the shows. Not quite yet. In 1997, the band puts out another EP called El Gran Orgo, which features the band's strangest lineup situation. Now we've got Paul Hinoj on bass and Tony Hajar on drums, and they'll stick around. Omar Rodriguez Lopez moves from bass to guitar, but founding guitarist Jim Ward briefly leaves the band entirely. Replaced on guitar and backing vocals by a guy named Ben Rodriguez, who gets kicked out of the band mid-tour shortly thereafter. This song is called "Fahrenheit." When these guys play a song with a chorus that goes, "If these walls could speak, I

• 44:26Speaker 01

  wouldn't tell them anything," there's like 10,000 incredibly personal issues they could be talking about, or I guess not talking about.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  And then founding guitarist Jim Ward comes back, and finally, we have the canonical imperial lineup of At the Drive-In. Cedric Bixler-Zavala on lead vocals, Jim Ward on guitars and occasional vocals, Omar Rodriguez Lopez on guitars, Paul Hinoj on bass, and Tony Hajar on drums. That was easy assembling that lineup. That was not easy. Nothing comes easy to this band ever. Talking to Rolling Stone in 2001, after At the Drive-In have finally blown up, and now they're dealing with huge ecstatic, violent crowds and asshole security guards, and tons of non-fugazi-esque mainstream media demands, and a general expectation that these fellers

• 45:35Speaker 01

  are gonna save rock and roll, Jim Ward says, quote, "Our secret weapon is that we've been a band for so long, and we've been through so much worse shit than this. Saving rock, to me, is not realistic. It's not real life. Real life, to me, is rolling in a van with a gallon of gas left, or crashing on someone's floor, or running out of money to buy strings when you broke your last two strings during a show." End quote. All this anguish and conflict, the live sound versus studio sound conflict, perhaps even the accumulated weight of all the intra-band conflict, and definitely the young, open-hearted,

• 46:15Speaker 01

  ambitious band versus a cruel and unfeeling and often operatically tragic universe conflict, all that calamity and suffering fuels perhaps the first truly great, if also impossibly heavy, At the Drive-In song, which is called "Napoleon Solo."

• 46:48Speaker 01

  "Napoleon Solo" appears in the second full-length At the Drive-In album, released in 1998 and called "In Casino Out," in slash casino slash out. "Napoleon Solo" is dedicated to the band's old friends and Cedric's former bandmates, Laura Beard and Sarah Riser, who died in a car crash in 1997. At the Drive-In, we're about to play a show in New Orleans amid the beaded impotence of New Orleans when Cedric got the call. "A hint of suspense when the telephone rings, this is forever." Talking to Rolling Stone in 2001, talking about Laura and Sarah, Cedric says, quote, "I think about them every night. It just sticks with us now.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  We always play that song about them, Napoleon Solo, at the end of our sets. Everything we do is in honor of them." End quote. To my mind, "In Casino Out" is the first great At the Drive-In record, the first recording that comes close to matching the band's increasingly famously bonkers live show, but nonetheless, Napoleon Solo Live is still on another planet entirely.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  That's At the Drive-In Live in Toronto in 2000. Cedric Bixler-Zavala, at this point, is mostly just screaming so loud with so much physical intensity that he looks like he's about to burst into flames. But I think his screaming there replaces the usual line, "17, embalmed in caskets, lowered into the weather." Here are At the Drive-In doing Napoleon Solo in Germany in 1999. The audio quality here is not awesome, but if you're watching, dig the impassive woman smoking pretty much directly in Jim Ward's face as he screams. And dig the way Jim just stares her down and keeps screaming.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  So there's a strong argument that just due to safety concerns, you don't ever want to invent a way to transfer the gargantuan ferocity of At the Drive-In Live onto a CD. But this In Casino Out record notably also features one of my all-time favorite songs of theirs, a song about military warfare called "Canbara" that just so happens to use the word "cauterize."

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I've honestly always been way too mesmerized by the rad guitars here to look up what Cedric's screaming about, but apparently he just said, "Prosthetic, prosthetic, prosthetic. Blemish necro is the Velcro on the charred appendage." And for your reference, Ayacucho is a city in Peru in the site of an 1825 battle during the Peruvian War of Independence. Medical, political, gnarly.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  They're still better live, though, and I suppose they'll always be better live. And that total exhilaration mixed with eternal frustration is at the very molten core of the At the Drive-In experience. The band put out another EP called "Via" in 1999. Here's a quieter, gentler, maliciously insinuating moment from a song called "Metronome Arthritis." Of course, that's what it's called.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Quick to the throat in this ink cartridge funeral. Hell, yeah. But now it's time to get these fellows on a major label, Grand Royal Records, owned by the Beastie Boys. So that's about as cool and integrity-driven and unobjectionable a major label situation as a turn-of-the-century punk band can get. And it's time to hook these fellows up with Ross Robinson, a Texas-born producer known informally as the godfather of nu metal for his explosive and increasingly commercially viable work with Korn and Limp Bizkit and Slipknot and Glassjaw and Sepultura and whatnot. Sonically and temperamentally, Ross is way more of a mud vein guy than the dudes in

• 52:01Speaker 01

  At the Drive-In are, and Ross excels at whipping his bands into a frantic, seething, sobbing, disturbing, volatile, emotional frenzy. All you've got to know, basically, is just like everyone else, Ross Robinson sees At the Drive-In Live and he flips out. In that sellout book, Ross says, quote, "I started crying as I watched them. It was this amazing feeling of seeing something brand-new. They didn't play anything correctly, which I loved. I love violent music, and yet it was so emotional and sweet and sensitive. It was fuck you and I love you at the same time." End quote.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  In September of 2000, At the Drive-In released their third full-length album, produced by Ross Robinson and called "Relationship of Command." Even the breathing here doesn't sound fully human.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  This is track one on "Relationship of Command." It is called "Arc Arsenal." I don't think I can fully convey how colossal, how extraterrestrially overwhelming this record immediately sounded to me, and it still sounds that way to me. It makes me feel like a kid. It makes me feel like a tiny, harmless little bug about to get squashed. And if it takes me getting squashed for these dudes to save rock and roll, then so be it.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Catatonic leisure at 1,000 miles per hour. That is a primo At the Drive-In phrase. The English pronunciation of leisure is very important. Once you get on this verbal wavelength, you hear echoes of it everywhere. My five-year-old daughter is going to her friend's birthday party, and her friend likes axolotls, right? The animals, the cute little salamander-type guys. And so we go on the internet and we buy a couple squishy axolotl toys as a birthday present, but shipping gets screwed up, and my wife goes, "The axolotls are delayed." And instinctively, I think, "The axolotls are delayed."

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Here's Cedric at the end of "Arc Arsenal" screaming "Beware" repeatedly.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so, yikes. This is the heaviest and gnarliest and screamiest and best rock album ever made, in my 22-year-old opinion. Every song on "Relationship of Command" has been my favorite song at one time or another. They work in shifts. Historically, my jam has been a song called "Enfilade," that is a French term for flanking gunfire, just for the way these dudes make a chorus of "Freight, freight train comin', freight, freight train comin', feel like the freight train has already mowed everyone down."

• 55:48Speaker 01

  It's just the ludicrously dense and fluid churn of the bass and drums there, the crunch of the world's largest and sexiest, sorry, trash compactor. It's the way these five dudes sound like they're 4,000 feet tall. Right now, I'm also quite fond of the song "Mannequin Republic." Awesome. Just for the way the dudes scream the line, "They call it a wasteland, baby."

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Seriously, the "baby" there is very important to me. "They call it a wasteland, baby." The vicious intimacy of the "baby." Speaking of vicious intimacy, please enjoy this song called "Rolodex Propaganda." Fantastic. In which Cedric cheers on super-special guest Iggy Pop as Iggy tries out various splendid line readings of the phrase "manuscript replica."

• 57:13Speaker 01

  I didn't know that was Iggy Pop, honestly. I thought that was four different people singing "manuscript replica" four different ways. I thought it was the other four members of At the Drive-In, and this song was illustrating the strength of their bond. I was mistaken in virtually every respect. I would not say that At the Drive-In enjoyed the Ross Robinson recording experience. In the sellout book, Cedric Bixler-Zavala says, quote, "It kind of drove some people to not want to be in the studio anymore. He was up in my face and throwing shit at me and wanted to recreate what we were like live, though there were times when I was like, 'All right, let's just record the fucking song, Ross.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  I'm tired of this method-acting shit.'" End quote. One especially not psyched member of the band is the drummer, Tony Hajar. You wouldn't call it a ballad in any conventional sense, but the song "Invalid Litter Department" is slower and patient and somber and all the heavier for that. In Rolling Stone, it says, quote, "When ATDI went to record 'invalid litter department' about the unsolved murders of women in Juarez at the Mexican border, Robinson had them imagine that the kick drum was the heartbeat of all the world's missing mothers. Pretentious, perhaps, but effective." End quote. Yikes.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  I see the kick drum as heartbeat vision there.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  But just the severity in Cedric's voice there indicates that this song is maybe not the time to be dialing up the method acting shit. In Rolling Stone, drummer Tony Azar says, quote, "I haven't talked about this, but in that song, Ross brought up my mom. She passed away in 1988, and it was a poignant time. I don't know if I should have gone that far when we were recording. Now, every time we play it, I associate this song with my emotions about her." End quote. Pretentious and personally damaging, perhaps, but effective. In that sellout book, Jim Ward says, quote, "Our records were not pushing people to our

• 59:45Speaker 01

  shows. Our shows were pushing people to our records." End quote. Relationship of Command solves that problem. Critics flip out over Relationship of Command. The NME announces that At the Drive-In are the new Nirvana. Magazines say that a lot, though. The band's own label, Grand Royal, announces that At the Drive-In can save rock. Labels say that a lot, though. But I do think you might believe this band was capable of anything if you happen to catch Relationship of Command lead single "One Arm Scissor" on a late-night talk show. Any of them, really.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  "One Arm Scissor" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, October 31, 2000, Halloween night. Cedric's got a whole rack of pedals to distort his voice into various anime supervillain guises, just to really drive home the ominousness of a line like "slithered entrails in the cargo bay." If you're watching, please compare and contrast your two guitarists. Jim Ward, far stage left, facing his amp, back to the audience, locking in, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. And then Omar Rodriguez Lopez, far stage right, thrashing about, shredding at random, communing with some higher power. If you can't see them, I do believe you can quite

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  distinctly hear them. Likewise, even if you can't see him, you can totally tell Cedric is dropping nearly to a push-up position when he hits the line, "Pucker up and kiss the asphalt now."

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  "One Arm Scissor" on David Letterman, December 15, 2000. I hope they're not neglecting their studies. I dig it when Cedric Bixler-Zavala jumps off the drum riser. I dig it when Cedric swings his microphone cord around like a lasso or a whip and he catches it midair. I dig it when Cedric puts both hands on a monitor or on the floor and he vaults his feet up into the air. I dig it when Cedric just parkours off a random wall on the side of the stage. I dig it that Cedric is guaranteed to execute three to five of those moves in any given span of 10 seconds. Okay, are the Letterman and Conan versions a little too

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  melodically pleasing for you? Yeah, that's what I thought.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  "Jules Holland," December 2, 2000. This one goes full avant-garde. This is functionally performance art. Omar has abandoned all notions of Western tonality. Yikes. Awesome. And just like that, you, you, the awestruck, dumbstruck, lovestruck, thunderstruck viewer, just like that, you have discovered At the Drive-In. You and every other human on Earth who still believes in the concept of a next Nirvana, who still believes that rock needs to be saved and/or can be saved. I will now personally determine which of these three

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  performances, Conan, Letterman, Jules Holland, which one features the best delivery of the line "I write to remember." Give me one second here.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was a tough decision. At this point in the Jules Holland, Omar literally throws his guitar into the crowd and just dances around for the remainder of the song. In the Letterman, Cedric is too out of breath to even sing "I write to remember," but he does have enough strength left to twirl his whole microphone stand around. So, but I went with Conan here because Cedric puts his whole ass into screaming "I write to remember." And then, if you're watching, where did he go? Cedric just runs offstage, presumably toward a nearby wall or desk he'd like to parkour off of, and he just

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  reappears on screen like 10 seconds later, gyrating on the floor. Best band in the world. Unquestionably the best band in the world in the fall and winter of 2000. Now that I'm here, I don't want to leave here. I do not want to leave the cocoon of these three truly incredible late-night talk show performances of one truly incredible song, "The Page Wants to Stay White." But I do understand a little better why this got totally out of control and could not possibly last.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  So we're back at the Big Day Out Festival in Sydney in January 2001, where At the Drive-In only play three songs. "One Arm Scissor" not among them. I am very amused by the steakheads in the crowd pumping their fists, as Cedric calls them sheep. I am less amused by Cedric's bandmates, who are standing around, glancing uneasily at each other, unsure of what to do next. Or maybe actually, they were totally sure of what to do next. At the Drive-In, leave the stage. Show's over. So later that same night, Limp Bizkit take the main stage at Big Day Out. New metal crown princes slash court jesters, Limp

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Bizkit, perform before an estimated 55,000 people. And the crowd is mega-amped, this roiling, endless, ungovernable mass of bodies aching to break stuff. And people keep falling over and getting crushed underfoot. And Limp Bizkit stopped playing several times to try to chill everyone out. And per a Billboard magazine report, later in 2001, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst tells the crowd, quote, "If you see somebody fall down, you gotta make sure you pick 'em up," end quote. But he also says more braggadocious and inflammatory Fred Durst-type stuff, like, quote, "I told them before we came, when Limp Bizkit and

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  60,000 Aussies are in one fucking place, this place is gonna go crazy," end quote. Per that sellout book, 600 people in the Limp Bizkit crowd seek medical attention. Six people are hospitalized, and 16-year-old Jessica Michalik, who'd suffered a heart attack and asphyxiation in the crowd, Jessica is put on a life support and dies four days later. Big Day Out organizers blame Limp Bizkit. Limp Bizkit blamed the festival for not using T-barrikays to help separate and insulate the crowd. And Jessica's parents eventually sue both the festival promoters and the band. It is an awful and senseless tragedy that

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  hangs over At the Drive-In even though they weren't there. At the Drive-In go on indefinite hiatus two months later. In March 2001, Omar and Cedric form the rad prog rock band The Mars Volta. Jim, Paul, and Tony form the more conventional but also splendid post-hardcore band Sparta. And at the Drive-In, don't put out another album until 2017, and that reunion doesn't take. I saw At the Drive-In in Columbus, Ohio, in 2017, and the vibe was dead. Very little crowd energy, and consequently, very little band energy. We blew it. Cedric didn't even bother to yell at us, which at the time felt worse to me than getting yelled at,

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  honestly. But it's more accurate to say that At the Drive-In got so close to being the best ever that they glimpsed an entirely new, harrowing universe of worst-case scenarios. I am still heartbroken that they called it quits so suddenly in 2001. But now, I certainly understand why.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  We are delighted to be joined once again by Susie Exposito, critic and columnist and journalist, and assistant editor for the De Los Vertical at the Los Angeles Times. She's worked for Rolling Stone and written for Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, and tons of other places. She is also a retired punk singer, who has covered, who has sung several At the Drive-In songs, which is the most impressive thing about her. Actually, Susie, thank you so much for coming back.

• 1:09:34Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me back.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Of course. I need to ask immediately, what songs, what At the Drive-In songs have you sung in public?

• 1:09:43Speaker 06

  I've done "One Arm Scissor," and, yeah, my old band, Shady Hawkins, we've also covered "Invalid Litter Department."

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  Which is really hard.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Fantastic name for your band. I was gonna say, how do you even, how do you even do that? How do you do that physically, like vocally? Like, how taxing is it to sing one At the Drive-In song?

• 1:10:07Speaker 06

  It's so taxing. I mean, like Cedric's vocal control is out of this world.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:14Speaker 06

  You know, I mean, he's like a beat poet meets an opera singer, so you have to like really lock in. And luckily, I've been practicing ever since they released Relationship of Command, so I would have been in like 6th grade. So I've been practicing a long time.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Do you do any of like the dancing, the throwing of the microphone stands, you know, the jumping off of the drum risers? Like, how physical is your performance? Are you so locked in vocally that you just need to concentrate on that?

• 1:10:52Speaker 06

  I did get some of my stage antics from them, but they're also like,

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:57Speaker 06

  They're so acrobatic in a way that I think would, would risk my well-being. I just like,

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:11:08Speaker 06

  I like to keep my bones, you know, intact.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, totally. Inside your body, et cetera. No, I feel you. Okay.

• 1:11:17Speaker 06

  I can definitely swing the microphone a lot. Like, I love doing that. To the chagrin of the sound, the guys behind the soundboard, oh my god, they hate that.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was also, every time I see Cedric do that, I'm like, he's gonna hit somebody else in the band. Like, he's just going,

• 1:11:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Like, do they, like, have they established, like, like a radius on the stage? Like, everybody has their own quadrant and they don't cross, you know, to prevent collisions or getting bopped in the head with a microphone? It's like, it's more, there's more structure to At the Drive-In onstage than I think is immediately apparent. You have to plan out how to be that chaotic and not like have everybody die onstage.

• 1:12:00Speaker 06

  It's a miracle that they live. I'll say that much.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  There we go. Okay, so 6th grade Relationship of Command. I saw somebody on social media recently posted, I think, a live video of Invalid Litter Department, and you quoted it and you wrote, "This band forever altered my brain chemistry." Which is such a beautiful way to put it. Like, how did At the Drive-In alter your brain chemistry when you were in 6th grade?

• 1:12:30Speaker 06

  They were just such a revelation. I first watched the video for Invalid Litter Department in 2001. I guess I was like watching MTV really late at night. It might have been like Subterranean, you know, that, that show. And I had like a, like a Hello Kitty TV, and I grew up in Miami, and I just like didn't know of very many Latinos at that time who were making, like, not, not just rock music, but like anything, I don't know, that was, that was like really heavy. But the video for Invalid Litter Department was really profound for me.

• 1:13:16Speaker 06

  It really shook me because the, the song and, and the video, it's about the femicides in Juarez, you know, on the border. Because, you know, At the Drive-In, they were from El Paso, and they were a border band. They were singing about life between the US and Mexico. And inevitably, the politics of that really trickled into the music and, and especially the lyrics. So in the video, they're talking about all of these disappeared women, you know? They go to work at the factory and then they never come home. And it's called Invalid Litter Department because it's, it's just about the way

• 1:14:01Speaker 06

  that these women were made disposable. And the truth is, is that none of them have seen justice. Like, to this day, they still haven't found where these women ended up. And so to see men, not, not just men, but like, you know, Latino men advocating for Mexican women and speaking out against violence was really powerful to me. And it blew my mind because I'd never seen or heard anything like that. I would see these stories on the news, but it never translated into the music that I was listening to. So that's why At the Drive-In altered my brain chemistry.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I feel like Cedric's lyrical approach, like, it's just such a barrage of imagery, you know, and the harsh consonants and the words, and just surrounded by the chaos. I think it's easy to think that it's all just abstract and expressionistic and like it's just a bunch of sci-fi imagery or whatever. But you reach a song like this, Invalid Litter Department, I kept saying invalid, but it's obviously, thank you. Invalid Litter Department, that's,

• 1:15:08Speaker 06

  Maybe it's regional.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  But I don't think so. So I, they opened, At the Drive-In opened for Rage Against the Machine, I think, like near the heights, you know, of their power. And like Rage fans, I don't think were into it. I don't think At the Drive-In had very much fun on that tour. But I was gonna ask, you know, if you felt like At the Drive-In were more of a political band than people thought? Not just this song, but just overall. I think it's easy to miss the political imagery, you know, in their songs, in At the Drive-In songs, just based on what, everything else that's going on. But are they more of a political band than they get credit for in general?

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  I think they are. I think that it's, it might be easy to miss because the lyricism is so dense. You know, like, like Cedric's lyrics are like, it's like reading Naked Lunch or something.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:16:02Speaker 06

  And so, yeah, yeah. And so it's like, it can get lost, but then if you, if you read into it, if you do some really close listening, you realize that, you know, they're, they're singing about, again, the border experience in Texas. Like, "Manic in Republic" is a song about immigration and how people see immigrants. Like "Infilade," that's, that's about like cartel violence. That one's featuring Iggy Pop. And the way that they wove it in, to me, it's not that subtle. But I can understand, like, some of the context getting lost in, in the verbose-ness, if you will.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. So Relationship of Command was 2000, you know, this is the height of nu metal, right? Like Korn and Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, Mudvayne. You know, did you see, did you hear At the Drive-In is like part of that nu metal explosion? Or were they in direct opposition to it, you know? Is, was this a band that was always sort of separate from whatever was going on around them?

• 1:17:10Speaker 06

  I would not consider At the Drive-In nu metal, but I also would not consider them in opposition to it. They're part of like a post-hardcore tradition. So it's, it's not a surprise that like Rage fans weren't into them. I think, I think there's just a difference in how, in how the music sounds and like how Zack de la Rocha, like, his, his lyrics, they're like anthemic, you know, they're like protest chants, right? And in comparison to Cedric Bixler Zavala, like, who is just, it's all kind of stream of consciousness style. But no, At the Drive-In, they're like the descendants of Fugazi,

• 1:17:51Speaker 06

  you know, and Rites of Spring. And that's, that's where you start seeing the, the break-off in punk go into like emo and hardcore and post-hardcore. And so I think that At the Drive-In, they had more in common with bands like, like Glass Shaw or like Orchid.

• 1:18:10Speaker 06

  But the, I, I think what connects them is being produced by Ross Robinson, who produced, you know, multiple nu metal records. And I think it's, it's the heft, you know, of, of the sound that might connect them. Nu metal, I associate more with like turntables, you know, like guys who, you know, people who grew up on like hip-hop and metal, who grew up on funk. You know, you hear it in the bass in nu metal. It's like very thick, sludgy bass.

• 1:18:45Speaker 06

  And it's, it's just different.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  Different roots.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  But the Ross Robinson, the Ross Robinson connection is like a real thing. And like Ross Robinson's whole thing was like, he was like screaming at people in the studio and like insulting them and throwing shit at them, like to get like the most intense, ferocious performance out of Korn or Soul Fly or whoever it was. And I, Cedric said like at some point, he was like, enough with this method acting shit. Like, I don't need to do all that. Like, do you, do you like, do you hear, you know, the Ross Robinson approach? And do you think that in some ways it was necessary to have this sort of angry drill sergeant, you know, method actor sort of guy, like screaming at people to get these performances out of them? Or was it all just sort of macho bullshit?

• 1:19:32Speaker 06

  I think, uh, it ended up, I mean, it worked. Whatever he did, it worked. But also you read about, you read about the making of Relationship of Command. And like Ross Robinson might have been screaming at them, but he was also doing like intense therapy with them, you know, like they opened up about, about really formative and also traumatic life experiences, whether it was, you know, like child abuse or, uh, losing loved ones at like a young age. Like, these were things that they also delved into in the studio.

• 1:20:11Speaker 06

  And if you can get a bunch of like bros, I wouldn't call them bros, honestly, but to, just to get guys talking about that stuff, which is also, you know, that's also what Korn did, like in their, in their music. And like Jonathan Davis, he was like just bloodletting in the studio. And I think it was very similar for At the Drive-In. They were also doing a lot of bloodletting that, yes, veered political, but that was just because that was the, the era that they were in. That was the climate that they were in, in Texas. So I don't, I don't fault Ross Robinson because obviously it yielded a really powerful record.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  It really did. I mean, it's, it's, and it's miles above anything else that At the Drive-In put out. Like, I love the earlier records, but you can tell, like, they're a live, they're a live band trying to figure out how to translate, you know, their chaotic live sound into the studio. And what makes Relationship of Command so intense for me is that it, it feels like they did it. Like, it just, just the assault of that record, you know, within the first 10 seconds, I just, there's, there's very few records from that time that I can really compare it to. That just the overwhelming feel of that record. So like, you know, if, if, Ross Robinson sounds like a pretty tough hang, you know, in general, but I, as you say, I don't think we can deny that, like, he gets results, right? Like, he gets the job done.

• 1:21:41Speaker 06

  Damn right.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Yes. I, I love your, your Deftones merch here. Is that a soccer jersey? What is that you have there?

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  It is. It is. Um, I, I bought it because they were, uh, they released these jerseys to like, um, help support soccer in Sacramento, which is where they're from. And so I got it, you know, like at the beginning of the World Cup, I was like, I don't, I don't have any like teams that I root for usually in this race. I usually root for like, you know, the US women's team when there's a, an international tournament, but no, so I just, yeah, I wanted to support soccer in Sacramento and, and Deftones as well.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Yes. I, thinking about the early 2000s, like, I, I think I thought of Deftones and At the Drive-In and maybe even Tool as like, for lack of a better way of putting it, like elevated nu metal, right? Like, the way people talk about elevated horror now, like, you know, the nu metal guys, the Mudveins of the world, like, that's great if you're into that, but like, these are smarter and cooler and more political and more cathartic bands over here, like Deftones, At the Drive-In. Like, does that make any sense to you? Is that what was going on in your head? Or was it all more kind of mixing together?

• 1:23:03Speaker 06

  I mean, Deftones and At the Drive-In, you know, they're both like majority Latino bands. You know, like they, or they, they had like a lot of Latino members in the band. And, um, so that's just, you know, like points for Latino excellence. But also, I, I do think that they're very different, though. I think they sound very different. I, you know, going back to like the post-hardcore thing, like At the Drive-In, especially like, like Omar, his, his guitar noodling was very frog rock, you know, like it, it was very mathematical noodling, right? And that's, that's like characteristic of a lot of these like post-hardcore bands was

• 1:23:45Speaker 06

  like playing with time signatures, you know, being really sneaky, you know, and switching it up.

• 1:23:52Speaker 06

  And I think their, their output was just more intellectual than bands that were like super popular during the day. I don't know, I don't want to trash nu metal either because I love it, you know, it serves its purpose. You know, the angst, the rage, the divorce of it all.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Break stuff.

• 1:24:14Speaker 06

  Give me something to break. Oh, my God, especially in middle school. Oh, I needed that.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Lots of stuff that needs breaking in middle school. I agree with you completely. I have middle schoolers in this house right now who are breaking stuff. And so I, I respect. The need to do that. Thank you. He does. Hopefully, hopefully he will.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  I'm very curious, Suzy, are you, are you a mosh pit person? Are you not a mosh pit person? What is your personal and political opinion of moshing?

• 1:24:45Speaker 06

  I love to mosh. I love to mosh. But I have to be careful. I have to be careful. I'm like a petite woman.

• 1:24:55Speaker 06

  So I, I can't like go buck wild, you know? Well, well, depending on the pit, I guess. But I think I, I use my, my petiteness to my advantage. I love to crowd surf. I think.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:25:10Speaker 06

  People like, they get really, crowd surfing is really divisive, but as long as people are there to catch me when I jump, and as long as they're there to pick me up when I'm down, you know, I think that is like, that should be, that's the ethos of punk right there, right?

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:25:30Speaker 06

  But then, you know, the mosh, it's like the, you're expressing this like communal catharsis. However, I do think some people, they take it too far.

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  I think it's, it's great to, to let people express that catharsis and make it, um, give everyone kind of the opportunity to like go bananas. There was a recent, uh, recently, the Sex Pistols, like I guess their, their current lead singer, he like, uh, called for, you know, all the women to start a pit, you know, just for women, because it does, it does get scary when, when you have some dudes just acting totally roided out in the pit and I'm like actually fearing for my life.

• 1:26:15Speaker 06

  So I think he wanted to prevent that, but then some guys were like really upset that he was inviting just the women to mosh. So I, I think there's a lot of politics to moshing as well, um, that we have to think about. And so I think that's what leads to some people being anti-moshing or anti-slam dancing. It's just the number of people that it can also exclude. And you're also thinking about like ability, um, size, like, uh, or really just how, how angry somebody is and whether that, that poses like a danger to other people. These are all things to think about.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you mentioned Fugazi, right? And Fugazi are obviously famous, you know, from Ice Cream Motherfuckers on down for like having to spend so much time on stage being like, knock it off, knock it off, knock it. And it was the same with At the Drive-In.

• 1:27:08Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  You know, obviously there was the famous infamous sort of terrible thing in Australia, like right near the end where they had to stop, right? You know, and like later that day at a Limp Bizkit show, you know, somebody dies, you know? I, I, I don't think that I really thought hard about, you know, it's easy to be exasperated by Fugazi and like they're scolding the crowd and a little bit with At the Drive-In, but like, do you sympathize with how frustrated these bands must be? Like, from an elevated position, looking down at like, like roided out dudes, like pushing people around, like, do you sympathize with how frustrated they must have been just trying to keep their crowd safe?

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I think that, again, At the Drive-In, they're like, they were descendants of Fugazi and they had that ethos where they wanted to make sure that everyone had each other's back. But it's so hard to, you, you also can't like control people. Or it's, it's like, especially being a, a front person of a band, and I would know, it's like really difficult to be like the, um, the, the orchestrator, the maestro of a crowd. Yeah, the ringleader of like a crowd that becomes kind of combustible because they're responding to the music, right? And so people kind of like lose themselves.

• 1:28:30Speaker 06

  And I, you know, I, I think that Cedric meant well when he asked people to like tone it down, but it's, uh, just the nature of the music, like it's, it's just hard to contain.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Right, and especially just the way they are on stage. It's like at the drive-in, even more than Fugazi. Like Fugazi on stage is very intense, but like at the drive-in, they're just thrashing around. And as you say, Omar is not really playing to the song. Like, he's just doing whatever, and it's great. And again, Cedric is like throwing shit, jumping off the riser. Like, I don't know if there's any other way for a crowd to react to that. Like, was it inevitable that at-the-drive-in crowds would get out of control? Just because the band is so clearly out of control on stage.

• 1:29:22Speaker 06

  Right, that's the thing, is that they're just matching energy. And I love watching old videos of at-the-drive-in performing, you know, on like a late-night talk show. And they're still trying to do like their usual antics. But it's so funny, because they'll be, you know, like Omar's dad was like a salsa musician. And so sometimes, you know, like he'll start getting down. You know, he'll like boogie a little bit and like move his hips, and then suddenly just like flail his guitar, like bounce off the amps. And yeah, Cedric just jumping from high platforms and doing his own like cha-chas on stage.

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  Like, I live for the mess, honestly. I live for the chaos. And so does, you know, so do their audiences, though.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah. I remember being genuinely heartbroken when they broke up, you know? I think I was out of college by then, and I didn't understand why at first. But I can't imagine going through that breakup like in middle school or high school. Like, how did you react to the at-the-drive-in breakup at the time? And like, where do they rank for you on your personal most upsetting band breakups of all time?

• 1:30:42Speaker 06

  I was, I was pretty bummed out, because I, I don't know. I mean, my mom didn't let me go to any concerts, especially not at that age. But I think like the only concert I had been to at that point was like Casey and the Sunshine Band.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Different vibe, yeah. Not as much crowd surfing.

• 1:31:03Speaker 06

  No, again, it was Miami. It was like in the park, you know? Everyone was wearing feather boas. So I, I was like, you know, 12 and was like, damn, I really wanted to see them. Like, I was gonna see them anytime soon. But eventually, they did reunite, and they did play, you know, a few shows that I got to see them at later. I saw them, and this might have been in like 2017, 2018. I saw them in Boston and New York. And it felt like I was catching up, or, you know, like making up for lost time. But yeah, I was pretty sad until the Mars Volta started up.

• 1:31:44Speaker 06

  And of course, you know, when they dropped Delouse in the Comatorium, I was like, there. You know, day one at like Best Buy, ready to, ready to buy the album.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Great album cover, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:31:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, how can you forget?

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Are you a Sparta person at all? Like, did you take sides in the breakup, per se?

• 1:32:07Speaker 06

  I did not take sides in the breakup. It's like when your parents split up and you just have to like, you know, you love them both in their own way. Yeah, I loved Sparta. I remember when Cut Your Ribbon came out. I bought that album too. And I didn't feel like I had to pick sides. I just had to appreciate all of these bands for what they were.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you actually reviewed the reunion at-the-drive-in record for Rolling Stone, Interalia? Am I pronouncing that right? I hope that I, okay, good, good, I got that one.

• 1:32:41Speaker 06

  You're doing great.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  You said something, thank you, thank you so much. You said, and it was really interesting, like, at-the-drive-in made the most responsible call when they put their legacy on hold in 2001. And like, as you said, like you, did they do themselves a favor? And maybe do their fans a favor by breaking up right at their peak? Like, my thought was like, oh, they could have made like five more albums as great as Relationship of Command. Or would they have just like flamed out slower in a way that was ultimately sadder? Like, is there any version of this band that is sustainable for 20 years? Or is the whole point that they're not sustainable?

• 1:33:19Speaker 06

  I think it was, I still think it was a good call. They would not have been sustainable the way that things were. Everyone had to go and find themselves. And I, you know, even Mars Volta like went on hiatus at some point, because Cedric got pulled into Scientology, which, you know, he's also famously left. And I mean, you know, if you're listening, you should go and like read the articles. But he's, you know, he and Omar talked about it in the LA Times, about leaving Scientology, but not just leaving, but like escaping it. So, you know, this is a group of guys that has been through a lot, you know?

• 1:34:04Speaker 06

  And I think that part of the beauty of their artistry is how they transmute so many of these traumatic experiences, these intense experiences into music. And with Mars Volta, you know, it's got that like Prague feel to it. It's more like, it's very influenced by like jazz and psychedelia. And so I think that's, that's like something that helps them express themselves a little more than maybe like punk would have. Like, I think they would have grown out of punk anyway,

• 1:34:50Speaker 06

  especially with how heady their music got in Mars Volta. I don't think that punk or metal or post-hardcore, what have you, I don't think it would have been able to contain their artistry.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  All right, just to wrap up, to return to something you said earlier. You watched an at-the-drive-in video on a Hello Kitty TV. I'm very interested in this. Like, it was a Hello Kitty branded TV. Did it look?

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Like, the television itself looked like the Hello Kitty? Like, can you describe this television for me really quickly?

• 1:35:26Speaker 06

  It was pink. It was like a small TV, and I had a matching boombox as well. And I have really funny memories, yeah. Oh my God, I have very funny memories of, you know, listening to like Nirvana or like Tool records on like my Hello Kitty boombox. Now there's a whole genre on Instagram and TikTok of videos where people will play like metal albums on like a Hello Kitty boombox.

• 1:35:56Speaker 06

  I actually had it, and I also had the TV. And so, you know, this TV was my everything. I also watched, you know, like System of a Down for the first time.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Totally, totally.

• 1:36:10Speaker 06

  I saw their videos, and also like Limp Bizkit and Korn. And it really captured the like dissonance of my girlhood compared to like everyone else's, my duality. Like, I love girly things.

• 1:36:28Speaker 06

  I also love to rage. I love to rock out.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:36:32Speaker 06

  You know?

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  You contain multitudes.

• 1:36:36Speaker 06

  I contain multitudes, especially when I was in middle school. So I just like, I do appreciate the, I don't know, the poetic way that at-the-drive-in came into my life, watching a video about, on it. I mean, the video is so dark. So like, for me, being a young girl, watching a video speaking out against femicide on a Hello Kitty TV, just, wow. 2000 was a crazy year.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  You rewrote your brain chemistry. In conclusion, I am absolutely convinced that that rewrote your brain chemistry.

• 1:37:15Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  All of that is beautiful. This has been wonderful, Suzy. Thanks so much for talking.

• 1:37:21Speaker 06

  Thanks so much for bringing me back.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Suzy Exposito. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Juliana Ress, Justin Sales, and Chris Sutton. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. Special thanks to Cole Kutchner, and thanks to you for listening. And now, let's all go listen to One Armed Scissor by at-the-drive-in. We'll see you next week.

• 1:37:58Speaker 00

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