Does the band really date back to ’74?

I didn’t “join” the Vomit Pigs until sometime in ’76 – right before we made the EP. Chris, Roy, Mike, Doug, Eddie, and maybe a couple of other guys I don’t remember were playing as the Vomit Pigs long before I came along.

How weird is it knowing that the record you made is one of the most sought-after punk 7”s out there?

Not weird, it’s sad. I only have one fucking copy!

Do all of the guys in the band still have copies?

Roy might have a few, Eddie maybe a few, Chris, I dunno. But get this: somewhere there should be about 50 or so of the EP, that appear to be mysteriously lost. I’ve been trying to track them down, to no avail. There was a time when quite a few collectors were calling me wanting copies of single—offering $150-$200. I think Eddie might have needed the cash and sold his.

How did Mike convince you guys to be in the group?

I think it was the Quaaludes. And the groupies.

Groupies? Really?

Well, this was pre-AIDS era, and these girls just liked to have fun. I don’t know how much the Vomit Pigs had to do with it.

Was Mike really the only one who liked Punk at the time?

Hmm, I don’t know. Probably.

Can you set the story straight on how he died? Is it true that it happened at a Bobby Soxx BBQ?

I wasn’t there when it happened, but that’s the gist of it. I had seen Mike a few months before he died, he was huge, 250 pounds I bet, and he looked awful. The way I heard it, he just OD’d on his drug of choice for the evening, and passed out on the porch during the party. Knowing Mike as most of the party-goers did, they figured he was just out of it, catatonic, and so they left him alone, thinking he would eventually come out of it and do something. They didn’t discover Mike was dead until the next morning.

How did you react when you found the VP’s had been bootlegged on Killed by Death?

I hired an assassin to infect them all with e-coli. Just kidding.

You worked with Ryan Richardson from Existential Vacuum to repress the single. Why did you leave out the new wavey song “Slut?”

That was Ryan’s decision; there are what I call “punk purists” or “elitists” out there that only like the fast, thrashy stuff… and that’s cool, but I suspect that anyone who’s heard the Vomit Pigs think of a fast, thrashy, Punk band, and the Vomit Pigs were never strictly that way. The VP’s played a lot of silly goofy shit too—like “I’m Drunk and I’m Stupid,” “Slut,” and other stuff that was kind of Jonathan Richman inspired new wave stuff.

What are the rest of the Vomit Pigs up to these days?

Chris likes to frighten people at furniture stores, Roy runs a large construction company, Eddie teaches high school, Doug works as a commercial insulator, I’m a flunky for a muli-national manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. David Williams is in Austin doing something, Russel Flemming is in Arlington… I think.

[originally published in MaximumRockAndRoll #213 Feb 2001]