MICHAEL GERALD

You may be asking yourself “Who is Michael Gerald?” 

Well, on the surface he's a tax attorney that lives in Los Angeles. He enjoys spending time with his wife and cocker spaniel. The occasional Nicolas Cage film or episode of Columbo bring him happiness. He is even a fan of dining in restaurants and the great outdoors, however he is not a fan of the Who. 

If you dig a little deeper, you will discover that for a number of years he fronted Madison, Wisconsin’s mighty and influential rock trio, Killdozer. Writing satirical songs about the dark corners of midwestern existence, often humorous, always loud and slow, Killdozer actively released records and toured throughout a great deal of the 80’s and 90’s. While sometimes they slept in parking lots, on occasion audience members tried to attack them. 

Throughout these life affirming and character building experiences, Michael was able to develop and nurture a love of coffee that perseveres to this very day. He was kind enough to talk with us about this, and a variety of other things, all for your reading pleasure.

Hi Michael, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could we start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself?

Oh, yeah. I’m Michael Gerald, and I’m a lawyer in Los Angeles. I practice in the area of employee benefits and executive compensation. Sometimes, I help people adopt foster children for free. I have a dog and a wife.

Michael Gerald and Lolly.

You’ve been in L.A. for a while.

We’ve been here since ’01. I graduated from NYU law school and moved here to be a lawyer, with a job already lined up. I’m not stupid, I didn’t just move here looking for work. Some people do that! It’s fine, if you’re like 20, but I was 40.  You know, law is a second career for me, the first having been Rock Star.

The thing that really inspired me to go to law school was The People vs. Larry Flynt…

Not really!

It was more like “I just broke up Killdozer, what am I gonna do now? I guess I’ll go to law school.” It was either that or become a math teacher. My bachelor’s degree is in math through the school of education.  The flaw in how we educate is that you don’t do your student teaching until your very last semester. You’ve invested your entire college career, you go and meet a bunch of high school students, and only then realize you’ve made a terrible mistake. I was even in high school myself! Somehow, just in the span of three years in college, I had forgotten just what horrible people they are.

There ya go. My college career in a nutshell.

When I applied to law schools, it was like I threw darts at a map. Sixteen different schools. I was accepted to NYU and spent half my time there living in Jersey City, half living in New York City. We moved to L.A. because we could. When my wife and I decided we wanted to move to southern California, we had San Diego in mind, but that’s a very insular community. All the firms I interviewed with started by asking what my connection to the city was. What I’ve come to realize about San Diego is they’re all too used to people coming from the midwest and east coast because of the weather, and then discovering that it’s actually quite a boring city and leaving.  Much like New York, in L.A. the law firms don’t have that problem. That said I still love San Diego and don’t know that I personally would have gotten bored. For all the nightlife in L.A., I don’t do any of it. I go to Dodgers games, but not that often. I don’t go to movie theaters, because I hate the other people in the theater. I don’t go out to see rock shows because they always start past my bedtime. We like to go eat at restaurants, go to the ocean, hiking, that stuff. 

Bill Hobson (from Killdozer) has probably been out here since the mid 90’s. He works in movies. There are only so many Coen Brothers movies you can work on back in Minnesota. He’s got a steady job on Grey’s Anatomy. Knowing that he’s still employed is how I know that show is still on the air. I saw him not that long ago. He called me at the office and said “Hey! I’m across the street.” They were setting up to film and I went over there and chewed the fat with him.

I get together with David Yow and Eddie Rivas (Distorted Pony) and have lunch every couple of months. That’s pretty much the extent of my socializing right there. 

David, Eddie, and Michael, either before or after lunch one day.

Hod did Killdozer get started?

I grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and Dan and Bill are from Eden Prairie, which might as well be Minnetonka. Dan and I were high school friends, and Bill… well, he’s Dan’s brother! He was two years ahead of us in school, and he got a job driving a school bus. After he finished his route, he would come by our high school, and Dan and I would skip school and ride around with him.

We started it up while in college, while I was studying to be a math teacher. Bill was studying to be an English teacher, and Dan was studying to become a social studies teacher.  All of us were at the University of Wisconsin, and being in college was nice but we were really more interested in starting a band. Dan and I rented a house in Madison, solely so we’d have a place to practice. The idea was that I would just be the singer. We put up some notices in guitar stores that we were looking for a bass player and we auditioned a few, but didn’t like any of them. They all played too much. They were just showing off their chops or something. “Look at all the notes I can play!”  One of them had a really nice P Bass, and he told us he was going to go trade it in for a Rickenbacker, which I think is about has stupid a thing as a bass player could do. So, he went and did that, and I went down to the guitar store and bought his P Bass. I just decided I would play bass and try to sing at the same time.

There ya have it, we started Killdozer.

Killdozer (L-R): Dan Hobson, Bill Hobson, Michael Gerald

We didn’t call it Killdozer at the time, though. I think at our very first show, we went by some other name.

Do you remember the name?

Yes. Meat Party!

I think it’s an Irish term for a wake.

After the first show, someone asked us “Have you guys ever heard of The Meat Puppets? “

“Yeah.”

“Have you guys ever heard of The Birthday Party?”

“Yeah.”

So, we realized we needed a new name, and it just so happened that the Made-for-TV movie Killdozer was on and we were like “Wow! This is wonderfully horrible!” It’s a terrible movie. Apparently, there’s a science fiction short story, but we didn’t read that. We’re children of the 60’s and 70’s. We didn’t read books, we watched television.

We put our first record out in ’83 on Bone-Air records. We would’ve started playing together in the fall, because that’s when we would’ve moved into the house. We recorded our second record ourselves in Madison and sent that to Corey Rusk (Touch & Go Records) as a demo tape. We also sent it to Homestead records, but Byron Coley lost our phone number and Corey called us first.

Even though unsolicited demos were always accepted, my understanding was that you were maybe the only band ever signed from a demo.

I think I had heard that. We did have an endorsement from King Coffey. We opened for The Butthole Surfers in Chicago, the show being a Steve Albini production. I think it was at The Metro. I just remember that I got piss-face drunk, which I did in those days, and marveled at their accents because they’re from Texas. King told us to send a demo to Corey. I don’t know that he said anything to Corey, but I guess I think he did? I do know that Corey and Lisa asked the guys in Die Kreuzen about us, and probably asked Steve about us. They all must have said something along the lines of “Those guys are OK, but they don’t skate.”

We almost lost a show in Madison once because we didn’t skate. We managed to keep it though, because we were the only band in town that owned a P.A. system. Skate or not, we had to be on the bill.

Aside from Killdozer, have you been in other bands?

As far as releasing anything or doing anything other than playing local shows, Killdozer is the only one. As soon as Dan and I got to Madison in 1979, we started playing with a woman we met at a record store named Genie. The three of us had a band called Genie, Mike, & Dan. We played bubblegum hits, songs by Abba, The Monkees and such. We’d play it all really, really fast and poorly. We just played at basement parties, and had one show at the local punk rock club. I think an open mic at the student union. 

Could you share some memories from touring?

We were at this place in Philadelphia, it had to be our very first tour. This place wasn’t even a club, it was Abe’s Steakhouse. Not a high end steak house, a cheap steak place. It might have even been a cafeteria. Cheap grilled steaks. We played in the back room, on a stage that was just dining tables all pushed together. They were kind of wobbly.  There was a local skinhead yelling at me, and at one point he grabbed my leg and tried to pull me off the stage while we were in the middle of a song. Dan just dropped his drumsticks and leapt like a superhero over his drum kit and jumped off the stage onto this guy. Then, he and our sound guy dragged him outside and threw him into the alley. They didn’t actively beat him, they just subdued him. Dan had to protect his singer!

Did you guys continue playing?

Well, when Dan got back to the stage.

One tour involved what could euphemistically be referred to as camping, which meant sleeping in the van in various parking lots. We brought along one of those stove top espresso makers and a camping stove. We played one show in Montreal, and our next was in Pittsburgh, but a week later. That’s like a one day drive, so we hung around in Montreal until our work visas expired. I think the guy we were staying with, who at this point was probably eager to have us out of his apartment, was trying to convince us that Canadian Mounties would come round us up if we didn’t get out of the country. We got going, but took the scenic route because we still had days to kill. At one point we actually checked into a campground in the Adirondacks. There were horrible, horrible mosquitoes. We had sleeping bags, but nothing else besides our van, and it was real nice to have that little coffee maker. 

I think Bill had brought it along, it was just part of his camping equipment. It was very portable. That was great for stopping along the roadside. “Hey, make some espresso!” However, given that there were four of us, we had to make several rounds. Usually, by the time everybody had some, the first person wanted more.

Most of our camping was sleeping in gas station parking lots until they opened up and made us leave. We checked into a motel in some hillbilly town about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh the night before our show. We were just Wisconsin kids too naive to understand what it meant when hourly rates were advertised. The uncomfortable beds had thick plastic under the sheets, the kind grandmothers would put on their furniture. There was no air conditioning, it was pouring rain, and humid. We just had this rotating fan. There was a 13” TV secured with a bike chain. We had our sound man with us, and all four of us were in this one little room with two plastic covered beds. It started to sink in what hourly rates meant, as we heard and watched people check in for an hour or less, over and over. Always couples. 

There was this other show we played in Muskegon, Michigan. Again, probably our first or second tour. Muskegon is straight across the lake from Milwaukee. They make tires there, and I’m not sure if they do anything else. Not even tires, but tire patches, and to the best of my knowledge, no other industry. Anyway, we went to the venue which was a bingo hall, and the promoter took us to his house. He had to, because they wouldn’t let us load in until bingo was over. I guess it was a bingo hall, so they call the rules. He fed us, probably hot dogs and spaghetti, and it started to sink in that they thought they had booked a different band called Killdozer. A hard core band from New York that later changed their name to Killdozer ‘85, and then became Sharky’s Machine.

So, things got a little ugly at the bingo hall. Some people were surprised and a lot of people were bummed, especially this one really big guy. Now, by big I mean round. A very large person that was so angry we were not the Killdozer he came to see that he ran across the bingo hall, charging us like a linebacker. Watching him barrelling at us like a locomotive, I thought “Our goose is cooked! This is it!” Then someone from the sidelines came at him and knocked him off course, I won’t say tackled. It was like sending a nuclear missile at an asteroid. Later, back at the promoter’s house, people were saying we were OK. They paid us the paltry sum we were promised.

Michael playing bass.

Those were the early days, and we did move up from bingo halls. I think touring for Twelve Point Buck, we played in London at the Marquee. I remember being told “The Who played here!” and I was like “So what? Who else?”

I want to make this clear: Killdozer adamantly dislikes the Who. 

There was a guy from the Membranes, and when he introduced himself, he matter of factly informed us that he was a fire breather, and offered his fire breathing services. We took him up on it, and jeez I thought he was going to burn the theater down. He was spitting flames from his mouth that were shooting up to the ceiling. We could feel the heat. Then, a woman climbed onstage and started groping me during "American Pie" and actually pulled my pants down. Dan came out from behind the drum kit at the end, basically to prevent her from pulling down my underpants as well, and as long as he was there, he joined me on the final chorus, holding up my underpants while this woman was at my knees trying to pull them down. I was also holding them up, as I was no longer playing my bass.

I was assured after the fact that she was an unstable woman, and in no way should I think that I was some sort of hottie. 

Also, We were once in Oslo, Norway and treated to a Mexican restaurant. I’ll just say I ordered a burrito that had green beans inside of it. 

How about from recording?

One recording I remember was when Corey got a deal at some studio in Detroit, or Dearborn maybe, when Touch & Go was still up in Detroit. We had two albums out at the time. He booked us time at a 24 track studio. We had only worked with Butch Vig at Smart Studios, which was 8 track at the time. We said we wanted to bring Butch, which caught Corey by surprise, but Butch agreed to do it for some paltry sum plus airfare. 

This was at the tail end of a tour. We came into Detroit on a Sunday and we were booked for the week. The whole week really started with us being driven up to Windsor, Canada to buy as much Canadian beer as we could possibly afford in preparation for the week to come. 

We recorded the BURL EP throughout the week, and on Wednesday we opened for Einstürzende Neubauten at the Graystone, where Corey and Lisa were living and running Touch & Go at the time.

After their sound check, Einstürzende Neubauten didn’t want to move all of their giant equipment and junk that they had on stage, so they announced that they would play first. 

So after that week, we had Burl under our belt, and I was hellbent on calling the record Butch’s Big Vacation but... you know it as Burl.

So we recorded our first record, Intellectuals Are The Shoeshine Boys Of The Ruling Elite on our own, and at the time, Smart studios was on the second floor of an old factory and they didn’t have air conditioning, so all the windows were open. It made for a lot of street noise in the background. Bus brakes, trucks, that kind of thing. 

On one song, I believe “Run Through The Jungle” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, we had this idea for percussion that was just... breaking glass. So what we did was outfit Dan in a leather jacket and welder’s gloves, a hat, mask and goggles. We took two cases of empty Leinenkugel’s (which we had emptied during recording) and a microphone and recorded it. This was pre-sampling, so he listened to the track on headphones, and every time he needed to accent the beat, he took two bottles and smashed them together! 48 beer bottles.

Just so you know how big of a deal this was, there was a 5 cent deposit on each of those bottles! It was an investment. 

So you just mentioned your CCR cover, and one thing I’ve always enjoyed about Killdozer is the tremendous amount of songs you covered. How did you guys pick the songs you covered? 

Well, most of the covers we chose because we liked them, but that’s not necessarily true with all of the songs on For Ladies Only. While we were actually supposed to be in the studio for that one, we went to the used record store Dan worked at and started rifling through the bins. There’s nothing tying those songs all together other than finding them all at the same time, within the hour we alloted to find music. Initially, my idea for that album was to record songs by the likes on Englebert Humperdinck, but we quickly realized “What are we going to do with that?” It was too hard to figure out, so we went with standard rock recordings. But the whole concept came from American Pie, because we were going to release this as 7” singles, and that song is so long that you have to flip it halfway through. We did that Steve Miller song (Take The Money And Run), and I mean I hate that song! I hated it then! We didn’t even all agree on the songs, and there are probably songs that I wanted to do that Bill or Dan didn’t see the point of.

One thing about that record though, Bill whistles the melody at the beginning of One Tin Soldier. I don’t even know where that came from, but to me, that’s just inspired. 

How did you guys end up covering Janet Jackson?

Well, um, first I should clarify that we didn’t actually play that. The starting point was after a Killdozer show in DeKalb, IL. I know Shorty was on the menu, and I think Tar was as well. After the show, my wife and I, Corey and Lisa all got into Corey’s vintage Mustang and drove to Memphis. Immediately after the show. We went to see Graceland and eat barbecue. Across the street from Graceland there was one of those tourist traps where you could record yourself singing, basically doing karaoke alone in a recording studio. I think at that point Corey realized he could write off the whole trip if he got me to record something and we used it. 

At first, I was trying to sing "Sweet Child O’ Mine", but I couldn’t, I’m a terrible singer! I was also really nervous because I wasn’t drunk, and I wasn’t with Dan, Bill and Butch. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was with Corey, Lisa, Eva, and this high school kid who was just grimacing.

Eventually I just did Nasty.

I brought back this really crappy cassette, took it to Butch and asked “Can you make this sound better?” and, um, he did! He actually redid all the music on his computer using samples of Killdozer songs from Twelve Point Buck, which is the only reason you hear Bill’s guitar, Dan’s drums, or my bass. Then I just recorded all of the singing again. 

So you guys recorded almost everything with Butch?

Yeah, everything up through Twelve Point Buck and For Ladies Only, which were recorded in the same sessions. That’s why Twelve Point Buck doesn’t have any covers on it. 

Twelve Point Buck was our big production number. I remember some affiliates hating the sound on it because it was so slick. But, you know, it helped launch Butch’s career and then we couldn’t afford him anymore. My understanding is that record is how Kurt Cobain heard of Butch.

We recorded Uncompromising War On Art Under The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat with Doug Erickson, who is also in Garbage, so one of Butch’s affiliates. Butch wasn’t available. We recorded it at some place in Madison where they recorded music for radio commercials. I think the place was actually called Jingles. Smart studios had forgotten that we had booked ten days, and they were under construction. We had taken vacation from our jobs and needed to record, which was our mistake. It ended up being very substandard, at least by our high standards. 

Now that you mention it, while I like the record, it’s kind of thin sounding.

Yeah, that was all from the recording. There was nothing we could do about it. We mixed it at Steve Albini’s house with Steve and Brian Paulson, and between the two of them they did what they could with what we gave them! 

Our very last record, the often overlooked God Hears The Pleas Of The Innocent, was entirely recorded and mixed with Steve at his house, which I believe we credited as "The House That Dripped Blood". I had all of these found photos that I wanted to use for the artwork, but by this time TAD had been sued by the couple in a found photograph that had been used on the cover of one of their albums, so Corey said we were no longer allowed. So, instead, I solicited the employees to provide baby pictures.

Oh, and one real nightmare recording session; We recorded a duet with Urge Overkill at Steve’s house. It was on a compilation album put out by a magazine called Away From The Pulsebeat. Ed and I both played trumpet, and that’s something to behold. We both knew how to, but hadn’t played in years. Your lips are like any other muscle. If you don’t exercise them, they're not up to the task! We practiced a little bit, but by the time it came to record, our lips were so shot we could barely hold a note. It’s really an atrocious recording. It was a song called Evil Woman by the band Crow. It was also recorded by Black Sabbath.

I remember it taking so long, and Ed and Nate were being so finicky, that Steve eventually said “You guys have taken a song that I loved and managed to make it the song I hate the most in the world.” 

Do you think we will see more Killdozer activity?

Well, no. We did our reunion tours, which ended when we closed down Emo’s in Austin. We were the last band to ever play on their stage and people trashed the place. We were also the first band to ever play their indoor stage. This last show was on December 30th, because they had to be out of there by midnight on December 31st. But after that, I realized we did enough reunion shows to remember why I quit in the first place. It wasn’t fun, it was a lot of work. You’re flying around playing on maybe a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and staying up until 4 am. The rest of the week, getting up at 5 am. My body and brain just don’t appreciate shifting the clock that way. It was fine when we’d play a festival at like 4 in the afternoon.

We don’t even live in the same city, so to play shows, Bill and I would get together and rehearse how to play these songs from memory, in my living room with tiny little amplifiers. I’m just singing over them, my wife is watching TV in the next room, not even hearing us, dogs sleeping in front of our amplifiers. Then we bring Dan out to L.A., because it’s cheaper than Bill and I flying to Madison, to do some real practicing. It’s just a lot of work and expense, regardless if it’s one show or six. It’s just not what I want to do with my spare time, and going to play shows is not what I want to do with my vacation. 

Are these the reasons Killdozer broke up in the first place?

No, it ended because I just lost all of my enthusiasm for it. I realized that for the last couple years of it, I didn’t care about any other bands, I just cared about Killdozer. I mean, I cared about people as friends and such, but I wasn’t interested at all in what was going on musically. Then I realized that I didn’t even care about Killdozer anymore. So, I decided to call it quits and decided to do one last tour, nevermind that I was the only remaining original member, and that was that. I got tired of touring, and even more than that, I was tired of trying to write music. I just didn’t have any more ideas. 

I think it would be fun to get together with Bill and Dan and write new music, like two more songs, but given the distance between us and the hours both Bill and I work, it’s just not going to happen.

That said, I invited the members of Killdozer to continue, like a corporation. At that time, it was Paul Zagoras on guitar, and Erik Tunison (from Die Kreuzen) was the drummer. Jeff Ditzenberger was the second guitar player. So I said I was going to quit, and they opted not to go on, so we did the “Fuck You, We Quit” tour. At the time, I decided to get into the world of graphic art and wound up working at an ad agency, doing their packaging. Boxes for Oster blenders and Sunbeam nose hair trimmers. I had put together a portfolio of Killdozer artwork and sold myself, and if anyone asked, I said “Sure! Computers! Macintosh! You Bet!” when I actually did everything with X-Acto knives and rubber cement. Anyway, I got into the work but quickly came to realize it pays shit unless you go to art school. Art school would have been four more years of college, but law school was only three. That’s why I decided to go to law school. I'm not very good with my hands, except with a guitar. Also, I understood that lawyers get health insurance. Before we broke up, I had a hernia and needed surgery, which proved to be very expensive. It was time for a gig with health insurance, which I didn’t foresee Killdozer being. 

Do you think your hernia was Killdozer related?

I never thought of that! There was definitely a lot of heavy lifting, but I usually deferred to the other guys to carry my equipment. Sometimes, though, I still had to carry something. 

Is that why the lineup kept changing?

Yeah, and they became fathers, so they were just replaced by people that didn’t have children. 

I’ve seen that you volunteer and assist with adoptions. How did you get started doing that, and what does it mean to you?

That’s something I do pro bono. It’s not part of my practice. The firm I’m at has always had a great relationship with an agency in Los Angeles called The Alliance For Children’s Rights. They advocate for foster children. One of the things they do, and this started in the Los Angeles County children’s court, is periodic adoption days, four or five times a year. On these days, nothing else happens in the court, except adoptions. A hundred or more children all adopted on that day. I represent one, two, three families. The work I do mostly involves boring, tedious paperwork that has to be filed. It doesn’t necessarily take long for me, but would be monumental for the families to have to do it themselves. So, I relieve them of that burden, and then represent them in the hearing. That takes fifteen to twenty minutes at most. The judge talks to the family and the children, and gives them a teddy bear. There’s always a teddy bear, though sometimes I’ve had a child that claims to be too old for one. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as being too old for a teddy bear. After that, part of my job is passing a box of tissues to the new mothers, because they always weep. I always find that I happen to get something in my eyes. 

Also, there’s good coffee at the children’s court and that’s why I do it!

My firm is a big proponent of doing pro bono work, and I choose to do mine for children and animals, grown adults can all just go fuck themselves. They’re the source of all the problems!

What do you do for animals? 

My wife volunteered for a cocker spaniel rescue group and I offered them some tax advice.

What are some of your favorite movies, books, etc. that you feel inspire you?

Well, you know, most of what inspired us is right there in the songs! Flannery O’Connor, pop culture, Bert Convy, all as pointless as it sounds. That’s what I paid attention to. Lyrically, though, the biggest inspiration for me was the local newspaper in Madison, WI. The local stories about the various morons that lived in Wisconsin. I wrote songs about morons. 

One afternoon, Dan, Bill, and I were sitting around watching TV when we should have been rehearsing and there was a story about a local warehouse burning, a dairy warehouse, and they were showing footage of all these firefighters wading in ditches of knee deep melted butter mixed with water. We realized we had to go check this out, all got in Bill’s car and headed out there! We watched this fire burn and butter flow through the streets. We didn’t write a song about it, but it was still an inspiring moment. 

Make no mistakes about it, the butter fire was a tragedy. Countless pounds of butter were lost, and who knows how much ice cream was in there? I’m sure there was cheese in there too, but let’s be honest; they don’t make very good cheese in Wisconsin.

The last time I had Wisconsin cheese, and specifically cheese curds, was when Bill and I were in Madison rehearsing for the Touch & Go 25th anniversary. I have eaten a tremendous amount of cheese curds, but this was the first time I realized that they have an amazing texture and no flavor.

How do you feel about the fact that the Touch and Go 25th anniversary was almost 14 years ago?

I prefer not to think about that. 

Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?

I like coffee. I love coffee. I shocked my wife once when she tried to stump me by asking if I would rather give up coffee or beer, and I chose beer. No way I’d give up coffee. Fortunately, it’s a hypothetical question, those are much easier to answer. 

I love coffee.

What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?

How do you make coffee at home?

Sometimes I use a French press, sometimes I use a Melitta, I think the fancy term is pour over. I used to have a vacuum pot, but we now have an induction stove which doesn’t cook with heat, it cooks with magnets. Magnets require that the pot is steel or iron, so I can’t use my glass vacuum pot any more. I also can’t use my stove top espresso pot anymore, because it’s aluminum.

You might be able to find some induction coffee brewers.

That sounds very complicated, I don’t think I’ll do it. 

 If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?

Well, if I’m at a Starbucks, which is always my last choice, I’ll always get an Americano because their drip coffee tastes like ass. I drink coffee black. A cappuccino is alright after a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant.

I really like Thai or Vietnamese coffee. It’s like the coffee equivalent of chocolate milk. 

The best espresso I’ve had was in Italy, and it’s not as good in France. In the 80’s and 90’s, if you were in the UK and wanted a cup of coffee, they would bring you a cup of hot water, a spoon, and a jar of Nescafe. That’s how I learned to enjoy tea. 

I always buy whole bean, and I really appreciate who I buy my coffee from. We make a drive to Long Beach which is 25 miles from my house and go to a place that roasts the coffee there. There are plenty of trendy places not that far from me, but I’m just not that into them.

I’ve realized I don't really like coffees from Africa, they’re too flowery. I like coffees from Indonesia, and I like darker roasts because I find them to be sweeter.

Guatemala.

I do like Guatemalan coffees, and I remember that one time when Killdozer was in San Francisco, we stayed with a friend that worked at a coffee roasting place. He served us a Jamaican Blue Mountain, which at the time may have been $40/lb. We were all enjoying this cup of coffee, and I believe Dan asked “Paul, do you think it’s worth that much?” and our friend replied “No, it’s just coffee.” You know what though? He was right. 

Thanks so much, Michael. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?

I haven’t heard any, what’s the next question? 

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