D.C. Punk Band “the Goons” Reunite for “One Last Job”

[Note: For some reason, Creem Magazine did not stop their presses to run this interview with D.C. punk singer Sergio Baptista, or “Serge Goon” before this weekend’s show. So, this is perhaps a slight break from your regular OT programming…]

It’s something you’ve seen in a million crime movies: getting the gang back together for one last job. The Goons were D.C. area punk stalwarts who seemed to play everywhere all the time, so it was a bit of a shock when they basically called it quits back in 2006 after years of relentless touring, recording, and gigging. I mean, they still liked each other! The members remained good friends, but have only played a few shows in the interim. Now, a live recording of the band at their peak playing at D.C.’s Black Cat Club is being released on vinyl for the DCxPC live series and the band is reuniting to play at, you guessed it, the Black Cat Club with (holy shit!) punk’s all-time greatest frontman H.R. and Boston legends the F.U.s opening!

For me, it’s a trip down memory’s urine-drenched back alley because they’re also old friends of mine; heck, I used to live in the “Goon house” once upon a time. It’s also definitely bittersweet for reasons we’ll get to in a moment. But I called up their singer Serge and talked at him about the band and the show.

Now, as I remember the Goons, they appeared in 1996 at a time when punk in DC was feeling a bit too post-punk for my tastes. Fugazi had peaked in terms of influence and nearly every band I saw play live for one year sounded a little like Fugazi: two singers, poetic lyrics ranging from a whisper to a scream, jangly guitars, incredibly earnest political speeches between songs. It all felt a little bit… good for you. Punk as consciousness-raising.

So, I sat up on my hind legs when, seemingly overnight, the Suspects and the Goons arrived, and played furiously loud/fast punk that rocked the hell out, while arguably still having a political message. At least, I think so. Serge disagrees.

“Chris Suspect said sort of the same thing, and we were pissed and we were righteously pissed, but I don’t think we took ourselves seriously enough to be a political band.”

Okay, sure, there were no lyrics rooted in a deep reading of Noam Chomsky, but there’s a fine line between singing “I hate my job/ I do it every day/ the boss thinks I’m stupid ‘cause I do it my way!” and hating the fact that you even have to piss your life away at a job to survive under capitalism. The Goons wrote songs about the perennial frustrations of living in America; not pop-punk songs about crushes and cars. Serge notes:

“I couldn’t sing that. When I write my lyrics, even if they’re stupid, I have to feel them. It has to feel right coming out of me.” 

And so, the personal is political, kids. And they pretty much were kids when they started. Serge and Mikey, the bass player, met in high school and started jamming in senior year. By the time of their first show, Mike had gone off to college, but he came to the show anyway. It was a memorable christening because the bar in question had decided to host an all-ages gig for which they weren’t prepared and hid the beer, while using a doorman of questionable intent. Alcohol was procured anyway by a punk who ran off with the bar’s beer in a shopping cart, and chaos ensued. The bar did not host another all-ages show.

But, Mike was soon taking the bus back from college every week to practice and play shows. Serge recalls: “He was a diehard motherfucker, because yeah he was in college.” They soon added Pat “P.J.” Crean on guitar and went through a series of drummers, with the most beloved being the hilarious and hyperactive “kid” Tommy Omachel, and they had their “team” Serge recalls:

“So I had this idea if we put out a record it would be called “The Four Ds of Punk”: Mike is the drunk, P.J. was the defective, Tommy was the Delinquint, and I would be the deviant.” This sounds about right. 

They also had their basic recipe down: short, fast, aggressive punk songs that walked the line between hardcore and New Bomb Turks rawk, and a generally snotty pissed off lyrical voice. Et viola! They played for twelve years and released three full-length albums and various singles.

(The Goons “Everyday” live, 2016)

Was it always fun? No.

“There was a period in time,” Serge recalls, “when every show we played started to get violent. There was a show where a kid got cut up with a broken bottle even before we arrived. And while we were playing, this kid bumped into this girl whose wedding was that weekend and he got dogpiled. We stopped playing and went on the dancefloor and peeled people off him.”

So, they took a break:

“we turned around and we didn’t play DC for months because we thought let’s go play somewhere else where we don’t have to watch this happen. We don’t want that at our shows. That’s not what that’s about.”

They also realized that being in a band might feel at times like arguing with three girlfriends, but it’s gotta be a gang sometimes. Serge remembers telling the band, after a show that almost turned violent: “Dudes, if that ever happens again, and you don’t have my back, I quit. When we’re out on the road, we gotta be a fucking gang.”

What doesn’t kill you makes for a good story later. For the most part, though, Goons shows were a blast and Serge loved every minute.

“I mean that’s why I did it. The personnel changes were not always awesome. I know other people complain about shit like being on tour and not getting along with their bandmates. Man, I loved it. I want to be hanging out with those guys all day and I’d rather be hanging out in front of a record store asking every kid with a mohawk where the show is and if there’s going to be a party afterwards.”

Since disbanding the gang, Serge has sung with a band called Nervous Impulse, going in the opposite direction of most ageing punk singers and releasing something faster and harder. He’s jamming with a slowly-forming band on Tuesdays. Mike got his PhD in economics and has a wife and kid; he also played in Musicband with P.J. on vocals. Tommy didn’t live to see 30, though he’s making a racket somewhere on the other side. 

(Musicband:”Drug War”)

And somehow we all got old. Serge reflects:  “It’s weird being old. I don’t feel old. I feel like I’m sixteen half the time.” They don’t tell you about that, kids. Plenty of us are recovering adults at best.

P.J. Goon

Except Pat. No doubt one of the hardest things about preparing for this show was knowing Pat wanted the band to play it, but wouldn’t be there in person. You hear a cliché about people “fighting a war” against illness, but Pat was fighting for his life the whole time we knew him. In the band days, he was the guy with cystic fibrosis who had to go in to have his lungs pumped out once a year or so; and then had the lung transplant but had to fight off cancer twice, due to a weakened immune system; and then he finally had a lung infection that couldn’t be cured. When we talked, Serge and Mike had already visited Pat in the hospital and knew he wouldn’t be coming home. Pat Crean wasn’t just kind, cool, and musically talented; he was the toughest guy we knew and he fought for every minute. But, kids, life is a fucking whisper.

And here’s another secret: the bullshit you’re angry about when you’re twenty-two remains bullshit when you’re forty-eight. You’ve just had more time to understand how deeply entrenched and systemic that bullshit actually is. Unless you’ve convinced yourself that you actually like the taste and smell, it never changes: work destroys your soul, cops are killers, the government thinks we’re fools, and America hates its youth. The songs were meaningful. Serge sort of agrees:

“I don’t know about meaningful, but it was important for me to do. I would still be living that way if it was up to me.”

And we could all use an excuse to blow off some steam. Serge was, nevertheless, pleasantly surprised by the interest in releasing a live album, now, and the response to taking those fliers around to the shows.

“It felt weird doing it without Tommy, and it definitely feels weird doing it without P.J. but it’s gonna be a blast and (Scott Pasch, whose label is releasing The Goons Live) wants us to play… What’s really great is to see people are really stoked for the show. When people’s eyes light up, I’m like awesome, man, let’s have some fun.”

 “I’m like a wild animal that’s been kept too long.”