Poison Idea vocalist Jerry A. on his version of punk rock and his love of cooking

Interview by Jason Schreurs

Legendary Portland band Poison Idea didn’t just put out one of the most underrated punk rock albums of all time, they’ve been a staple in the Northwest punk, hardcore and metal scene since their inception 34 years ago. Sure, there’s been alcoholism, self-abuse, trauma, tragedy and crime sprees along the band’s way, but founding member and vocalist Jerry A. (real name: Jerry Lang) soldiers on, even after the departure, including the death, of some of his best friends (guitar Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts passed away from health complications in 2006). We recently talked with Lang about his definition of punk rock and how he’ll always carry it with him, as well as his love of cooking (who knew?).

You’ve been doing this band for more than 30 years. Do you think that punk rock will always be a part of you?
I was going to shows when I was like 15, before punk became a uniform and the set of rules about “you have to look this way, you have to act this way, you have to think this way…” Before that, punk was everything. It was cinema, it was art, it was culture, it was lifestyles, it was fashion… I learned from that, from everything about it, and from the authors that I was reading… because I dropped out of school really young, but punk turned me onto French poetry, and fucking existentialism, and Dadaism, and surrealism and situationism, all of this through punk rock, and it basically schooled me.

Cool, I didn’t know that about you.
I think that I’ll always be punk in that sense, if you call punk rock a lifestyle or form, and a feeling, and not a fucking uniform and some stupid three-chord bullshit about the same Xeroxed generic shit over and over and over. Punk rock could be anything, from Syd Barrett, to Howlin’ Wolf, to Billy Childish, to whatever. It’s anything that’s true. So I guess it will always be a part of me.

What would you do if Poison Idea ended?
Well, I’ve never really held down a job, so I don’t know. I’ve had lots of jobs, but I always got fired, because if you’re working for somebody who fucks up and takes it out on their employees, and I’ve seen this many times, the employees will take it, and I will say, “No, this person’s wrong. Why should we be taking the brunt of it?” It’s better to confront it. I worked at this restaurant once and dumped a bowl of soup on the owner’s head and these waiters were shaking, and they’re going, “I’ve been here for 20 years, I’ve been waiting for something like that,” and they’re like, “You’re fired, but thank you so much for doing that; that guy is such a prick and I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” So just that little satisfaction of doing something like that is common for me, and it’s something I would do every day; questioning things and asking why.

So that’s punk rock for you?
Yeah, it’s not negativity. It’s reality.

I know you’re big into food. What are some of your favourite places to eat in Portland?
Well, I’m not sure. I don’t like fucking Voodoo Donuts and trendy shit like that. Honestly, I cook myself a lot and I’m into juicing; I have a really nice juicer that I invested in. I cook lots of stuff; fish, seafood… I was raised in a single-parent family and that parent was never there and I had two younger siblings, which I basically had to raise myself from like seven years old and on, until I left home when I was 15, and I had to cook for these two little kids. So I learned how to cook and learned how to bake bread, and make bagels and whatever. And I can cook, and I’ve had jobs cooking before. But the reason why Tom [a.k.a. late guitarist Pig Champion] and I were so big, it wasn’t because of sitting around eating donuts, it was because of our intake of alcohol and being alcoholics, drinking a lot of booze. It was fattening; very fattening.

What’s one of your favourite dishes to make?
You can go across the board and say, “What’s your favourite Mexican dish? What’s your favourite Italian dish? What’s your favourite Cuban dish? What’s your favourite American food?” If I could narrow it down, it would probably be Spanish food, with the little fiesta things, like the squid cooked in its own ink, stuff like that. Shit that we can’t do here on the West Coast. We do have seafood here, like salmon, and things like that, but on the East Coast there’s a lot of stuff we don’t have over here, like blue soft-shell crab. Just crazy shit like that. I like learning how to make things. Like I said, when I was a kid I learned how to make a bagel; the process of using different amounts of yeast, depending on how condensed or fluffy you wanted it, and then boiling these things, and once you’ve boiled them, then you take them out, and then you bake them! The process was so interesting to me; I thought it was killer. So then I would start fucking around with potato water to boil the bagels in, or I would start adding fresh fruit or vegetables or shit like that into the dough, and just doing different things with them. When I cook, it’s my own spin on it, just like the way our music has its own spin on it; it was punk rock infused with this other crazy shit. And when I make coffee in the morning, I put a half-teaspoon of cinnamon in, and then do a shot of vanilla with the creamer. You make your own stuff up, you know? I’ve worked in French restaurants, Mexican restaurants, pizzerias… We could talk about cooking for a long time.

Poison Idea‘s back catalog is available through Southern Lord Records. The band is currently working on a new album with Joel Grind of Toxic Holocaust.