Interview with Dennis Most, October 2006

NB - Please introduce yourself.
DM - Hi, I'm Dennis Most, longtime singer, songwriter, producer and arranger of garage punk/hard rock from the Midwest of the United States. My hometown is Fairmount, Indiana, best know as the home and final resting place of film icon, James Dean.

NB - How did you start to listen and play music? What was the 1st band/artist you liked, what was the 1st record you bought...?
DM - My mother had a lot to do with me getting into music at a very early age. I used to listen to this big radio with tons of knobs at my grandmother's house. We didn't have a TV so the radio was the thing. I used to lie on the floor and listen to real roots country music, not the processed stuff of today. I also used to go to a Baptist church where my aunt pounded on a standup piano and sang up a storm. Believe me the place was rocking. I'm not particularly religious, but I have fond memories of the energy. That with American Bandstand and Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know early rock'n'roll. Elvis was my first music fav. I think the first record I bought was a Jan & Dean LP called "New Girl In School" and my first single was the Beatles "Can't Buy Me Love". The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was what made me say "that's what I want to do". I always sang from an early age.

NB - Your 1st band "Punk" was formed in 1972. A bit strange name for 1972. How old were you then? What kind of music did you play?
DM - I actually was in a couple of bands before Punk starting in 1969, but it was the first band that I controlled the direction of what we were doing. I was 20 years old. Punk was very much a garage band. 2 guitars, bass, Farfisa organ and drums. I did all the singing. Besides a few of my songs we played stuff like Velvet Underground, Alice Cooper, Mott The Hoople, some Stones, etc.

NB - "AudioLove" was formed 1976. I guess you can say you were one of the pioneers of punk/wave music. Tell me how it was back then? I guess this kind of music was not very popular. Was it hard to get gigs? How did people react to your sound?
DM - AudioLove was definitely unique. I had gotten bored with my band Punk as I wanted to play something much harder and louder. But with 60's garage punk being my first love I wanted to incorporate it into something louder and faster. I always considered AudioLove to be a speed metal band with those strong garage punk roots. It was surprising that when we were able to get a gig we were really well received although we kind of freaked out people at the same time. But I had great musicians and I put on a very aggressive stage show and we had some hardcore fans. But the clubs and blues scene where we lived killed us off. Little money and few shows and the inability to move the band somewhere else also did its damage.

NB - 1st Instigators were formed 1979. Tell me more about the band and it's short existence.
DM - After AudioLove broke up I was floundering around, because I wasn't sure how I was going to top what I did there and I didn't want to create another AudioLove. My brother, Mark, who had been singing in hard rock bands, was going through a down time, too, and he said if you want I'll play bass for you. He'd only been playing about 4 months so I said let's just do a fun thing. I got a guitarist and drummer, who had talent, but were novices and I put together some revved up 60's arrangements, threw in a few of my songs and a few of Mark', rehearsed hard and went out and played. It was actually a very good live band, exciting and lots of fun. The audiences loved us and the club owners were afraid to book us. "What's the name of the band? The Instigators? Uh, no thanks." We did the "Excuse My Spunk"/"Destructive Love" 7" and then I really wanted to focus more on my songs and play with some better musicians and Mark wanted to go back to being a lead singer. That was always the intention. The original band was never mean to be a long term thing. But we had a good time and some good things came out of it.

NB - What happened after this? You kept going on with music and you are still active. Who are the people you work with now? Same members as the 1st Instigators?
DM - Well, I formed another band...still garage punk, but a little more hard rock with some pop tinges and then a new lineup in the early 80's that continued my garage punk leanings, but added more of a 60's garage pop feel to it. We did the "Baby, Come Back"/"Tough Break" 7", continued to get ignored and continued to do gigs. In late 1983 I went through a divorce and moved out to Los Angeles to continue playing my music. I did a small pressing of a solo LP in 1985 called "Don't Take Me For Granted!" A re-mastered version with bonus tracks is being released on CD for the first time in the next few months on Japan's Wizzard-In-Vinyl label. In 1994 I returned to Indiana and in 2001 I reformed The Instigators. Earlier this year I moved back to the East Coast.

The lineup since 2001 has included Peter Poulos from AudioLove on guitar, Jeff Roncalli, who has played drums on pretty much everything I've done since 1981 and Keith Grave, long time punk bass player, who started out in 2001 acting as an A & R man for the reissues of my early music and ended up joining full time. Daxe Rexford is sort of the fifth Instigator. He plays keyboards on my recordings and runs my website, but doesn't play live with us. It's a great lineup with experience and chops and we are raw and powerful and I love it.

NB - Your music is not really pure punk, it also has other elements - hard rock, blues, garage, ... You also played some covers and there was also a period when you were influenced by new wave. What kind of stuff do you like to listen and what are your favorite bands?
DM - While I know where you are coming from, I don't know that there is such a thing as pure punk. In the 60's when I started playing you could turn on Top 40 radio and here anything from the garage punk of the Standells, heavy psychedelia of Hendrix, pop rock with the Beatles, blues-based Stones and Kinks and everything you could imagine. I listened to it all so that's why you can hear different elements in my music. Classic punk bands like the Ramones were heavily influenced by 60's pop and I hear definite elements of metal in the Sex Pistols. To me punk is all about an attitude and being different. I consider early Elvis punk. He was unbelievably outrageous for the 50's. James Dean was a big influence on me as a punk. To me the roots of modern punk are the garage bands of the mid-60's and the Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5. Likewise I think New Wave was a contrivance of record companies as a marketing device, but in reality was more power pop than anything. Did genres spring up around these labels? Most certainly. I see in reviews of my music quite often that the reviewer labels me as proto-punk. I can live with that.

As you can probably guess I like all kinds of music as long as it's done well. My fav bands are from the 60's and I still listen to them. I love the Stooges, MC5, Lou Reed, The Troggs (Reg Presley!!), the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, Love, the Who, the Move, Kinks, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, Standells, Blues Magoos, etc. I'm a big early Black Sabbath fan and I like lots of the British bands from the 70's like Budgie and Judas Priest. I love Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and of course Elvis Presley. Motown and Stax like the 4 Tops and Otis Redding are great and I'm a big fan of the New York Dolls, the Dictators, the Damned, the Saints, Ramones, the Cramps and so many others.

NB - Any new garage/punk bands that you like?
DM - Well, not exactly "new" but I dig Pennywise, Bad Religion and New Bomb Turks. Current of my friend's bands that I like are Sweden's Rickshaw (now evolved into Chuck Norris Experiment), Finland's Mean Idols and out of Boston...the Tampoffs, Spitzz and the Konks.

NB - What do you think about the whole scene today - bands, labels...? I guess lot of things are different comparing to end of 70s and early 80s. What do you think is now better/worse than back in that time?
DM - There are good bands and there are bad bands and a lot of them all sound the same. I just don't think music is as diverse as it used to be in the 70's and 80's. Not that there wasn't plenty of crap during that time, too. It was just more diverse crap. I can't say a lot about the labels as my dealings have been basically with small independents or self-released. The labels that have released my stuff have done their best with limited resources and I appreciate their efforts. Keith says it's really tough getting stuff released as internet downloading and IPODS have certainly hurt the labels. I never felt part of any scene. As far as better or worse, I couldn't get a bigger label to listen to me back then and I still can't. The good thing is that the internet and smaller labels have made me a presence and I'm getting attention for my history and my current work. I'm bootlegged a lot more now than I was back then.

NB - What is in your opinion your best record/CD?
DMI would have to say that the original "Excuse My Spunk" 7" has to get credit for creating an audience for me, so I have a strong love for that record, but I would say the "Vampire City" CD is probably the best overall release.

NB - You are making music for so long. What makes you keep going on?
DM - It's just what I love. I can't imagine not playing. I love being on stage and being in the studio. My music is still loud and fast and the stage show is just as wild as it was when I was starting out. It keeps me young and I like that I have an audience that ranges from 14 to 50 plus. I'll do it until I die.

NB - Any other occupation except for playing in Instigators?
DM - Oh, yeah. I had to do the day gig to pay the bills. For the last 20 years I've been in office operations management. Enough said.

NB - 3 things you hate most?
DM - Ignorance.

Having to work a day gig instead of playing music full-time.

The idiotic idea that I can't play my style of music at my age. Total bullshit. Listen to my CDs and come see my shows and then tell me that. I understand energy.

NB - Did you ever play in Europe and do you plan to come soon?
DM - I did a mini-tour of Italy in early 2002 and it was unbelievable. The crowds were great and I couldn't believe how well they knew my music. We've wanted to go back over ever since and we've had numerous invitations. Unfortunately the finances have not been there to support a tour. But we've talked about it and I wouldn't be surprised if we did go back in the next year or so. I'm not sure how many countries we'll be ale to hit, but we'll see what we can do.

NB - What are Instigators doing at the moment?
DM - Well, we are label shopping our most recent CD called "I'm Not Dead Yet!". We're receiving airplay all over the U.S. and some overseas with advance promos and we've had lots of good reviews in Œzines, but haven't been able to get it officially released. We went ahead and started recording our next CD and have got the basic rhythm tracks down and we'll be working on it over the winter. I'm very excited about it. Very punk, very hard rock, very garage pop with twinges of psychedelia. Still very much me and the Instigators. We've also started doing more live shows and hope to do at least a few shows a month.

NB - Anything you want to say to No Brains Zine readers?
DM - Well, if you've read this far thanks for reading the interview and thanks to No Brains and Vanya for asking me to do the interview to begin with. I hope you found it somewhat interesting. Also keep an open mind to all kinds of music (except rap and opera) and check out the beginnings. You might find something that you like and you might find out that favorite band of yours actually listened to somebody else first before they added their twist. Music is the real life force.