Since launching in 2020, Trust Records (get the story behind its founders here) have released beautifully packaged vinyl reissues of some of the most seminal records in the hardcore punk canon. 7 Seconds, Circle Jerks, and SSD are a few of the bands that have received the Trust treatment so far.
Just last month, the label dropped a remastered and expanded version of In Control, the influential 1984 record by Oxnard, California's Stäläg 13. As 185 Miles South Podcast host Zack Nelson wrote in No Echo in 2020, "Stäläg 13 was rocking a DC-inspired style through a California lense," and along with Agression and Dr. Know were the foundational bands behind what would become known as the Nardcore Hardcore scene.
Admittedly, outside of the broad strokes, I didn't know the Stäläg 13 story well, so I chatted with original vocalist Ron Baird about the band's history and the making of In Control. As you'll read below, Ron was generous with the details and didn't hesistate this walk down Nardcore memory lane.
What was it like growing up in Oxnard during the late 1970s and early 1980s? How would you describe the culture and atmosphere of the area back then?
This is a very good question. Well, firstly I am actually from Port Hueneme, which is a very small beach town that is completely bordered by Oxnard on land and the Pacific Ocean to the West. However, that said Oxnard is the dominant town and Port Hueneme seamlessly connects to Oxnard and the majority of my friends in the scene were from Oxnard. Growing up in Oxnard in the 1970s and 1980s was very interesting for a couple of reasons; firstly, the whole area was very conservative and dominated by the military and secondly because it was a boring agricultural town with lots of citrus orchards, strawberry, blueberry and broccoli fields.
Port Hueneme is the home of the Naval Construction Battalion Base as well as the only deepwater port between Long Beach and the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, the area is home to a Naval Air Station at Point Mugu, just south of Port Hueneme. Given the large presence of military personnel and installations the Vietnam War and the Cold War were dominant features of our upbringing.
Also, this conservatism contributed to an attitude and environment that was not tolerant or welcoming of hardcore punks so we used to get verbally and physically harassed a lot, which resulted in the need to fight often with military folk and other red neck types of which there were many.
As I mentioned, the Vietnam and Cold Wars had an impact upon our lives. For example, damaged tanks, armoured personnel carriers, trucks, jeeps and other military equipment used to come off ships at Port Hueneme from Viet Nam and were loaded on to trains at the port, which you could see through the chain link fence. I remember seeing an M113 armoured personnel carrier with a huge hole blown in the side of it and you could see dried blood on the armour and that really freaked me out.
Also, we were subject to regular Nuclear War drills with warning sirens sounding on Saturday mornings for five minutes while the television went to a blank screen informing viewers that this was a test of the US Emergency Communications System in the event of an enemy attack, and it had been drilled into us at school that the enemy was the Soviet Union. All of these events had the net effect of creating some very anxious kids worried sick about the fate of the world, and I strongly believe that this all played a part in the birth and growth of the hardcore punk scene.
The Oxnard/Port Hueneme area was otherwise mostly a boring place to grow up in particularly as we all became teenagers. Oxnard historically is a farming community and surprisingly still is despite its vast growth over the past forty years including a number of new housing estates that have gone up in recent years. Though in the 1970s and 1980s it was a largely quiet place with not much to do apart from skating, surfing and BMX riding. Farms abounded around Oxnard and Port Hueneme, which made for a large population of migrant farm workers primarily from Mexico and hence the large number of Hispanics in the Nardcore scene.
Culturally, it was an interesting amalgam of Latino cultural elements and patriotic nationalism from the local Navy bases. There were and still are some of the best Mexican restaurants in the state in Oxnard. Also, on weekend evenings when my Mom and Dad often took us out to eat at Cielito Lindo on Oxnard Boulevard we would encounter the ever present Mariachi music that dominated the downtown Oxnard restaurant area.
That said, Port Hueneme was also an amazing place to grow up as a kid given its close proximity to the beach, which we spent endless hours at particularly in summer, when my sister, brother, and I with a group of friends would head to the beach at 8:00 am and not return home till the sun went down at 7:00 or 8:00 pm.
There is also a creek that runs from Bubbling Spring’s Park on the east side border with Oxnard all the way West to the beach. The creek passed right across the street from my house and that was a wonderful play space for my friends and I to explore; we built an awesome BMX track in a culvert on the banks of the creek down the street from my house that provided lots of action and entertainment as we raced our BMX bikes, tried new tricks or crashed.
Skateboarding was also a favourite pasttime, and we were lucky that Stacey Peralta lived on Silver Strand beach; Stacey actually taught me to skateboard as he was a friend of my sister Luana. We also had the Endless Wave skatepark in North Oxnard, where everyone skated. I first met Big Bob Clark (the bass player for Agression) at the Endless Wave skatepark. I recall one time when at the Endless Wave, Big Bob showing me and Mike Hickey how to make Devo stickers by cutting out the letters from Powerflex Skateboard stickers. Those were really cool times.
Were there any significant music scenes or subcultures in Oxnard when you were younger?
Yes, there were. Obviously being a beach town surfing was a huge subculture, and the associated tribalism and localism was very real, particularly on Silver Strand Beach where Agression and the Cruz family lived (Blake Cruz, our guitarist). It was not uncommon to see out of town suffers get beat up and run off the beach by the SSL (Silver Strand Locals) crew. A lot of my friends and peers at school surfed. Ironically, I never surfed much; I tried it a few times but could not get the hang of it and after getting hit in the head with my board while out trying to learn I gave up on it. That said I was a great body surfer and boogie boarder. I spent heaps of time at the beach in the water catching waves.
Skateboarding was the other huge subcultural activity that I and a lot of my peers took to with gusto. The birthplace of skateboarding being Southern California, it was only natural that it caught on in a big way with young people in Oxnard/Port Hueneme. Most of my friends in the scene skated, though obviously not everybody, but it was and still is a huge part of the Nardcore scene.
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s street gang culture was also a thing; the biggest local gang was in La Colonia in Oxnard’s East Side. Walking around Oxnard it was routine to see the gangs calling card spray painted on walls and fences COxCH (Colonia Chiques). They tended not to bother punks, as I think they saw us as just another socially marginalised group like them. There was also a small Crip gang on Ivy Street in Oxnard, though the number of African Americans in the Oxnard/Port Hueneme area was pretty small back then.
As far as music subcultures, apart from the burgeoning punk and hardcore scene marked by very early Oxnard area bands like The Rotters and The Angry Samoans, there was the heavy metal scene with the biggest band being Ventura’s Cirith Ungol, who as kids we used to hate thinking they were just dumb-ass hippies. Ironically, my wife, Valeria and I, went to see Cirith Ungol play with Night Demon on their recent Australian Tour and they are a kick-ass band. I think as far as music subcultures are concerned that was pretty much it in the Oxnard area back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
I am not aware of any prominent hip-hop DJs or rappers at the time, though there may have been some, after all Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played at the Oxnard Performing Arts Centre back in 1978 or 1979. Most people back then used to listen to Top 40 radio music or hard rock, such as Ted Nugent, KISS, or Cheap Trick.
How did you first get exposed to punk music? Was there a specific band, show, or person that introduced you to the scene?
I got into punk in 1979, when I was 14, after reading an article about the Sex Pistols in CREEM. The Sex Pistols anti-social attitude and way of dress and the descriptions of their discordant sound outlined in the article really appealed to me. So, I tracked down their record Never Mind the Bollocks at a record store at the Esplanade Mall in North Oxnard, which is no longer there.
I also bought the Clash Black Market Clash 10-inch EP and 999 Feeling Alright with the Crew, on that shopping trip. I was also fortunate enough to meet the Hernandez Brothers (Jaime, Gilbert and Ismail) at an X concert in Santa Barbara in November 1979.
Jaime and Gilbert are the famed illustrators behind the Love and Rockets comic books and Ismael was the longtime bass player of Dr. Know. We became fast friends, and they introduced me to a wider array of punks in the burgeoning punk scene in Ventura County, as well as taking me to shows and parties. I was also lucky to go to middle school with Mike Hickey, the little brother of Mark Hickey from Agression, and we became friends in this way I was able to go to watch early Agression rehearsals with Mike.
Agression are such an important band for that era of hardcore in California.
Agression were cool guys who were real trailblazers of the Nardcore scene. They would help young bands wherever they could and really acted as mentors for other bands including Stäläg 13, for example, Mark gave me some very needed critical feedback on the first rough vocal mix of In Control that were vital to the ultimate output of the record, which was all the better for his advice.
READ MORE: Dr. Know Bassist Ismael Hernandez on Nardcore History, Crossover + More
Were there any local venues or record stores in the Oxnard/Ventura area that played a key role in introducing you to the punk and hardcore scene?
Early on in the scene (1979-1983) there were no venues in Oxnard putting on punk shows, so it was a very party driven scene. Later on, there were shows at the Casa Tropical a club that was housed in an old Quonset Hut next to Oxnard Airport on Fifth Street (Suicidal Tendencies played there in 1984) and a few shows at the old Roller-Skating Rink on Hueneme Road (Corrosion of Conformity played there in 1986), and a few other one-off hall shows.
LA and Hollywood venues were the places that played a key role in introducing me to punk and hardcore music, particularly the Starwood and the Whiskey a Go-Go. Tony Cortez from Ill Repute would often drive down to the Starwood on Wednesday nights for shows. My first gig at the Starwood was the Weirdos and the Dickies in early 1980. We also went to see Mad Society, 45 Grave, the Dead Kennedys and a range of other bands at the Whiskey.
Though, further up the coast in Santa Barabara and Goleta, there were two venues that were very important for the hardcore punks in the Ventura County (Oxnard/Hueneme/Ventura) area that also played a crucial role in further cementing my involvement in the punk and hardcore scene. These two venues were the La Casa De La Raza in the East Side of Santa Barbara and the Goleta Valley Community Centre, put on by Goldenvoice Productions.
These shows were awesome and had killer bands such as Bad Brains, Misfits, GBH, SSD, Husker Dü, Red Hot Chili Peppers (when they were still funk-punk), Suicidal Tendencies, the Big Boys and the list goes on. Stäläg 13 were lucky enough to play on a number of these bills and I cannot thank [Goldenvoice founder] Gary Tovar enough for believing in us as a band and putting us on some choice bills.
As far as record stores that were important, Salzer's Records in Ventura is the standout record store that was instrumental in creating access for me to a wide range of punk and hardcore music. While you could buy more commercially successful punk records at the chain record stores in the mall, mainly English bands such as The Clash, The Damned, and The Stranglers, Salzer's provided a more eclectic and local selection of punk music such as X, the Gears, Misfits, and Black Flag.
However, that said I also went to Vinyl Fetish on Melrose in Hollywood as well as purchasing records via mail order directly from labels such as Touch & Go, X-Claim, and Dischord.
[Check out Chris from Dead Heat chatting with Ron at Salzer's below]
How did Stäläg 13 come together? Were you already friends before starting the band, or did the band bring you all together?
I started Stäläg 13 along with one of my best friends at the time Karl Weinrich. Karl played guitar and I initially drummed and sang, but as we could never find a decent singer I decided to sing. Karl and I recruited Chuck Collison on bass who was a friend of Karl’s and Kevin Lundberg from Ventura on drums who we knew from going to parties. This was the original lineup and we recorded a demo-tape in 1982 that went to be bootlegged as a 7-Inch EP, with the Brian Walsby artwork on the cover.
This lineup of the band only lasted about a year. I kicked Chuck and Karl out due to personal differences and recruited Blake Cruz on guitar, Blake was only 14 at the time and I was 17. We quickly filled the drum and bass positions after a number of short-term fill-ins with Joel Liebke on drums and Rickey Bowersock on Bass; this lineup played a lot of shows and recorded a second demo, including a few songs that would appear on ‘In Control’. This lineup was solid and lasted for about 18 months though Ricky and Joel left primarily due to lack of commitment.
Blake and I quickly replaced them with John Morris on bass and Harry Meisenheimer on drums. Dave Casillas also joined the band at his time as lead guitarist. Dave was a high school friend of John Morris who he had played with in a Ventura band called M.I.A. (not the Las Vegas M.I.A.). This lineup was the one that recorded In Control, though Harry quit the band shortly after recording the album and we quickly filled the spot with Larry White, who had played with several bands in Ventura County.
As the scene was tightknit at the time, we all tended to know each other more or less or at least know of each other through mutual friends, so no one was a real stranger when they joined the band.
Did you feel part of a larger movement in the Nardcore scene, or was it something you had to build up yourselves? Can you recall any memorable early gigs or experiences that shaped the direction of Stäläg 13?
Well, Nardcore really did not exist back when we were first playing, I mean yes there was a scene, and we went to parties and shows and there were some local bands. But Nardore is something that was built and developed over time and is something that is still evolving.
Ironically, the term Nardcore started as a joke, I recall being at a party in Oxnard and DOA’s Hardcore ’81 was playing as it had just come out and Ismael Hernandez from Dr Know picked up the album cover and said if DOA are hardcore then we (bands in Oxnard), must be Nardcore and that was it to name stuck and it grew to be a meaningful community of punk and hardcore crew from Oxnard, California.
Apart for the original ‘Big Four’ Nardcore Bands of Agression, Dr Know, Ill Repute, and Stäläg 13, there are now a wide range of Nardcore bands from RKL, False Confession, Scared Straight, Habeaus Corpus to newer bands such as Torena, Omega Point, Pink Mist, Goner, War Tomorrow, and some very commercially successful bands like Annihilation Time and Nails. Nardcore, therefore, is a strong hardcore and punk community that continues to thrive, put onshows and produce some awesome bands.
I believe that every show we played shaped who we were as a band. Though I would have to say playing with East Coast hardcore bands was an experience that really influenced our directions as a band particularly new songs that we were writing post-In Control. We were lucky to play with SSD four times on their two tours to California. We also got to play with Government Issue, Necros, and Marginal Man.
How did Stäläg 13 end up working with Jorge Newberry and Upstart Records? Did you have conversations with any other labels before them? Did you have a manager or some other help when it came to dealing with that side of the band?
I was the sole manager and driving force of the band, though Larry and Blake helped particularly with merchandise and band mail. Bookings, tours, recording and business negotiations fell on my shoulders. We would, however, have regular band meetings to discuss management of the band and future direction.
We did not speak to any other record labels at the time. Of course, we were keen to record and release a record as we wanted to tour more widely than the Western US and that was hard without a release to promote. We initially planned to record and release the record ourselves.
However, one night when we played the Cathay De Grande, I think it was when we opened for Black Flag there, Jorge Newbury approached me to introduce himself and broach the subject of us signing with his new label Upstart Records. Jorge was a very cool guy who ran his company out of his parent’s garage at their house in Bel Air. As we had no other recording negotiations on the horizon and Jorge was proposing to pay for everything and we could retain copyright, so it did not take us long to decide to sign on with Jorge.
Do any specific memories stand out from the In Control recording sessions? Did tracking vocals in the studio come naturally to you, or did you need your hand held a bit at first?
Yes, the whole recording process was amazing. We had recorded two times previously, so we were versed in the basics of the recording process and had experienced live recording as well as doing overdubs. We were initially booked in to record at a friends dad’s studio in Orange County, however when Jorge turned up to the studio to oversee the tracking process, he was not at all impressed with the studio space and strongly suggested we pack up and go. Jorge assured me that we would be recording in a much better studio.
When Jorge contacted us a few weeks later to inform us to meet him at a studio in West Hollywood to check it out we were blown away when we went into the Skip Saylor Recording Studio. The studio was a world class professional recording studio, where commercially successful artists record. Beyoncé had recorded there later in the 2000s. So, we were very excited about recording there, working with a professional studio engineer like Jon Gass made it such a great experience as he worked with our ideas and provided his own input and suggestions for some effects and particularly the reverb on my voice on the song "Black and Gray" was Jon’s idea.
Tracking vocals for me was straightforward. I don’t know if I would say it came naturally, but I did not need any hand holding in the studio, as I had done it before. However, that said, when I was tracking my vocals in the studio, I was so focussed on singing clearly so the lyrics could be understood that some of the takes lacked that live intensity and punch. This was pointed out to me by Mark Hickey of Agression who listened to a rough mix of the recording and suggested that I re-record my vocals on a number of tracks.
Jorge was initially reticent to allow this due to the need to pay for more studio time, however I persisted, and I ended up re-recording the vocals on five of the nine tracks on In Control, which I was very pleased with the outcome of, as the songs sounded much stronger.
Overall, the process was seamless and such a good experience; doing the guitar overdubs and mixing was a very enjoyable time as the folk at Skip Saylor treated us like professional musicians and not some ‘pardon the pun’ upstart punks who were beneath their professionalism. Instead, we were treated as legitimate clients who produced a product that both parties were equally proud of.
What do you remember about the reaction In Control received when it initially came out back then? Were you tapped into the record reviews and zine coverage the band got, and all of that kind of stuff, or has that never really interested you?
Yes, how the record was received was very much front and centre on my radar. I was very attenuated to zine reviews of the record and was stoked with the generally positive press the record received.
Maximumrocknroll gave In Control a very good review as did Flipside, though there were some detractors particularly one review from a Midwest fanzine that praised the musicianship, but that also said my vocals were weak, but I suppose you can’t please everybody. That said the reaction to the record was generally very positive and there was a lot of talk along the lines of “expect big things from this band."
How much playing locally and touring did Stäläg 13 do after the record came out? Were you looking to make the band your full-time gig at that point?
We played constantly at the time, particularly all throughout California, after In Control was released, we were getting bigger shows and playing further up the bill. Ironically, we were planning a huge 65 show three-month tour of North America (Canada and the USA), that would see us play pretty much every major and middle size city in the country.
However, during this time, tension was building in the band and we asked Dave Casillas our lead guitarist to leave the band due to his lack of commitment and other personal issues there were impact negatively on the band.
What was the catalyst behind Stäläg 13 breaking up when it did in the mid-'80s? Have you had many "what if" moments in the years since then?
Well, building further on the response to the last question. Once Dave left the band we were playing with only one guitarist, Blake, who always flew around the stage when playing live and thus without that second guitar to anchor the sound live shows were a bit choppy. Also, the songs on In Control were recorded with that two-guitar assault and the hall mark Stäläg 13 leads, so I was keen to bring in another lead guitarist so we could stay true to how In Control was recorded.
I wanted a guy named Chuck “Steak” Collison to join the band, who was actually the original bass player for the first Stäläg 13 lineup. However, Blake was resistant to this idea and ultimately left the band about a month before the start of our big tour in support of the In Control release. At that stage, I assumed that we would just do the tour with Chuck on guitar, but two weeks before the tour Larry (drums) and John (bass) said they did not want to do the whole tour as they felt Chuck was not ready, so we ended up only doing the West Coast leg of the tour from LA to Washington state.
I was so broken from that experience as I strongly feel that if we had done that tour we would have gone on to bigger success, so yes, I have had plenty of “what if” moments since then, beginning on that tour, as when we played Seattle, the Melvins opened for us and they loved our set so much they drove 90 minutes to Tacoma, Washington the next night to see us play with Tales of Terror, and well we all know how huge the Melvins became.
I also recall going to see Helmet in Melbourne in the early 1990s and their bass player being stoked to meet me and said he saw us play in Portland with Poison Idea on our ill fated 1984 West Coast tour.
Also, the fact that 'In Control' went on to be such an influential hardcore record that inspired the likes of Judge, Strife, Chain of Strength and a whole generation of hardcore bands is testament to the fact that we were onto something and produced a classic hardcore record that still holds its own today. I often wonder what would have happened had we stayed together and completed our 1984 Summer North American Tour. Anyway, we are having fun playing again.
How connected did you stay with the hardcore/punk scene throughout the years since Stäläg 13's original run?
Well, not connected at all really. After the initial breakup of the band, I went to Europe for six months and when I got back in early 1986 Larry White (Stäläg 13 drummer) hit me up to do a metal version of Stäläg 13 that lasted about 9 or 10 months and then that was it, I went back to Europe and stayed there for about two years. I back packed around Europe for six months and then worked in a pizzeria in England for a year before back packing around the continent again, I eventually ran out of money and returned to Oxnard in mid-1988.
While I was overseas, I went to see heaps of bands, in London I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hüsker Dü, X, DRI, Faith No More and I even saw the UK Subs at the 100 Club! I also saw GBH in Carlisle North England. As far as staying connected to the scene in California or Nardcore, I pretty much had nil contact and was totally unaware that Nardcore became a hugely popular scene that spawned heaps of great bands.
That said, in Australia I went to heaps of shows I saw the Rollins Band five times over the years, though I was never really part of the scene here as Melbourne is very cliquey and frankly not very welcoming.
In addition, I found that being an African American into punk and hardcore I was just a double outsider here and felt fairly invisible atmost shows, but that was fine with me. When I was at University, I started singing in bands again and sang for a band called Fuel, not the Texas band of the same name. Fuel was described by a local independent radio station in Melbourne as Korn meets Soundgarden, which I thought was interesting.
I also rapped in a heavy hip-hop crossover metal band called 20Minutes, who played fat, down-tuned songs kind of reminiscent to Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Coal Chamber, we even had a DJ. 20Minutes gained a bit of local fame and played a lot of good shows including some good support slots, but never really went far.
What brought you to Australia and was there a long period of adjustment for you? Do you miss Southern California at all?
Well, when I was back packing around Europe, I met heaps of Australians, and they all said that I should come to Australia to travel. So, long story short I ended up going to Australia in late 1988 and after a few years here I was able to gain permanent residency status, and I decided to go to university (college) where I met my wife Valeria and stayed on.
Yes, despite Australia being an English-speaking country, it is culturally very different from the USA and it took me a year or two to adjust to the different environment. Australia has a relatively small population and when I first arrived it felt a bit like a cultural backwater compared to the vibrancy of Southern California.
Though I have grown to really appreciate Australia, and while there are some things I miss about California, particularly good quality Mexican food, I don’t really miss living there particularly the gun violence and extreme levels of homelessness. Though, that said we did live in Berkeley for six months as my wife was on sabbatical leave at UC Berkeley, which was cool as I was able to finish off the writing of my PhD whilst there.
Before I let you go, if you had to pick a record that you think captures the true essence of hardcore music, what would it be and why?
Black Flag’s Damaged LP for me is the quintessential hardcore album! It has everything including angst ridden angry lyrics that deal with alienation, police brutality, metal illness, family trauma, politics, and the dire state of society in late Capitalist America.
This album is a true classic hardcore record that is intense, heavy, loud and in my view you cannot beat the lineup of Greg, Chuck, Robo, and Rollins. Black Flag for life!
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The remastered edition of In Control is available now via Trust Records.
Tagged: stalag 13
