The following is an excerpt from the book "No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens" by Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico. Photos by Ken Salerno.
The Descendents Reunion - October 24th, 1993 (Milo fills in for ailing Chad Price)
Milo Aukerman (Descendents, vocalist): This show I have more memories of than anything else. I probably have more memory of it because it was a one-off thing. It wasn’t part of a tour where you’re brain dead or where you’re barely waking up in time to jump on stage. This show was exciting because I had given up music for several years, and [drummer] Bill Stevenson called me out of the blue. He told me that [ALL’s lead singer] Chad was sick, and how would I feel about [filling in] for one show. I liked the whole spur-of-the-moment quality of it… the novelty of it. I had left the band behind and was trying to do science, and science kind of sucked at that point. I needed the diversion, even if it was just an hour-long diversion. It seemed whacky enough to be fun, and it was fun to come back to City Gardens. It was like, “Ahh, back in my element.” Driving up to the club, I thought, “Yeah, here we are in the seedy part of town. Exactly where you’d expect a punk-rock club to be.” It felt so comfortable.
Amy Yates Wuelfing: I was set up to interview ALL that day, and, because Milo was in and out so fast, I didn’t get to speak to him. I was so excited about it being a Descendents reunion, and I said to [ALL’s bassist] Karl Alvarez, “This is a really big deal.” This was before the internet and cell phones, so you couldn’t call people and tell them what was happening. You were either there or you weren’t.
Carl Humenik (City Gardens security): I walked in, and another security guy says, “Milo’s coming.” I thought he meant Milo was coming to watch the show. But he said, “No, Milo’s going to sing,” and I was like, “AAAAHHHH!!!” So, I got on the pay phone and called a whole bunch of my friends. I spent $10 calling people.
Jamie Davis: This was back when they still had pay phones. I was calling everyone in Philly and telling them, “You better get down here!” Nobody was around!
Jeremy Weiss (City Gardens regular): I was going to school at the University of Pittsburgh. I was great friends with the guys in Serpico, who were called Sleeper back then. They were playing one night at City Gardens with ALL. From City Gardens, it’s a four-hour drive to Pittsburgh, and it’s a Sunday night. I wasn’t going to go to the show. My friend John calls me and says, “You’re not going back to school tonight.” And I said, “John, I love your band. You know damn well I want to be there, and I really like ALL, but I got to go back to school.” He said, “No, you’re not. Your butt is coming down to City Gardens. Tonight.” I said, “I’m not,” and all he said was, “If you don’t come to City Gardens tonight, you will never forgive yourself.” Nothing else—no further information. I took it on faith. I told my parents I was going back to college, but I drove down to City Gardens. After the show, I drove back to school and I got to Pitt at 7:30 in the morning, but not before seeing a band that swore up and down that they would never reunite. Now, that seems like a silly notion, because they subsequently have years later.
Jamie Davis (City Gardens regular): The only reason I went to that show was because on Sundays I would go to see my grandmother in Levittown, PA. I was thinking, “Ah, I’ll drive over to City Gardens and see if anyone is outside.” I would do that on any random day. So, I go over there and talked to one of the bouncers, who was like, “You are going to want to go to this show.” And I’m like, “Eh, I don’t like ALL. I’m really not a fan.” And he said, “No, they got Milo. The other dude’s sick and Milo’s doing a reunion.” And I’m like, “What?!” And then I found out Sloppy Seconds was playing, too. They weren’t even on the bill. No one ever mentions that that they played. They might have played without even being announced.
Jeremy Weiss: The thing was, when I got to the show [ALL’s singer] Chad was in the parking lot. I saw him, and I didn’t understand what my friend was telling me. He had been sworn to absolute secrecy. He was good friends with Bill Stevenson, and they made him swear up and down that he wouldn’t tell. They thought if it got out, even for a day, that it would kill ALL’s momentum, and everyone would be wondering if Milo was coming back to sing for the band for good. So they really wanted to sneak it in, just one time, and it was only because Chad Price had a very severe throat infection and could hardly talk.
Milo Aukerman: Bill booked me a quick flight and I got there, and the big question was, what songs do we do? Do we do Descendents songs or do we do ALL songs? I wanted to do some ALL songs, just because I knew that the band would probably prefer ALL songs. We ended up doing 60/40, like 60% Descendents, 40% ALL. That was fine, except that some of those ALL songs I had to learn on the fly. When they picked me up at the airport, I requested lyrics from some of the other guys in the band, and I tried to memorize them as best as I could. [It turns out] I remembered the ALL songs but forgot the lyrics to a Descendents song. Those receded further into my memory. ALL had been playing for six or seven years, and they were my favorite band, so I knew their lyrics better than my own. I remember attempting to sing [the ALL song] “Shreen” and totally failing. A very majestic sort of failure, where I had no hope of hitting the right notes and then realizing why Chad was their singer and not me… because he could do it justice and I couldn’t. I’m not sure when the buzz started, but there was some buzz. Like, “Oh, isn’t that Milo? What’s he doing here?” By the time I got on stage, a lot of people had figured it out and started saying my name. I thought, “How do they know”? We think we’re pulling the wool over the crowd’s eyes, but they’re totally on to it. I said something like, “Needless to say, this is not the normal ALL lineup, and we’re doing something a little different tonight.”
Jeremy Weiss: My best friend Andy and I go right up to the stage, and it’s packed. We’re standing there, dead center, right at the stage like nerds, waiting for 20 minutes for ALL to come out. Out of nowhere, Milo Aukerman walks on stage.
Milo Aukerman: In some respect, it helped reignite my desire to keep doing it, and, of course, a few years later we made a record. If Bill hadn’t called me—I can’t say for certain—but if he hadn’t called me and set this show up, we might not have gotten back together again in ’96. Each of these little events reminds me how much fun it is, how much getting up on stage can be a blast, and I think that event reignited something that kept the ball rolling for further music in ’96 and 2002. I’m sure Bill didn’t know how much I was hating science. We were sporadically in touch at that time. Whenever ALL played [nearby], I was there, and I used those opportunities to catch up. I’m not sure whether his motivation was, “Oh, we need a singer. Let’s get Milo,” or whether he was thinking, “Maybe this is a way of getting Milo back in the fold a little bit.” I’m guessing it was the former. Whether he knew it or not, Bill was reigniting my need to rock. The band has had its ups and downs, and I’ve left and I’ve come back, but it’s always been predicated on the need to rock and that night, obviously, I felt pretty good being back on stage.
Scott Foster (1124 Records): There was a rumor that Milo was going to be there and Dave Smalley, who was in the opening band Down By Law, was going to sing a few songs, but he didn’t sing anything with them. One of the coolest parts of that show was, when they finished their set, they all switched instruments. Bill got on guitar, and Steven got on the drums, and they did about four Black Flag songs. It was fucking awesome!
Jamie Davis: You could see all these new kids who didn’t even know the Descendents. They actually wanted to see ALL! I was like, “Are you nuts? What the hell do you care about ALL songs when the Descendents are playing?” These people were only into ALL because they didn’t know the Descendents.
Amy Yates Wuelfing: Everyone felt privileged to be witnessing this. But Karl Alvarez was very laid back about it, and he said—and this is a direct quote: “What you have to understand is, back when we were the Descendents, not that many people were into us. People thought we were sexist, people thought that [the album] All was noisy, chaotic heavy metal. People were yelling, ‘You suck!’ back when we were touring as the Descendents.” People forget that these bands that are legendary now weren’t that popular at the time and had to put up with a lot of adversity.
Milo Aukerman: At this show, I was almost 31 years old. The early songs were initially about other people, and then they start becoming about us, you know? Like, “I Don’t Want to Grow Up.” It’s one of those things where, when you’re 20 you can say that with a straight face, and then when you’re 50 you go, “Well, I still don’t want to grow up. However, I have.”
Jeremy Weiss: After they finished everyone was going so berserk, and then they switched instruments and played Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown.” It was absolutely incredible. It was easily one of my favorite nights.
Milo Aukerman: We still do those songs live. For me, one of the main reasons I keep doing music is to try to stay young, to keep that youthful energy, so when I’m singing a song like “When I Get Old,” it’s a bit of denial. I’m old, right? The song is a theme for my life in terms of denying the aging process. Physically, our bodies are falling apart… my body is falling apart… but if we are in denial about the other part of it, then maybe you can still have some fun. Maybe you can still pretend like you’re not one foot in the grave. People think about denial as being a bad thing; but I think, in this case, denial is a good thing. You’re saying, “No, I refuse to get old!” What we do now is, rather than tour, we book shows and fly in. We may fly in and play one or two or three shows in a row, but we’re never actually on tour. The notion of a tour bus, a tour van, doesn’t even enter into the equation. If I’m playing someplace local where we can drive, then [my kids] will come. We played Jones Beach opening for Sublime and drove up with the kids to make weekend of it. I like to have the kids come because they like to get on stage with me. We have the “All-O-Gistics” song with the Ten Commandments thing, and they participate in that. They read the commandments off the sign, and it gets a good response because they mess it up in funny ways. Like my daughter, instead of saying, “Thou shalt not partake of decaf,” she said, “Thou shalt not partake of death.” When she came out with that one, everyone doubled over laughing. And then we thought about it and realized, no, that’s a good one. Thou shalt not partake of death! We need to stay alive! She gave us a new commandment. There are some lyrics, in the light of [today], that might make you say, “Okay, that was written by me when I was 17. Do I still feel that way?” I’ve tried to modify some lyrics. A song like “Loser,” which I didn’t actually write… I look at the lyrics now and say, “I need to change some of these,” and I have. But I’m waiting for that point when [my kids] have questions about [certain song lyrics]. Then I gotta deal with it as best I can. It’s tough because I’m trying to transport myself back into my teenage years. I enjoyed those years. But those years were perhaps not politically correct. You look in the rearview mirror, and you have to place these lyrics in the context of the time. The only time it gets dicey is when we’re still playing live. Then I have to transport myself back a 17-yearold guy, because if I were to think about it too much, it’s a little weird. A song like “Pervert” or whatever… it’s fun to play. It’s a barn-burner punk-rock song, and so we do it, but the lyrics … Well, it’s not sexist, but it’s got some crudity to it. So you just have to say, “Well, I’m okay with being crude.”