Clarke Blacker
An Interview With
Interview By: Fernando Velazco
Clarke Blacker was the guitarist in Stick Men With Ray Guns, a legendary punk rock group from Texas. They were fronted by the late Bobby Soxx, one of the wildest musicians in the underground rock. Their last show was in June 1988 however in 2000, Clarke Blacker re-released 16 of their recordings on an album entitled “Some People Deserve to Suffer”.
Punk Globe:
You played in Bag of Wire before you formed Stick Men with Ray Guns, what can you tell me about that group?
Clarke Blacker:
As my previous band, The Nervebreakers was disintegrating, lead guitarist Mike Haskins and Bob Childress (the bass player who had replaced me when I left a couple of years before) finally bailed out and together we started a new band, Bag of Wire (BOW). BOW was a strange amalgam of rock, blues, rockabilly, ska, and anything else that interested us. Then we mixed some Captain Beefheart and some Roky Erickson with it for just a bit more spice. Mixing a bunch of different styles in a blender approach has long been a favorite tactic of mine.

BOW was started as a rock band that had no philosophy to push. We took our name from the Jamaican slang term for "betrayer" after the man who had turned in Marcus Garvey to the authorities and later became a street person wandering the streets of Kingston picking up bit of wire. We thought it was appropriate after all, we were breaking up the longest-lived lineup of the Nervebreakers, Dallas' premier punk rock band.

We all liked guitar oriented rock, we liked a lot of different kinds of things, and we didn't think there was anything incompatible about any of those different musical interests all in the same band. We didn't see any reason why the punks shouldn't like it too. We had fun, we played loud, and were very popular with the girls. With three of the five of us going through divorces BOW didn't last very long.
Punk Globe:
What was the wildest concert for SMWRG that you remember?
Clarke Blacker:
That really depends on what you mean by favorite. Stick Men With Ray Guns (SMWRG) was not your normal band. We discovered quite early on that we were more interested in amusing ourselves than being popular.

Essentially, we thought Bobby was very funny and so we would just egg him on. Our shows had elements of chaos, not usually violence It was more of a general disorder, often in reverse proportion to the size of the club. The smaller the club, the more things tended to get nuts, and the more comfortable we were, the more unpredictable the show was.

However, if we were pissed off about something then things could get really weird very fast. He would taunt the audience, going on long rambling rants that could offend everyone.

There are two shows that stick out in my mind because I really enjoyed them. The first was at a house party in East Dallas. We had been asked to play at this gigantic party, I have no idea whose house it was but there seemed to be hundreds of people wandering around and there were a numebr of bands playing.

We came really late after another show. Finally, around 3 am or so I was suffering through some 3 piece keyboard band that just wouldn't stop playing. I eventually got so pissed off that when we finally started playing I decided to screw up my sound so bad by using my Fender Concert amp's tremolo and two separate echo units all (at the same time) that no one could tell what I was playing at all. Especially SMWRG. I was going to punish anyone who could hear me. That was fun, but only for me.

The other show that sticks in my mind was at the Ritz Theater in Austin, Texas in the mid-80s. The Ritz is a very famous old converted movie theater. The club was having electrical problems and the power kept shutting down.

After the third or fourth shutdown I was bored and leaning against the wall at the side of the stage not paying attention when the audience started hollering and pointing at the center of the stage. Bobby had gotten bored too and so naturally he started poking around at the junk laying around the stage.

He had come up with a styrofoam plastic wig head. That's one of those bald heads that wigs sit on in stores or in peoples closets I guess. Anyways, he had stuck one of Scott's broken drumsticks into the base of the head. He then had pulled down his pants and stuffed the drumstick up his ass. I hadn't even noticed what he was up to, and before you knew it, there he was, pogoing around the stage with this wig head on a stick bouncing around out of his ass like an idiot. I could not stop laughing. The audience loved it. Eventually they got the power back on and we finished the show but I'll never forget that sight.
Punk Globe:
Why do you think Bobby Soxx was so aggressive on stage?
Clarke Blacker:
He really wasn't that aggressive in the violence sense. It was more that he mouthed off to anyone and everyone but, in the end, he made more fun of himself than of anyone else. His reputation is often misunderstood. Our shows were unpredictable but not really violent. Now Bobby was personally violent, but not in SMWRG.
Punk Globe:
Tell me what do you think about the shock rock art in rock and roll (Bobby, Stiv Bators, GG Allin)?
Clarke Blacker:
I don't really have much an opinion, I appreciate challenging the audience, but not just because you can. We did things we thought were funny.

I had seen a just little of the late Stiv Bators work and while I thought he was interesting, I wasn't a big fan of what he was doing. I didn't much like Lords of the New Church, a few songs but not the band's general approach.

I have a video of GG Allin that I've only watched once. I thought he was crappy. Just a lot of shock for shock's sake, lousy songs, and nothing original in the playing or sound. Anyone can wipe shit on himself and throw it at the audience. I'd much rather have monkeys throw their shit at me for that matter. Everything's better with a monkey. I live my life by that rule.
Punk Globe:
Who deserve to suffer?
Clarke Blacker:
I guess that I'd have to say everyone deserves to suffer. Privately, Scott and I talked a lot about SMWRG and exploring the irrationality of violence and hatred. We made fun of everything and everyone. No one was safe, nothing was sacred, especially ourselves.

Just look around you, the world is a cesspool. None of us are any better, no matter what we think. We all have hatred and murder inside of us and it doesn't take too much to let it out. It isn't something to be proud of. We aren't any better than the monkeys, they're better than us. At least they don't have religion.

SMWRG didn't advocate hate, we just didn't advocate anything. To us, everyone was a liar, including ourselves.

Unfortunately, when it came time to put out the CD, Scott had had somewhat of a change of heart and he refused to allow us to use the cover picture that he had taken years before for the cover. It was a closeup of a television image of a picture taken of four emaciated children in a Nazi concentration camp at the end of WWII. Scott didn't feel comfortable using that image any more. I wish he didn't feel that way but that was the way it was.

I guess he was afraid that people might get the wrong idea and think that we were making fun of the children's suffering. We weren't, we were just calling attention to the pain and suffering in the world. By the way, Scott also contributed the title of the CD.
Punk Globe:
Thanks for the interview Clark!