Dave Ahl and Chris Osgood, members of the legendary punk band The Suicide Commandos, visited The Current and talked with host Jill Riley about celebrating 50 years making music, their new album, and their upcoming Farewell Blowout Show at First Avenue.

Listen to the full interview in the player above, and find a complete transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current, I'm Jill Riley. In the studio this morning, I've got a couple guests who are pioneers of the Minneapolis indie and punk scene, paving the way for bands that would follow in that same spirit, bands like The Suburbs, and The Replacements, and Hüsker Dü and beyond. The Suicide Commandos are playing their Farewell Blowout Show Saturday evening in the First Avenue Mainroom. Chris Osgood is here, Dave Ahl is here. Good morning, fellas.

The Suicide Commandos: Hey, Jill, Hi. Thanks for having us.

Jill Riley: It's a golden jubilee after 50 years.

Dave Ahl: I'm glad you got that tucked in too.

Jill Riley: So how does it feel to be playing the final show?

Dave Ahl: A lot of mixed emotions. After 50 years, we know what we're doing,

Chris Osgood: Or we know what we used to do.

Jill Riley: You know what you should do. How about that?

Dave Ahl: But being punk rockers, we don't always do what we should.

Chris Osgood: And being 70-year-old punk rockers. It requires quite a few more rehearsals to get back in form.

Dave Ahl: Get that stamina back up.

Chris Osgood: Exactly.

Jill Riley: Sure thing.

Dave Ahl: And man, are we doing it.

Chris Osgood: Yeah, we've been — with Steve unable to make the show, both of us were uncomfortable doing it. We couldn't, as Dave said in the paper, we couldn't imagine doing a show without all three of us together.

Jill Riley: So this show was supposed to happen back in December, and you postponed to this weekend, and you brought up Steve, Steve of Suicide Commandos, who is in New York, and won't be able to make it.

Chris Osgood: Steve has lived in New York for a long, long time, and I think since what, [19]79. First we asked Steve what he thought, Steve Almaas, what he thought about it, and he gave us his approbation. And then after that, we started calling all our special guests, you know, Bob Mould, Craig Finn, Chan Poling, all the people that we had scheduled to play with us, and asked them if it was okay. And they said, Yeah, it was, and they wanted the show to go on. Steve Price stepped up, and is a consummate professional. Very handsome, too.

Dave Ahl: Steve is the first person that we thought of, and the first person we called. He agreed to do it, and he actually seemed kind of excited about it.

Chris Osgood: And also we'd played with him before. We'd done some things as The Sub Commandos.

Dave Ahl: Yeah, not as a Suicide Commando gig. It was a different band.

Chris Osgood: But Suburbs and Commando songs, you know. So he's familiar with our milieu. Let's put it that way.

Jill Riley: Suicide Commandos' Chris Osgood and Dave Ahl in the studio. Before we talk a little more about the special guests that'll be with you, and the influence of Suicide Commandos, I just wanted to take a moment and just send out some good wishes for Steve Almaas. I know recently he shared that he's been having some health challenges.

Chris Osgood: Yeah, and we can get into it a little bit, but he posted about it on Facebook and developed some oral cancer that was treatable, and he was being treated for it, and doing very well. So everything was of course, rescheduled to the end of March, coming up this Saturday, and Craig Finn and Bob Mould were gracious enough to arrange their schedules so that they could be a part of it, and but then the cancer came back.

Jill Riley: I'm sorry to hear that.

Chris Osgood: He just has a longer row to hoe, put it that way. But the same thing. And I talked with him yesterday, and he was cheerful and chirpy and said that he wished that he could be here. And, you know, in the long run, it'll be fine, but in the short run, there was so much momentum for this show that we thought, "What can we do for everybody that is either coming into town or people that we haven't seen here in a long time whom we love?"

Jill Riley: Yeah, well, that show is this weekend. Suicide Commandos with the Farewell Blowout Show in the First Avenue Main Room. You guys, I look back to the 1960s and it seemed like such a fruitful time for all these garage rock bands and just all of this great music being made in Minnesota. I think there are great things that were happening in the 1970s but as far as rock and roll music was concerned. It seemed as though there weren't quite the opportunities for bands that wanted to be playing original music.

Chris Osgood: There had been a lull, and we were really influenced by the music of Big Hits of Mid America, volumes one and two, which was all the bands of that period, from The Castaways to The Gestures. And when I was a kid in third and fourth grade, I would hear that music on the radio.

Dave Ahl: Yeah, local Minneapolis bands on the radio, which it was really cool.

Chris Osgood: It was really cool. And so as kids, we thought, Well, okay, we can do that. But by the early 70s, FM radio had come along, and it was —

Dave Ahl: Nothing wrong with FM radio.

Chris Osgood: No, nothing wrong with FM radio, but it was very formatted and the scene was much more about doing cover stuff and playing in those kinds of clubs. And only later on did we have enough original material to go to CBGB’s in New York.

Jill Riley: And that was a big deal for you guys to do that.

Chris Osgood: Yeah, John Bream wrote the first article about us: "Commandos Aim Fire at Big Apple," and I still enjoy reading that article and taking a look at the three of us. We lived in a place called Utopia House in those days, and a friend of ours dubbed it Utopia House because it had no heat or running water.

Jill Riley: Yeah, I understand that this was kind of like the party house central.

Chris Osgood: It really was. And the party would start on Friday afternoon and end on Monday afternoon. And we had a lot of fun smashing cars with sledgehammers, and then the car would get hauled away, and we'd get 25 bucks, and that was enough to buy more beer for the next weekend. And we started recycling the beer cans, and we were able to have a party with all the money we made on that one time, and the lessons that we learned recycling in those days, we went ahead and adopted a highway. I used to actually, believe it or not, run in the morning, and I would run by this section of road, and then later on, I would walk that section on the road. And even now, I hobble that section of the road, and I would always pick up trash. And I saw that there was an opening to Adopt a Highway, and I said to myself, God, it would be really fun to see Suicide Commandos, punk rock band on a highway sign.

Jill Riley: Yeah, doing highway cleanup.

Chris Osgood: We did, and Dave created the —we have orange vests with the Commando logo on them, and our names here. And in fact, one of them, this very highway sign is in the Minnesota History Center right now, in their 25 things to love about Minnesota.

Jill Riley: Yeah. The Suicide Commandos Adopt a Highway, right?

Chris Osgood: Yep.

Jill Riley: And so then how did this become — this is the cover of a record that you're holding in your hand right now.

Chris Osgood: Well yeah, the album is called, of course, since we adopted West Hennepin County 16, we named it Highway 16 Revisited. And people maybe remember that Bob Dylan record. It's called Highway 61 Revisited.

Jill Riley: Yeah. I think a few of us might vaguely.

Dave Ahl: You're music people, right?

Chris Osgood: Yeah, and by the way, we copied the layout of that Highway 61 Revisited too, and just plugged in our own image and then a nice picture of us on the back by the inimitable Paul Lundgren.

Jill Riley: We're talking with Suicide Commandos in The Current studio. Chris Osgood is here, Dave Ahl is here. I do want to talk about some of the folks that are playing the Farewell Blowout S how Saturday evening at First Avenue, because a couple of them you have mentioned. When I say that you influence some of these folks, I'm not saying that lightly. Bob Mould is going to be showing up at at the Farewell Blowout Show. And I heard Bob Mould tell a story once that he was 17 years old and he wanted to go see you guys play, and he had to go find a fake ID so he could get in the door. That was kind of a transformational experience for him.

Chris Osgood: Well, I gave Bob a couple of guitar lessons. Bob was going to school at Macalester over here, and he would take the bus, and Bob would show up with his [Gibson] Flying V, in his case, get off the bus, and we'd go up and do a lesson. And two lessons into it, I said, "Bob, you're ready to go." And Craig Finn is also coming in, another student of mine. And so for me, it's just fun that it's my former students, and they did very well, especially compared to me. We're so grateful that they made time in their schedules to come and celebrate with us, is what it amounts to.

Jill Riley: Yeah. And you have some longtime peers in the Minneapolis music scene. I saw that Chan and Hugo from The Suburbs are going to be joining.

Dave Ahl: Yeah, longtime pals. Chris and I introduced one half of The Suburbs to the other when they started. Chan and Beej came over to Utopia House, and were saying "You guys, you want to join our band?" But we were already The Suicide Commandos, so Bruce and Michael Halliday, we introduced them, and the rest is history. The Suburbs first gig was opening for us on New Year's Eve. I think it was probably [19]77.

Chris Osgood: Second Place, I think it was called. And then kaboom, they happened and actually dethroned us. So you got to be careful who you help.

Jill Riley: The Suicide Commandos are here at The Current. Chris Osgood and Dave Ahl. 50 years, the Golden Jubilee. You talk about The Suburbs and new wave. But did you guys feel like that kind of ushering in of the new wave was something that challenged you to continue at that time as a band.

Dave Ahl: We did definitely felt the handing off of the baton.

Chris Osgood: I would say that the tide was going out, but then the tide came back.

Jill Riley: Sure, yes.

Chris Osgood: That's how that works. And I got to go to work for Paul Stark and Twin/Tone and be the in-house producer there, not the outhouse producer, but whenever a band would come in, whoever it happened to be The Magnolias, or Soul Asylum, or on and on, we'd got to spend a lot of time with the next kind of sub generation of players, and that was very fun for me. And then Dave went on to build recording studios, and does to this day, which is where this record came from. He built, or designed acoustically Cubby Colby's Studio out in Cologne, Minnesota. And that led to Cubby giving a thumb drive to Brad Nelson, who was recording the show at Hopkins Center for the Arts. And the show got recorded unbeknownst to us. And then Cubby called up Dave and said, “Guess what should we see if there's something here,” and he's probably the most famous front of house guy in the world, and knows how to mix stuff.

Dave Ahl: Prince for a long time.

Chris Osgood: Kansas before that.

Dave Ahl: Phil Collins, Genesis, Shania Twain, Jon Batiste, Lady Gaga, yeah, I can't remember. His CV is very long.

Jill Riley: So Highway 16 Revisited, Suicide Commandos. The Final Blowout Show this weekend at First Avenue, with a long list of special guests. The Shackletons will be there as well.

Chris Osgood: Yeah, we love those guys.

Jill Riley: And talk about it again, the next generation and the folks making rock and roll of today. Now, Chris and Dave, I know that eventually the party house, Utopia House, was probably officially condemned and it burned to the ground.

Dave Ahl: Officially condemned and purposely burned down by the fire department, the Minnetonka Fire Department for practice.

Chris Osgood: That's why we wrote the song, we knew that our house was going to be burned down, and we thought — we knew Chuck Statler, and he'd been making videos by that time for Elvis Costello and Devo. And we contacted Chuck and said, "Our house is going to be burned down. Do you want to make a movie?" In those days, they weren't called videos, because the videos didn't exist yet. He came out and shot it, and he digitized a copy of "Burn It Down" and we're going to show it, on Saturday night, yeah.

Dave Ahl: So when we made the video, we were still with the record label, and we presented it to him, and they said, "What are we supposed to do with this?" Yeah? It totally threw them for a loop.

Chris Osgood: Yeah, there was no place to show —

Dave Ahl: There was no MTV.

Chris Osgood: No, a three-minute, or two-and-a-half-minute movie of a band playing in front of their house as it burns down, which, by the way, that's really our house and ashes.

Dave Ahl: There was no AI computer.

Chris Osgood: Ashes were raining down.

Dave Ahl: Yeah, there were little ash cinder holes in my floor tom head.

Jill Riley: Well The Suicide Commandos Farewell Blowout Show, very special guests, Saturday evening in the First Avenue Main Room. Congratulations on 50 years of making music, and not just making music, but being part of this community, and being such boosters of this community as well.

Chris Osgood: Well, we want to say thank you to everybody. Can you imagine that we've had 50 Years of fun? And it's all thanks to the support that we get in our hometown. And to be able to do it in our natural habitat, our favorite venue our favorite place to play. Well, I think we'll be having fun one more time.

Jill Riley: All right. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen, Chris Osgood and Dave Ahl of Suicide Commandos, have all the fun. Have a great time this weekend.

Chris Osgood: Thanks, Jill. Thanks everybody.

Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current.

Credits

Guest – Chris Osgood, Dave Ahl
Host – Jill Riley
Producer – Nilufer Arsala
Digital Producer - Natalia Toledo

External Link

The Suicide Commandos – Farewell Blowout Show at First Avenue