Sensory Overload

An Interview With Fist Fight on Ecstacy

June 11, 2019

GARDENA, CALIF. – GARDENA, CALIF. – “Fat and sweaty.”

Fist Fight On Ecstacy has been asked to describe their on-stage performance and drummer Shay Gutierres offered up the three-word descriptor without cracking a smile.

“People say our live shows are better than our recordings,” singer Ed Molina added. “We all get into it. I have my little outfits.”

By “little outfits” we’re talking thongs, homemade warm-up pants that can be torn off (or sometimes don’t) and leather bondage harnesses.

“I’ve been wearing these things for years,” Molina continued, in reference to the harnesses. “I have like three at home.”

“It’s not just a stage thing,” Gutierres clarified.

“It’s a way of life, but I wear them on stage. I sing a couple songs. Take my shirt off so I can breathe,” Molina said. “At one point, I decided I’m going to drop my pants, whatever. I tried to make homemade snap pants. Did a couple tries. I failed, twice. One time it wouldn’t even work on one leg. And then the third time, oh man. I grabbed my underwear by mistake and it goes snap. So my dick’s hanging out. Balls out.”

“The owner of the bar’s freaking out and he’s pulling the plugs,”

continued guitarist Josh Stamps. “He thought they were the amps, but they were the lights in the bar. He was flipping his shit.”

“You don’t like my art, I’m sorry. I’m an artist,” Molina said.

He’s mostly kidding since he uses discretion when it comes to peeling off his layers. For example, he said, he’d never drop his pants at a family picnic. Nardcore Turkey Bowl at the bowling alley in Simi Valley? No problem.

“He dropped his pants. There’s all these kids running around and you saw all these parents trying to cover their kids’ eyes. Shit like that, it’s funny to us,” Stamps said. “It’s punk rock. It’s supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be ‘Oh my god. What are you doing?’ Some of these bands and some of these people with these attitudes, like lighten up a little bit.”

The visuals are pretty rich with this band – just as rich as their sound (which should actually be taken with more seriousness than their on-stage antics.) Even hearing the description of the band name’s origin conjures up a scene right out of a comedy that starts out by Molina, “This one time at a bar in Hollywood.”

“Back in the day,” he went on, “we all went out, popped ecstasy having a good time. We’re in the bathroom and some guy asked for a key so he could do some coke. Another guy said, “Hey, I got a key, but you’ve got to let me get some.”

Long story short, tempers flared from the guy doing the ask, who was traveling from out of state and went off on a rant about Californians.

“We just kind of looked at him and walked outside,” Molina said.

The group thought nothing of it, but the guy wasn’t done, “This guy comes out talking shit still, falls, our friend LJ helps him up and he starts swinging on LJ," Molina said. "So LJ’s girlfriend took off her heel and started beating this guy’s head with it. He grabs him by the shirt and says, ‘Now, I’m going to be looking around for you.’ And LJ said ‘You know what? You fucking found me right here.’ The security guards came up and said ‘You’ve got to take this guy out.’ So, all in all, we’re on ecstasy and got in a fist fight. On the ride home, we said, ‘That would make a great band name.’”

“A week later we started the band,” Stamps said of the year the band formed in 2012.

Their philosophy’s pretty simple: “We like to have fun; no politics involved,” Molina said.

“Party punks,” Gutierres said.

”We don’t like hate,” Molina said. “We hate hate.”

Their stories of how they fell into the music are not unlike how many people stumbled upon punk.

Stamps, who grew up in the unincorporated part of Ventura County called El Rio, was 12 when he went to a party and remembered seeing his first punk band there in the garage. They were called Juanita’s Kitchen, and “I remember right away I felt the energy and I was like ‘Oh, shit. This is what I want do.”

Gutierres was around the same age when he was first exposed to the genre by his older brother, who gave him an Ill Repute CD.

“We lived in Ojai,” he said. “We went to Ojai Community Center and I saw my first show. I was in the corner, scared to pit, but singing the lyrics. I just didn’t – I had never seen anything like it before. It was a really good show and it was packed. And it was amazing.”

Molina and bassist Alex Manzanares started their first punk band together in 2002 as soon as they graduated from high school. “I was 13, 14 listening to all kinds of music, but once I started listening to punk rock, the high energy and the fast pace got me, Manzanares said.

They started their own record label, Etard Records. Don’t try to pronounce that fancy. It’s exactly what your eyes initially thought: the word “retard” without the “r.” The impetus of Etard was to serve as a vehicle to release their own music.

“Maybe it’ll take off soon, if we put it out there,” Stamps mused.

“We’ll start Echord,” Molina suggested.

They’re saying all this as they sit outside in the makeshift patio of Cide Show Rehearsal Studios in Gardena as Stamps balanced paperwork on his lap trying to fill out an order for 7-inches for Fist Fight’s third release. It’s their second on vinyl on Etard. Their first on the label was “This Better Be Good Shit.”

“It’s not a deal,” Molina said. “We’re not joining Burger [Records] yet.”

For now, they’re content with doing it on their own. They already tried their hand once before at a record deal and if they sign anything in the future, they’re only interested if the partnership involves help with distribution. End of story.

“We got signed with Mystic Records. The legendary Mystic,” Stamps said. “It was a fucking stupid decision on my part. It caused a lot of backlash because my peers back at home – Ill Repute, Dr. Know, the bands that were on the label before – got ripped off by them. Mystic didn’t give back their rights to their music, and it really left a bad taste in their mouth. I looked at it as good exposure, you know? I also wanted a cute little logo on the side of our record, you know? But, yeah. Like I said, all it did was cause a backlash and right away, after I signed, they started to bully us around and not give us 100 percent creative writing responsibility. They tried to make us change the lyrics to a song title.”

One song that included an introduction where Molina did a realistic Hulk Hogan voice (“It was really spot on, too,” he said), the band was advised by the label to not play that out of fear of getting sued by the WWE.

“I would have welcomed that,” Molina said.

“At the same time, it’s an underground punk label,” Stamps said. “Who the hell is going to give you a cease-and-desist letter?”

There was another song involving the KKK and one of their friends getting stabbed. They were advised again by the label, they said, to go a different route out of fear of being sued by the KKK.

“KKK is represented by the ACLU,” Stamps explained. “I said ‘Fuck you guys’ and we jumped ship. We decided to release the

record that they were supposed to put out, ourselves, which was 'This Better Be Good Shit.'”

In totality, the band was on Mystic for less than two months. Although Stamps said most of the issues between him and people back home were hashed out, a few have written him off.

“I tried to apologize, do what I could,” he said. “Maybe over time, they’ll forget about it.... After I signed, it dawned on me. I barely read the fucking fine print. I was just excited to do it.”

“Yeah, like why not, right?” Gutierres said in the band’s defense. “We grew up listening to a bunch of records on this label. We see that all the time. So we were like sweet. That’s how I felt. It was like ‘Oh, cool. Mystic.’”

“I used to get Mystic compilations every Christmas,” Molina remembered.

“Whatever,” Gutierres said. “We’ve all been doing it ourselves so many years. It’s like what is else is new, right?”

“I felt I’ve been putting music out for myself and my friends since I was 12,” Stamps said. “Maybe because someone could do it for once for me this time without me having to fucking lift my finger and spend all this money out of our pockets because, shit, that does suck. It’s a burden when you’re not financially stable. All you want to do is play music and put out records."

With everything sorted out, the Fist Fight on Ecstacy universe appears to be all back in order with the band now gearing up for an upcoming West Coast Tour to celebrate their new album.

“Once you see that record in your hand and it’s pressed on vinyl, it’s timeless,” Josh said. “That’s our hard work right there, and it makes you feel proud.”

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