Well Traveled

Interview With Total Chaos

Long Beach

October 12, 2018

LONG BEACH, CALIF. – Rob Chaos is sitting in the driver seat of the Total Chaos tour van. It’s non-descript and white, parked in the shadow of trees outside Alex’s Bar.

His voice is gravelly; yours would be too after belting through songs such as “Babylon” and “Police Rat” during a show that ended less than 30 minutes prior. That’s on top of wrapping the band’s Riot Across Europe Tour in the spring, trailed by the Chaos and Anarchy Across the U.S.A. Tour that had the band zigzagging around North America only to cap here in Long Beach, just months shy of the band’s 30th year.

Guitarist Shawn Smash motions to join Rob by the tour van, as he explains he lives in Palm Springs, but is making his way back to Riverside that evening, where Total Chaos has had its recording and rehearsal studio for some 20 years. The two go back and forth on whether it was ’98 or ’99 when they began recording there before Shawn calls it saying, “Something like that. Close enough.”

Half the Chaos family – Shawn and drummer Miguel Conflict – are here in Southern California. The other half – Rob and bassist Geordy Justify – live overseas. Geordy is from Holland, while Rob took up residence in Germany 12 years ago.

“Go there and you’ll see why I went there,” Rob says. “You won’t want to come back.”

He’s pressed for further explanation on what makes Germany so great and would he ever come back to Southern California.

“Why? Do you want to live in hell?” he asks almost aghast.

“Yeah, he has different opinions on things,” Smash says as he exits the conversation.

“You don’t like freedom?” Rob continues without flinching. “You like to live under oppression and slavery? That’s what America is. Total oppression. It’s not as oppressive as China, but it’s getting there every single day. Germany is totally free. They spend all their money on the people, not war. America spends, oh my god, like 70 percent of their taxpayer money on war. America’s bankrupt just to let you know.”

A few minutes later Miguel and Geordy join the conversation after lugging most of their gear out of the bar.

They’ve all had a few days off since the last show to work on the website and putting the rest of their music up on Spotify. Coming down off the highs – and sometimes lows – of tour life is now second nature to them.

“When I got back I didn’t talk to anybody for about a week,” Miguel says. “I just hid in my house and watched TV and hung out with my girlfriend. I did nothing, but then after that I got back into recording in the studio and doing the drummer for hire thing.”

“For me, it was like one day and then the next day I was back to business,” Rob says.

That’s not necessarily surprising for a veteran who does the booking for not just Total Chaos, but has also booked for Acidez, The Exploited, Funeral Dress, Lower Class Brats and on.

“He was born booking tours,” Miguel explains.

“’Cause I’m crazy. That’s why,” Rob adds with a smile.

The conversation totters all over the place. When Rob brings up seeing his 20-year-old daughter, who is pregnant with a boy, the conversation somehow seamlessly transitions to birth rates and how more boys are being born. It’s the result, Rob says, of manmade manipulation of the environment. That then turns to fluoride in the water, which Miguel and Rob are in agreement, makes people stupid and docile (some have argued fluoride need not be ingested for the dental benefits and a good portion ends up sitting in our bodies unable to be excreted). That leads into how Shawn drinks Smartwater, but it’s so expensive.

Miguel snaps the group out of the stroll through tangents.

“Do you have any other questions?” he politely asks. “Sorry we....”

It’s hard to wax poetic or get too into the muck of things when you’re standing in a nearly empty parking lot in Long Beach. The question of where to even begin for one of the scene’s more storied street punk bands is a tough conversation to broach.

“I always thought I’d want it to go on forever,” Rob says slowly of whether he could have ever anticipated Total Chaos going on for this long, “but I didn’t know for sure it would happen. To be honest, I didn’t know. You’ve gotta understand, how am I supposed to predict the future? I didn’t know.”

“Especially because this industry’s really unpredictable,” Geordy says. “You never know what’s going to happen. It could be over tomorrow.”  

Maybe that’s why they work so hard to make sure it doesn’t. Just as they cap this tour, they’re set to begin as early as the end of this year, a tour with the U.S. Bombs. They’re also in the recording studio putting together some demos for the next album, a best of compilation due out in late 2019 or the year after. They’re also working on an anniversary tour for next year that will take them throughout the world, again. Geordy also thinks stops in South Africa could be a possibility, which would be a first for them.

“We’re addicted to playing,” Miguel says. “I don’t want to be doing anything else, you know? I don’t want to work a 9-to-5 job every single day. Even though it’s difficult, the struggle’s worth it in the end ’cause I’m my own boss. I really like that.”

“It’s also, when we come to different states, people come up to us afterwards. Not every single day, but almost, and at least one person will be like ‘You made my day,’ and hearing that, it touches you,” Geordy says. “We don’t want to stop. My first ever show for the band, a girl came up to me after, ‘Thank you so much for playing. I really wanted to see you for a long time. I’ve been depressed for years and Total Chaos dragged me through that and I’m starting to feel better now.’ That just blew my mind. It’s going to all these crazy places, meeting different kinds of people through the punk scene. This whole world that we live in, brings all that together.”

Perhaps there’s no more tangent a way to paint that picture than a 2016 show in Indonesia that drew some 5,000 people.

“This was not even a festival; it was just a local [show],” Rob says. “They were all there to see us and even the shows that we missed were over 1,000, 2,000 people. We’ll never pull that in L.A. ever. Only megalithic bands. Not even The Exploited would pull those kind of numbers nowadays in L.A., and so that makes Indonesia the biggest punk scene in the world – for real punk, unless you want to have Green Day.”

The comment, which steers the conversation down yet another new path, isn’t a slam on the aforementioned band, either. No one’s standing on soapboxes, proclaiming one group is better than the other. It’s a statement of one of the nuances to the genre differentiating the bands that still maintain a largely DIY, guerilla-style approach to how they operate and those that end up transitioning away from backyards and small venues to major labels and all that comes with commercial success.

“Green Day’s on a major label; they’re on the radio. They were on major video play rotation,” Rob says. “This is not underground punk. The majority of real punk is underground, and that is definitely different. I like Green Day and they’re good friends of mine, but I’m just talking about real punk that’s DIY like it always was and has been for decades. It’s unbelievable what Indonesia and places like that pull off. It’s just, oh my god. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Commercialization of punk and other subcultures for that matter is nothing new, but given the subject’s come up, it begs the question of what they think of the Vans-backed documentary “Los Punks: We Are All We Have” and whether it ultimately helped the scene. The Orange County sneaker company, which is aiming to reach sales of $5 billion by 2023, is part of the publicly-traded VF Corp. (parent to brands such as The North Face, JanSport and Timberland).

“Honestly, it did shed a light to a lot of the world what was going on in the L.A. scene, the underground scene,” says Miguel, who appeared in some of the clips. “I think in a way, it did help it. It did help a lot of the bands that were there get a good start because they got some exposure throughout the whole series and, actually, I enjoyed being a part of it.”

“It helps in a way that people actually get to see that maybe we look extreme and scary, but we’re not,” Geordy says. “We’re normal people; we just look different and have a different way of thinking, but we’re good people and we try to do our part in society. At least, that’s what I’d like to believe is that we’re nice people.”

They’re nice enough not to box themselves into labels or be militant about what punk is. They’re nice enough to where they’re breaking up fights (such was the case with Geordy earlier that evening, dashing off the stage in the middle of a song to break up a scuffle), or mingle with fans. That’s part of what’s earned them a loyal following across the decades. They don’t place barriers between themselves and those who like their music. Clearly, considering the stamps they’ve amassed on their passports.

“We all have our own story; that’s the nice thing,” Geordy says. “Most people in the punk scene have their own story. We’re in this band. We’ve got four people. My parents are old punks so I grew up in this world. I don’t know any different. Miguel grew up in L.A. He grew up at a time when the peace punk scene was big. Rob – when the punk scene was big and there were lots of protests and riots. We all have our own little thing that brought us to where we are now.”

“If I hadn’t gotten into punk, I probably would have ended up being in a gang because a lot of my family was in gangs and stuff like that,” Miguel says. “We’re around a lot of that stuff in the communities we’re living in so it’s kind of hard not to be involved in that somehow. I could have gone in that direction. Once I discovered punk, it just took me to a whole different reality. It hasn’t been the same since.”

That reality has also pushed the band into being proactive with Total Chaos a founding member or affiliated with organizations over the years, such as United Valley Punks, Orange County Peace Punks and Alternative Gathering Collective.

“Being a part of the political peace punk scene really opened my eyes to the whole political side of it and that it’s not just ‘Let’s go get fucked up, get drunk and get hammered,’” Miguel says. “It brought some ideology to my whole existence, you know what I mean?”

“Where’s Shawn?” Rob’s voice says, cutting into the conversation. The singer had earlier gotten out of the van and walked off to begin packing up.

Geordy explains he left a while ago. Rob’s itching to go at this point as friends who had been manning the merch table bring out any remaining items from the bar and say their good-byes.

“Shawn is someone special. He mixes styles,” Geordy says, going on to say how nervous he was to initially play with Shawn, given he grew up listening to Total Chaos. “Shawn is so talented, I was like, ‘If I suck, I’m going to hear it and that would have meant the end of my music career. If he had said ‘Dude, you fucking suck,’ I would have put my bass on the wall and never touched it. But it worked out fine. I have massive respect for the guy.”

“Geordy, can we pack this up ’cause I don’t know how you pack it,” Rob says.

“Help us out, bro,” Miguel adds as he’s stooped over some equipment.

“I’ll do it, yeah,” Geordy says, not moving from where he’s standing.

“Cause I want to get out of here,” Rob adds, driving home the point if it wasn’t clear already.

Geordy goes back to finishing his thoughts.

“We all have our own way of doing things and our own habits.... Don’t put it in yet,” he says realizing they’ve started to load and it’s not his way of packing.

It’s late now, if it wasn’t already, at nearly 2 a.m. The doors to Alex’s Bar are closed and anyone who was lingering in the parking lot is long gone. The van’s back doors were flung open a while ago, and the gear is sprawled out on the ground, like a taunting game of Tetris. The tour is over, that evening’s set is over and so is this interview, except for one last question: If Total Chaos had enough drive to make it to 30, do they foresee slogging through another 30?

Rob sighs loudly. Maybe the thought tires him; maybe the thought of telling his bandmates one more time he wants to get out of there, makes him ill.

Geordy, the youngest in the lineup, doesn’t hesitate: “I do. I’m 23, you know.”

“Uh, he can do 30 ’cause I’m not doing it,” Rob says.

“Con Chaos, bro,” Miguel adds.

“Miguel will still be there, dude,” Geordy says resolutely. “You’ll be like [U.K. Subs singer] Charlie Harper.”