Matty Luv is one of our favorite songwriters and his music was, and is, one of the foremost influences on our own. Since early on we’ve done a Hickey cover at almost every one of our shows! Our first band together, the Copulated, lucked into opening for Hickey at their last show in Tulsa. Other older, cooler and possibly more entitled bands were jealous, lemme tellya. To this day I have never even been to, let alone played, such a huge, crazy house show! I was eighteen and totally broke, but their roadie gave me a patch and hilarious photocopied pamphlet in exchange for the crumpled Homeland Dollar I had to offer. Jon-Paul set up his old 4-track and a couple mics in a valiant attempt to record them, but the sheer volume of their amps and the kids jumping around like mad made it cut in and out at the most infuriating moments. I listened to it once just recently, and it’s truly torture… one of these days J.P. will get it fixed and somewhat listenable, and then we’ll have a party for all our friends.
In June I got to interview Matty rather extensively (as far as punk interviews seem to go) when we were in San Francisco, tour before last. His girlfriend, Sarah, ran the door for him while he answered my questions for almost two hours! I was really nervous, ‘cause the chain smoking man on the couch next to me might as well have been George Harrison or Kurt Cobain back from the dead, as far as rock stature in my mind! We finally stopped because I ran out of tape (for the second time!)
Shortly after, he booked our September show at Mission Records for the most recent tour, but unfortunately we never got to see him alive again. He died a few days before we got there. We’d listened to our live Yogurt tape (a gift between fans from the sweethearts in Los Rabbis) everyday in the truck, but we stopped talking as much while it played. I thought of a thousand more questions I should’ve thought to ask and now couldn’t.
My amp was broken so Tommy Lasorda lent me their much more thunderous 300-watt Sunn, so we rocked with unprecedented fury! (I thought, anyway.) We did “Everyone’s a Whore” and “Cool Kids Attacked by Flying Monkeys” and people seemed sad, but thankful that we had paid tribute to their friend. I wish we could’ve done the requests we received!
I guess for all this talk, I didn’t really know him at all, except through his music and meeting him a few times. But it seems like he really put himself in the songs, and I always feel a connection. His loss affected us, and the whole rest of the tour. And still now, I reckon. Sarah told me that this is the last interview he did, so hopefully it has what he wanted the fans to know! It’s pretty dang long, that’s for sure…
A wonderful zine was assembled by his friends and handed out at his wake. It tells a lot more about him and his various undertakings…tour stories and stuff, submissions from friends and wannabes. Dunno how you’d get your hands on one, other than for me to copy mine and send it to you, which ain’t no thang. Just holla…
And for anyone that’s still reading that doesn’t know what this hubbub is all about, see if you can’t download any songs by Hickey, or any other bands talked about herein… it’ll be worth your while, I think.
