Biography
Pariah
was born in 1981 when Tony Cox and Mike Smith met each other
in a high school photography class in Martinez, CA. They
shared many common interests and quickly became fast and
lifelong friends. They had actually known of each other
since junior high. Both were (and still are) avid motocrossers.
Tony had seen Mike at school wearing his Suzuki jersey and
Mike had heard of Tony’s homemade motocross track
in his front yard. What they really connected on, however,
was a love of music. Tony had been playing bass for a while
and Mike had been playing guitar since junior high. It wasn’t
long before they were jamming in Tony’s basement music
room. Mike had been jamming with a drummer he had met through
mutual friends and he soon invited him over for the basement
jam sessions. Greg Travers (a.k.a. Stickman) completed the
earliest incarnation of Pariah. The musical direction of
Pariah was established under the guidance of Tony Cox. Tony
had been turned on to punk music by a friend of his brother
(who was himself an avant-garde jazz saxophone player).
In his typical charismatic and persuasive manner, Tony soon
had Greg and Mike jamming away to the Dead Kennedy’s
“California Uberalis” and The Ramones “Rockaway
Beach.”
Soon
the band was working on original material. At this point,
the band had no name. Someone suggested The Hostages and
they soon had this moniker spray painted on all their speaker
cabinets. None of the band members were particularly happy
with this name, however. Fortunately, they wouldn’t
have to wait long for a new name. Fate quickly intervened
as one day after school, Tony was grudgingly working through
a vocabulary assignment when he came across the word “Pariah.”
The definition read “any person or animal generally
despised, outcast.” Tony knew immediately that this
would be the new name for the band and so it was.
The San Francisco bay area was a hotbed for the punk movement
in the early eighties. Clubs like the Mabuhay Gardens, the
On Broadway and The Stone were putting on amazing shows
with legendary bands like The Dead Kennedys, The Circle
Jerks, D.O.A., T.S.O.L, Black Flag and many others too numerous
to mention. Pariah desperately wanted to be part of the
scene and to play shows in the city. In order to obtain
billing at these clubs, Pariah needed a demo that they could
send to club owners. Setting an early precedent, Pariah
went all the way and produced a 3-song EP mastered at the
famous Fantasy
Studios . While the EP was good enough to get
the band booked, they still had to pay their dues. Their
first show was at an unbelievable dive in the Turk District
called The Sound of Music. Their first audience consisted
of Tony’s then girlfriend, an obviously bored soundman
and an alcoholic bar patron passed out at one of the tables.
Pariah soon graduated to weeknight shows at the Mabuhay
Gardens where the malicious soundman regularly introduced
the band as “Piranha” and when he did pronounce
the name correctly he would ask the audience “isn’t
that a gum disease?” Undaunted, the band continued
to work on their chops and write new songs.
At
this time the band was developing a local reputation which
regularly brought visitors to the basement practices. One
of these visitors was Ray Lujan, a local punk rocker and
bass player. Realizing that liberating Tony from his bass
playing duties would open up a whole new dimension to the
band, Ray was soon asked to join the lineup. Not only did
the addition of Ray Lujan provide a new stage presence for
the band, but Ray brought a tremendous songwriting ability
as well. Soon the band was cranking out punk anthem after
punk anthem and getting solid booking in support of the
top punk acts. Realizing the bands potential, Pariah soon
recruited the talents of now legendary punk producer/engineer
Kevin Army of Green Day fame to produce a demo to send out
to the major punk labels. Once again, Pariah went all the
way and produced a full albums worth of finely crafted punk
rock music. An early result of that effort was the inclusion
of “Up to Us” on the Rodney on the Roq Volume
3 - Compilation LP on Posh
Boy Records in 1982. In 1983, following closely
on the heels of the Rodney on the Roq release, the now classic
Alternative Tentacles release “Not so Quiet on the
Western Front” which featured Pariah’s “Learning
Process” was released. This legendary compilation
was re-released by Alternative Tentacles in 1999 and is
still widely available today.
The
success of these early compilations led to a record deal
from Robbie Fields’ and his legendary punk label Posh
Boy Records. After mastering the album in LA, Robbie released
Pariah’s debut album “Youths of Age” in
1983. The band promoted the album through regular club and
arena appearances in support of major punk bands including
The U.K. Subs, The Ramones and Suicidal Tendencies. The
album was very successful and the band scored a hit with
“White Line”, a tongue-in-cheek condemnation
of the eighties drug of choice. Soon the band was receiving
fan mail from all corners of the globe and enjoying top
billing alongside the greatest punk bands of the era.
Productive
as always, Pariah was soon headed back to the studio in
preparation for a second full-length Pariah album. This
time Pariah hired legendary engineer/producer Matt
Wallace of Faith no More fame to engineer the
second album at Starlight Studios. Once again, Kevin Army
was recruited to produce the album. Sadly, tensions began
to mount with this second endeavor. Ray Lujan had taken
over most of the song writing duties in the band and was
determined to take the band in a more accessible direction.
This new direction was not universally accepted by the band.
Dissatisfaction with the new recordings only exacerbated
existing tensions between band members. The band managed
to complete the album, but broke up before it could be released.
The
years passed and Tony Cox and Mike Smith stayed in touch.
Tony pursued his dream of becoming a surfboard shaper and
became a successful entrepreneur opening up a surf shop
in Santa Cruz, CA. Mike had gone to school and ended up
with a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry (of all things).
While pursuing these goals, they continued to collaborate
on new music. This collaboration was hampered by the fact
that Mike was attending school in Indiana for five years
and took a job in New York for two years after that. A number
of demo recordings were made, but due to the demands of
these other pursuits, nothing was done with them. Finally,
in 2000, Mike returned to the San Francisco bay area and
the musical collaboration between Mike and Tony took on
a whole new life. Mike had been honing his skills in the
studio and had become well acquainted with the digital revolution
in music. He had invested in a computer based project studio
that was producing high quality work. Tony had honed his
skill as a lyricist and songwriter and together they made
some initial recordings that they were quite pleased with
and impressed all those that heard them. They realized that
they had the opportunity to produce a second Pariah album
that would reflect the bands origins and show a maturity
that can only come with time. By 2002 a full CD’s
worth of new Pariah songs had been recorded. Pariah hopes
to have the new music released for it’s fans in early
2003.
