Location, location, location
Stay at home! In bars, yeah, you get drunk, but you end up spending way more money. So, just buy a good amount of beer – have everybody pitch in – and take the party home (well, to someone else’s home, maybe a friend who doesn’t mind it getting wild). That way you can control the music, you can control who shows up; it’s actually always a better time, I find.
Keep the guest list pretty tight
For me, I’ve had the most fun when it’s only been four or five people. I’ve overheard my neighbours saying ‘Oh, the Waste had a huge party the other night’, and it was seriously me and four of my friends; sometimes that can get wilder than having 30 people over your house. One time at a party my friend knocked over my entire tape collection – broke every single tape I had – and he was just standing there. I mean, there was no way that that could possibly happen if there were four people hanging out – it’s more intimate with fewer people.
A kitchen party can be pretty crazy too – the kitchen needs to be craziest place, I feel. When you’re standing around in the kitchen that can actually be the wildest time.
No band, no CD’s… I do LP’s, man.
You need to play a lot of straight up rock – not really any intense hardcore thrash, but plenty of old school heavy metal and rock because that gets the party going better. Something you can sing along to, y’know? Often, we’ll even take it the soft rock route – throw on some Toto or some Hall & Oats, or some album orientated rock… You need to put on some Kansas or some Boston at some point!
I also make mixes called ‘feel good mixes’ – shit that if your parents came over and heard it, they’d be like ‘Hey, this is a pretty cool party’. We’re on tour all year playing loud music and having everyone beating it into our heads and after a while you just want to fucking relax, play some mellow shit. Absolutely no current dance music, though: anything with that constant ‘duh, tis, duh, tis, duh, tis’ beat, like house or jungle or whatever, shit like that, or whatever people rave too. That shit just gives me a headache immediately.
Alcohol is a matter of quantity over quality
Get a half gallon of whiskey – that’s when you’ve got to keep it minimal, you’ve got to make sure you know who’s there because whiskey can make people crazy. But if you get a half gallon of that in the winter time and mix up some hot toddies – just some lemon and some hot water in there – it keeps everyone healthy… And drunk.
I mean, I like good beer too, but if you’re worried about money, you’ve got to go quantity over quality. There are tonnes of horrible beers drunk in America, but I say you buy a few good beers for yourself, hide them in the fridge, and then buy a shit load of cheap ones for your broke-ass friends.
I dig making Margaritas for people too, on certain occasions; I think it’s a real social drink that you can whip up pretty easily – it’s a good ‘day time’ drink, is a Margarita.
Yes, it is acceptable to drink aftershave if you run out of booze
Yeah, it’s cool. We’ve ended up drinking Vanilla extract and mouthwash, and all that stuff has alcohol in it – we’ve been pretty creative in my past. It’s good to be responsible and know when the cut off time is for alcohol. In Virginia it’s midnight if you want to buy it from a store, so you have to stock up and make sure that you have enough to keep you going… you have to be responsible with your alcoholism.
I’ve heard that in Europe, at festivals, the soap in the toilets has alcohol in it, and I’ve heard of people mixing the soap in with water and drinking it. One of the first times I was in Europe this girl comes up to me – I think she was from Sweden or something – and she was like, ‘You have to try the soap; you got to drink the soap.’ And I was like, ‘Girl, we get beer on the rider, we get a bottle of booze every night, but I appreciate the suggestion’. So I think that one should just be a punishment, like when you were a kid, getting your mouth washed out with soap… That shouldn’t be a party favourite at all.
Hard drugs are not at all essential
Most of my friends smoke weed. I’m an occasional weed smoker these days, if I see a joint going around and I’m drunk I’m like ‘Yeah, that looks good’, but I don’t ever seek it out. You’ve got to keep the hard drugs away from the party because that just makes people get exclusive and very weird, y’know, so just stick with the booze I say.
Whatever kind of party you end up throwing, don’t let this happen
I was 14 years old and I rode my bike to this house that was basically a speakeasy – it’s like a bar, but it’s not really legal. So my little crew, we rolled over to this place where we could drink. We’d give this guy $5 and we could drink and do drugs all night, party and just watch old banned videos – kind of a punk rock situation. I was drinking whiskey all night, just doing shots, and not thinking that it was going to catch up with me, totally non-stop drinking; I stumbled my way home on my bicycle that night and on the way – thinking that I wanted to get some food – I saw my house and thought, ‘Y’know what, I’m going to keep going’.
I fell completely head-first over the front of my bike and dislocated my whole shoulder. I didn’t know it at the time though so I was still using my arm. I went to get some tacos at the end of the street, saw a bunch of my friends – and I was bleeding all over the place and my arm was just dangling – and I was just like ‘Hey, how’s it going!?’ and they were like, ‘Are you alright?’. I just fell over again, then got some tacos, ate them and came home where my parents were just like ‘What the fuck!?’, but I blacked out as soon as I fell on to my bed.
So, when I woke up I couldn’t move my arm, and I realised that I’d seriously fucked up my shoulder too – I was physically using it the whole night but when I woke up I just had, like, a floppy arm. But the next day I went out again. I was going to go and meet some friends or whatever, just to get out of the house, and I was sitting outside of the local convenience store looking all beat up – especially my face because I’d fallen off the bike and my shoulder was still all fucked up – and the cops pick me up, thinking that I’m some sort of vagrant. And because I’m just some little kid they’re like, ‘Do you have a home or a family?’ and I’m like, ‘Awww, I’m all hurt’. And then they’re like ‘Well, we need to search you’. I had marijuana in my pocket, but I couldn’t move my arm, I couldn’t move to try and hide it because I’m like a cripple, so I got arrested! That whole thing spanned two days and was kind of how I cut my teeth partying when I was little… It’s all been downhill from there, I guess.
