We got to the Roxy and ran into Bosco and Scabs there... Bosco was laughing uncontrollably, I asked them "what's the deal...?" Scabs was on his knees spitting some fluids out of his mouth, and he was holding a beer bottle. From what I recall from the story, Bruce and Bosco has been in Hollyweird all day... they were pissing behind some building, and Bosco had peed in a beer bottle, and set it up on a fence. Well, Scabs pops up, and sees the apparently full bottle of beer! And he grabs it, and spouts: Hey! Lookit this, someone left a FULL bottle of BEER on the fence here... And BEFORE Bosco could say anything about it... Scabs proceeds to attach the beer bottle to his lips and... GLUGGLUGGLUG!!!! Whoops hehe. We had just walked up when Scabs was ejecting the Offending fluid out of his mouth. HAHAHAHA.

Wellll, so we all stood in line to get into Stiff Little Fingers and The Alley Cats (The Alley Cats had that song: Too Much Junk!). Darby Crash was in line, and he had a helluva Mohawk, this was about a month or so before he died. Typical Saturday Night in Hollywood, eh?

We get in, and we were walking around, and saw a bunch of these tables that said "Reserved for A&R People Only"... Let me go on a tangent here, one of our friends was a 250 pound punk Dyke Chick named Black Michelle, she was with us, and she just went right up to one of the tables, knocked the sign off the table and gestured us to all have a seat. We were descended upon by a couple of employees of The Whiskey Au-Go-Go and we were informed that the table was reserved for A&R people only. Black Michelle looks up and quite seriously tells the gentleman: "We IS A&R People!"- Well, I don't think this guy wanted to futz with Michelle, so he backed off, and we ended up with the BEST seats in the entire place. So, this is my remembrance of one of the first nights I hung with Cliff. He was very quiet, and Lorna was dragging around by his pinky, while he sheepishly followed. (Actualy, I am told now, that Lorna was falling down drunk, and Cliff was actually holding her up... My Bad!) Little did I know, Cliff was FAR from a sheep being led around by his cock so to speek. I talked to him a little, and I remember that I liked him immediately.

So, The Alley Cats played a bitchin Set, and then Stiff Little Fingers played ALL of their best songs, including a very militant version of "Johnny Was:"

Cliff Was...

Johnny was - Stiff Little Fingers

During which, some asshole set off a string of Firecrackers, which caused Jake Burns to eject this retort: "Oi, that was blooody fooking Intelligent!"- Which cause a bunch of fooking stoopid LA PUNKS to tell him to FOOK OOOF!

And there it is: My fond memories of one of my first encounters with Cliff Cunning-Ham. Actually the entire memory is important to me, it was the first Punk show I had gone to in LA- And it was Strange Territory for me, I was half frightened and half exhilarated. I did not get beaten up, so I guess it was a good night. (Some of the details of this night are fuzzy: Cliff called me and refreshed my memory, but I already forgot the corrected version)

So: After the December North Park Lions Club show, Cliff had us play two parties at his house, this was before he moved to Edgemont Street. Actually, I had been at his house on Swift Avenue near North Puke, and it was a neat house: He was living with Mandy, then he mooved to Alabama street or something... Or maybe it was Mandy who had moved there? I ferget, but we played a party on Alabama street- I think I remember Mandy had an Arse roommate, who used to give her a lot of shite. So she did a change of address on him, hahaha. I vaguely remember this, I may have helped her move over to Edgemont. We had Some Fun Now™ on Edgemont Street! The place was happenin: "Party at Cliff House!" was our Rallying Call after the last band of the night at the Lions Club! Some pretty wild stuff used to happen there. He lived there for quite sometime, perhaps 5 years, and when I came down to San Diego from SF on visits, his couch was a great place to sleep. My Mum would get pissed off at me cos I did not stay with my parents when I came down. I came down once with Grace, this was for the 1st annual Social Spit reunion, we stayed with Cleo and Dennis (Dennis Frame the original Bass Player from The Neutrons/Battalion of Saints). Once I came down by myself and I slept on Cliff's couch some days, and a couch in the basement of The "New" boys club on other days. But as always, when Tim Maze branched out from having shows at The Lions Club, to larger halls, like Fairmount Hall, and Carpenters Hall- The Battle Cry would still resound: PARTY At CLIFFS HOUSE!

I remember, one of the first things I did after joining Social Spit was the realisation that we needed a PA- Well, Lou Skum sold me a PA and a speaker for A Hundred bucks, it served us well. We played our first Party at Cliff's house shortly after that time- Excuse me, I think it was Cliff's former roomate Mandy's house where Cliff had us play first, then later, I think we played at Cliff's house at Edgemont Street.

Dead or Alive productions, which was Mad Marc Rude and Peter Verbrugges's "Production Company"- did not want to give us any more shows after the December show, and so Scabs quit, the fooker. So it was Brian, Russ and I, we kept practicing. We played with a few other folks, like we tried Donny ex-Neutron, and he was a good guitar player actually. I tried singing all the songs, but Peter Verbrugge REALLY did not want to give us a show unless we replaced Scabs. So I said, what about Cliff? And Peter said: Yes, maybe if you got Cliff to sing, we can find something for you.

So there you have it, that was when I asked Cliff to sing, and he was all too glad to do it.

With CLIFF at the Vocal Helm, we wrote a BUNCH of new songs, "Psycho Ward" "Plasma Center" Reagan Gun Club" and the ever popular (as in this is a joke:) "Riot on Palm Street"- which was a true story of what happens when you pull a KNIFE on Mad Marc Rude (Your house gets thrashed hahaha).

Eventually, we played a few shows at The Zebra Club, and there used to be a Girly Club down at the foot of Fairmont: There used to be a huge Batgirl Doll thing on a Billboard, that was viewable from The Freeway. Forget the name of the place, but we played there twice, once with The Big, then with Claude Coma and the IV's- I remember playing Psycho Ward and we ended the song with a huge Dogpile. We played at The Zebra Klub, and Peter Verbrugge walked by as we were playing "Warhead" by the UK SUBS and he razzed me cos I was playing a lead (the punks in San Diego hated lead guitar solos, even though Chris Smith from Battalion of Saints used to whip them out all the time at Neutrons and Battalion of Saints shows). So, I kicked Peter right square in the arse (At least I THINK that's how it happened... Haha) as he walked by, which was difficult cos I was playing a slide guitar solo. I was pretty pleased with that action myself.

We played for about a few months with Cliff, then we decided to call it quits near May or June of 1981. We had a HUGE blowout party at, well there was a little girl, Chris, that liked us: She was really neat, she had a party and we played and the band "No Age Limit" played, it was pretty fun.. And the punks that showed up, did not really thrash the house as badly as I was expecting them to. I met Heckle and Jeckle at that party, that is, Grace and Jane George, they both had their hair dyed black, they both had prominent noses, and, well, they looked like the two crows, Heckle and Jeckle. So everyone would call them that. Grace who I ended up with for a long time- I never would a thunk it when I first met her, actually I was more attracted to her sister, Jane. But Jane thought I was a geekdweeb, so I ended up with Grace, and we actually had a lot in common. After the party, Russ and I kept the rehearsal space just cos it was convenient... I used to bring various people up there and we messed around with recording stuff.

More SOCIAL SPIT History...

I moved to SF and after a year, I came back to Slow Deth and we had the first of a few Social Spit Annual Reunions- At King's Road on 30th street. Mad Mark Rude sang "Warhead" by the UK Subs with us, I got it on tape. Cliff had been diagnosed with Cancer in one of the little bones in his leg, and they successfully removed the cancerous bone, but the stoopid NAVY, started aggressive Chemo right after the operation, not giving the wound time to heal up. I remember when we did that show, Cliff was really weak, and ALL his hair had fallen out, so he was a skinhead: No Scratch that, he was a Skin BODY for a time. His vocals were barely audible at that show.

The Return of the SOCIAL SPIT!

I moved back to San Diego in 1985, and about a year after that, we got Skumdog from the metal band Prowler and Sean from the band Diatribe... it was the best Social Spit rendition we had- We started getting GOOD shows, people started coming to see us. And the core of it was always Cliff and I. We produced a small Tape Demo and Cliff sold them out at Off The Record... A few years earlier, he put out OUR BLOWOUT with a bit of help from Toby from Personal Conflict... Cliff had a knack tor making cool little tape presentations.

SOCIAL SPIT: Awarded BEST ALTERNATIVE BAND by North County Entertainer for 1987

In 1987 or so, the North County Entertainer, a small weekly rag that spotlighted Entertainment events, added an "Alternative Music" genre to their annual awards. We had been entered in by our then-scumbag-record company, DOUG MOODY. We were up against Eleven Sons, which was a band consisting of Tim Pinell, Jeff Mummert, Alan Brown, and I forget the singers name: and the band he was in in the early 80's, Tommy something? They were a good band, I thought they should have won the award, but by some freak of nature, Social Spit won the award for best alternative band for 1987². Later that night, Tim Maze was doing a show on 91-X and he played a couple of the songs off our "Psycho Ward" EP:

SOCIAL SPIT: !987 North County Entertainer UNDERGROUND
Band of the Year

In My Opinion, SOCIAL SPIT never would have gotten out of the rehearsal studio and into the Pubs and eventually onto Vinyl WITHOUT Cliff Cunningham: EVERY BAND should have a Cliff!

-Jonny V
3-5-2003

²Some idiot jackass dunce from a band, I think it was "The Hated" or some shit-ass, I mean, not only did they SUCK, they were assholes to boot, being very rude to Cliff and I at every turn... Well this assbite, got into the awards show using MY name. I got to the Door, to pick up my ticket, and I was informed that I WAS ALREADY IN THE THEATRE. Huh? So after proving who I was I was let in. It was the FUCKING RETARD JACKASS lead singer for that asinine band, said he was ME and got himself into the show. STUPID theatre personnel, did not check his ID- FUCKERS. Well, We stayed long enough to collect our trophy, and Cliff was gracious enough in his acceptance speech to credit ALL of the San Diego Punk bands of that day, and there were only a handful, compared to today, there are hundreds. This same said asshole that got himself in using MY name, got drunk, and caused so much SHIT that they kicked him out, and thanks to this UTTER FOOL the Alternative Music Genre was REMOVED from the list of Genres to be awarded from then on. I wish I remembered his name, so I can add a hearty FUCK YOU to the guy, but I can't recall so that's that.