High Times used about a quarter of this. Here is the whole darn thing.
Photos by Jackie Roman, transcribed by Leah Fishman.
Photos by Jackie Roman, transcribed by Leah Fishman.
I don't wanna be known as one of those music writer guys that constantly throws around the obvious and over used word "infectious" but what is just as infectious as their music, chicano dialect/bay area slang & their all around good vibe is there need for weed. It just works. I myself go through different phases of pot smoking. These days its commonly a few days a week. But whenever I'm out west rollin' around with these 'crazy fools', it seems like the only sensible thing to do is to get skroached as fuck all day every day. Originally from El Paso Texas, front man Omar 'Mijo' Hernandez & bass player Carlos 'Chuck' Palacios grew up with some very neat things in common. Like most people I am closest with it all started with a love of early punk and hardcore. Throughout the years that was followed by a growing love of 70's heavy rock & power pop. Like many a Mexican American they were raised on the solidest of golden oldie doo wops. Both eventually finding themselves in San Francisco, these ever so righteous burnouts molded this all into a cultish little yet larger than life band called Apache. 'What can I expect from Apache's live show' you ask? a throbbing glittery menagerie of groovy pounding punk rock music. Omar, looking like he walked straight home from a shift guarding Pablo Escobar's Medellin compound, went home, put on a glittery jacket and then walked right on over to his microphone snaking around the stage like some sort of snake like gypsy spider monkey. Chuck (I realize I already said "glittery" and now I'm about reuse another one because that's just how it is. I'll just add an extra O to it) laying out some seriously GROOOVY bass lines, makes me reminiscent of Leatherface during his famed chainsaw dance. Over all this is perfectly fitting, simplified, tighter than a dolphins asshole punk rock drums and six strings. Through the years they have had a revolving door of guitarists & drummers from a very tight knit circle of outstanding Bay Area musicians coming in and out like it aint no thing. Apache's current lineup consists of lead guitarist Nick ______ of which whom I have trouble picturing in my mind without his mirrored aviators, rhythm guitarist Ray Seraphin (who was MIA for this interview/photo shoot because he had to fly back home the day previous, for he may or may not be in summer school. As in high school summer summer school.), The ever so dapper Dan Rincon and then of course Chuck and Omar. Bringing us such no nonsense gems as Finger Banger, the outstandingly bouncy Crystal Clear which in my mind is one of the greatest singles of the past 20 years & the the mellow teenage anthem On The Outside which is so cool that I don't care that it sounds a whole lot like an old favorite of mine that I will skip listing here. Dan and Omar work in marijuana for a living. It being the West Coast it is of course all completely legal and still completely mesmerizing to us folks back East. The session that is seen in the photos here consisted of us smoking a $200 salad consisting of different types of delightful East Coast skroach that was delivered to us about 15 minutes before this all began. High Times contacted me and said something along the lines of 'talk about music a bit but mostly just talk about weed'. I feel I got the music part pretty covered. No magazine could be more fitting for these guys than the one you are holding at this very moment. So I bring to you, direct from a New York City rooftop...
Andy: How do you feel that High Times has brought me to you?
Omar: I'm fuckin stoned right now dude--- thats how I feel. they just gave us a bunch of weed to smoke.
A: Dan. You work at a--
Dan: I work at as medical marijuana delivery driver In San Francisco, the Vapor Room. Yeah.
A And what does that entail?
D I drive around all day taking weed to patients
A What kind of people? How do you feel the whole vibe is all around? How about all of that?
D Everyone's pretty fucking happy to see you, you know? They give me candy and shit, its cool
O Really? they give you candy?
D: Yeah some guy brings me muffins with like bacon and stuff on them. Everyone's super stoked.
A: I heard somebody you know went to high school with Richard Ramirez, the famed night stalker.
O: that would probably be my mom. Not exactly sure, at the same time, I think he dropped out at fifteen, I dunno-- but I think it was like a year apart. It was Thomas Jefferson High school, home of the silver foxes, El Paso Texas.
A: What is murple?
O: talk to Chuck, ask Chuck
Chuck :it's… a plant…(everyone laughing)
O: alright, it's weed.
A: does it provide some powers?
C; it's purple marijuana
O: it's like a hybrid of both purple and marijuana
A ok, i get it!
A: Mission style munchies. you got any recommendations?
O I like tacos from, i'll be honest, from El Farvidos (??)
A: how do you say that?
O: El Farolito is the way it's written on the wall
Nick: Barfarito, el fartolotta
C Taco Loco, they got good carnitas
O they have the best carnets. taco loco.
A: What do you guys recommend there that people wouldn't know about?
O: snachos. just go straight up to the fucking thing, you want carnets snachos.
A: What's snachos?
C (laughing) snachos!
O: just order it. you'll figure it out. i'm sure you've had some (everyone laughing)
A: well i'd like to find out! So are you gonna tell me, or..?… oh boy. .. How do you guys feel about the term "skroached" that we use on the east coast?
D I don't even know what it means. what does it mean?
O yeah i'm not exactly sure, what is it?
C sounds like scrogging to me, which is..
O yeah, which is fucking, right?
A skroached just kind of became the word that we used for weed or "a roach" , so "getting skroached", or "let's smoke some skroach" and "yo man, i'm skroached out"
O: hey man, I'm bilingual, I can deal with that.
C; we say jay-ter
A you say what? how do you do a j? you do a jay-ter, is it?
N You light a darth jay-dar
O nooo….. no, you don't
A: jay-ter, like jaded?jade? like jasmine and jade?
A: ok. chuck and omar, you guys have known each other for the longest, right? you grew up in el paso together. did you start smoking weed together?
O; No
C: actually, I tried to get him stoned and he wasn't into it
O I wasn't into smoking weed at first, i was into punk and shit dude
C yeah he was like, straight edge
A; punk'll bring you out of that for a minute right?
O for a minute
A and then you just kinda realize-
O: you know who actually got me stoned at first was james and eric johnson, the black guy, this black dude and my good friend, and we fuckin smoked a joint, like in the backyard, and then after that, like we went inside and they put the stooges funhouse record on, which i was always like (nerd voice) "ehhhh, i don't know about that one, i only like the first one" and then like they put it on and I sat on the bed like by myself and listened to the whole thing, like rocking my head and shit I was like "yeeeeeah, this is pretty good!" and they were like "you're just stoned man! you hate this shit!" and i'm like "Nahhh, dude!".. That was the first time I got stoned, it was pretty cool.
A: tell me about all your first times. chuck?
C: ahh, i was smoking weed with DLB
O: hahaha! dead little bats!
C: dead little bats were like a punk rock gang in el paso and they were all like misfit-ed out, you know, like? they looked like the misfits
A: devil locks?
C: some of them had devil locks. they were like skate- rockers.
O: they were punks
C they were punks, yeah.
A; tell me about the first time you smoked with them
C: ahhh, they got me hella smoked and they put on the beatles and the beatles still kinda scare me a little bit sometimes, because i kinda got scared, and then i went into this room with hella velvet paintings and shit, and it freaked me out, and i was like "what the fuck??" and then..i.. tripped hard, i dunno, that was it! (laughing)
O: damn man, you sure that wasn't your first acid trip?
C: No I was hella stoned, it was….
D: my first time was behind my parents house on the train tracks
O: with this prostitute!
D: with a bunch of weirdos that would hang out there… and i tried to roll a joint and i fucked it up and they realized it was like my first time getting stoned and everyone made fun of me. then i went to a show. and i was blasted.
A: it's a little confusing the first time, right?
D: i didn't know what to do
A: why don't you tell us about your first time nick?
N: the first time i ever actually got high--like there were a couple times when i just smoked like (some word i don't understand) shit and like didn't get high, the first time i actually got high me and two of my other friends just bought an eighth of like some , it was actual, like legit, it was like the first time we got legit weed and we like rolled all of it into 6 or 7 j's and we were super paranoid about the cops so we climbed onto the top of this elementary school because like nobody could get up there, nobody could see us, so we just smoked all of them in a row and we didn't think we got high until we all stood up and we realized that like we were not going to be able to get down. so we ended up having to wait there for like 5 hours until we weren't so high so we could climb down from there
A: that's pretty funny. and you enjoyed it?
N: oh yeah. and ever since then we managed to get to the point where we could climb down it even when we were stoned.
O: I still remember listening to Jimi Hendrix and shit for the first time when I was stoned, it was like with Mike Morales (former Apache drummer) , i used to cruise with him, we'd get fucking stoned listening to Jimi and Led Zeppelin, which is like his favorite band and shit… that was tight.
C: how much weed do you smoke, like averagely?
A: me, i just smoke like a few days a week these days, you know unless i'm on the road or something like that
O: then it's less?
A: no it's way more, yeah. And when I meet up with you motherfuckers in san francisco it's like a whole other fucking dimension
O: we come to new york and everyone's like "maaan, you guys like weed!" everyone's shocked.
N: how much more weed do we smoke than everybody here?
everyone: a lot! so much, like 50 million times more, 70 million bong hits more, etc
O:that's the thing, no one smokes bongs in new york-- no one has a bong! that really irks me!
C: and theres bong stores everywhere!
O: you guys spend all your money on alcohol
A: what is the name of the place you work at, do you mind telling us?
D: it's the Vapor Room cooperative.
A: so this is totally legal
O:in california!
D: yeah, i'm licensed
A: sounds pretty legal to me
C: I'm licensed to have weed
O: i'm not but i just roll joints for a living
