Da Mad Scientist

Rico: How did you get down, how did you start all this? Actually, what’s an even better question, who is it that actually coined the name? You or Scot E.?
Jere: It was me, yeah, but where it came from was from these guys that were hangin’ out with us early on that had like an invisible band, the band never materialized, but they had this idea that they were gonna have this song called “The Doc Marten Stomp.” They were like, “This is gonna be our intro, it’s gonna be called ‘The Doc Marten Stomp.’” And I was like, “That’s a good name for a graffiti crew,” you know? But at that time I was just writin’ graffiti by myself. There was me hangin’ out with a bunch of guys who smoked weed or fuckin’ smoked dust or fuckin’ whatever. No one wrote graffiti at that point.
Rico: You were the writer of the crew, so to speak, and pretty much the guy who brought the name, the letters—
Jere: I always been writin’ it out. I’ve been writing graffiti probably since I was ten, you know what I mean? Coppin’ tags here and there, you know, growing up in Queens and shit, Jackson Heights, and being this white kid and shit, in the middle of nothin’, you’re in the middle of no world, you know what I mean? And you kinda do stuff solo a lot. There was no real crew, everybody else had a crew, everybody else had this whole thing, but I was like writing graffiti by myself and, I knew a couple of people.

Rico: How did the marriage come between that and when it started becoming more of a graffiti thing, Doc Marten Stomp, whatever you were taggin’. When did it transition to more of a family?
Jere: Well, that happened with Scot E. He was an L.E.S. guy who came to Jackson Heights a lot. Jackson Heights was a different aggro in a different way because there were Columbian drug dealers. You grew up there and you had static basically that was real gang shit, you know what I mean? We didn’t call them gangs then, that was corny. The 70s had gangs. In the 80s we called it a crew. The thing with Scot E. is that he kinda got in this whole thing, he saw me tagging DMS a lot. A couple of weeks later, we’re hangin’ out, he’s like, “Yo, this is DMS, motherfucker!”



Rico: You were thinking of some other shit, but Scot E. had a different vision, more than just a graffiti thing?
Jere: It’s what we were already, you know what I mean? We had a big crew of people, you know, a lot of it had to do with Jackson Heights, Jackson Heights again. We had people who were illegal aliens, we had skins, you know, whoever was a fuckin’ castaway and a loser, we were hangin’ out with, you know what I mean? And it wasn’t by society’s standards. It was the same when we were hangin’ out at CBs. The first time I went to CBs, I must have been about 13 years old and the whole Bowery is like, girls with mohawks and spots on their heads and all that kind of shit. That was the best, man. That’s where I belonged, man. I think everybody sort of felt that, no matter where they were from, you know? Everybody’s like, “Yo, I don’t fit in here, I don’t fit in there” and you know what? Fuck it. We do fit in somewhere. I think when you’re young, that’s what that whole thing is about, you’re tryin’ to not be lost. And you know, don’t forget, most people, their parents threw them out in the street. They’re fuckin’ wanderin’ around the Lower East Side squattin’.Who the fuck throws their 15-year-old kid out?

Rico: What was CBs representin’ to you?
Jere: Do you know what I thought about CBs? Some people, they’re gonna wind up on the fuckin’ deuce, and they’re gonna wind up gettin’ fucked up and being prostitutes, or they’re gonna wind up downtown, and they’re gonna be safer, you know what I mean? There was like only two places for runaways to wind up in this city, and I mean that’s part of it, I don’t think that’s the whole thing. But I think for a lot of people it was definitely an outlet, the CBs thing and all and that was a positive. When I was goin’ there, man, I was like, probably for the first time in my life, I felt like I met reasonable people.
Rico: They understood you.
Jere: People were smart, you know, that cared, and were fuckin’ angry because other people don’t give a shit. It’s like they don’t, they’re cold-hearted motherfuckers, you know what I mean? That’s the thing, everybody had this image at that point, you know, like skinheads, punk rockers, they’re just like degenerates, they don’t give a shit. Actually, I think they gave more of a shit. I think that’s the important thing that always gets lost.

Rico: How did the crew stand out in the whole CBs scene? From my knowledge that also brought a lot of people together. Guys came from everywhere. CBs, if I’m not mistaken, brought other elements into this thing. Right?
Jere: Brooklyn was always there.Queens was always there. More or less around that time everybody  went from punk rock CBGBs to a skinhead CBGBs almost overnight. And that was kind of bizarre. I was a skinhead anyway, I remember standin’ at the Ritz at the second Superbowl of Hardcore, and there were 4,000 skinheads jumpin’ around, I was like, Where the fuck do these people come from? (laughter) It’s like, Who are these people? I’ve never seen those guys! There was a time in the scene when there were a lot of baldheads.

Rico: It was the look. If you wanted to get laid in the Lower East Side, you shaved your head. (laughter)
Jere: That’s where we stood out. We were part of a dynamic of people, a collective group of guys that came from mixed backgrounds. I think that the way DMS made an impact initially was that no one wore braces, really. Boots maybe, braces not as much. And everybody kinda wrote graffiti, ‘cause there was a hip-hop influence. Now, here’s the thing, the important thing about that is everybody grew up in New York City. There was no difference between getting up in the morning, writing graffiti, going to shows, breakdancing. That was just fun. I wore what I owned, you know? I mean, I lived with my mom and my sister in a basement in Queens, man, I didn’t have any fuckin’ money, you know what I mean? I had t-shirts, jeans, and I got the fuckin’ boots, and you know that’s where it’s at.... And I think from that point on there was no serious sort of dress up, you know what I mean? I think that very few people from DMS were straight up impeccable skinheads, you know what I mean? Like I said, very few people. But I think that it’s mostly because they were totally drunk all the time, fuck and they’d get into brawls to get a t-shirt, ripped up. I remember someone buyin’ a new Fred Perry, a white Fred Perry, I was like, “What are you, what are you doing?” Fifty bucks! Five hours later a fuckin’ knife fuckin’ slashed through it, you know (laughter). “You fight all the time, what the hell’s wrong with you, man? You’re the last person who should have a white Fred Perry, get a black one!”

Rico: Boneheads would come out and buy all this lovely clothing and we would wait for them to relieve them of their—
Jere: Of their gear?!
Rico: That’s pretty much how we shopped!
Jere: And here’s the contrast to that. Everybody didn’t fit in which is sort of how they wind up in this scene to begin with, you know what I mean? And I think that it has to do with intelligence more than anything else. It’s that they see what’s going on, they’re like, “Nah, I don’t think so, you know, this doesn’t make sense,” they wind up in the hardcore scene or punk scene. I think there was a certain kind of racial tension to begin with on the scene because I think it was a very static environment for a long time. And I think when DMS started hanging out, I think a lot of people were taken aback by the idea. We got Asian kids who are skinheads, we got black kids who are skinheads, we got Spanish kids who are skinheads, we got a lot of them, not like one guy, two guys, suddenly you have like 30 people hangin’ out and people are like, “Who the fuck are those guys? Where the hell did they come from?”
Rico: And they all called each other brothers.
Jere: And we were little kids. Everybody else was older.

Rico: When did you meet Hoya and them?
Jere: I remember when Hoya, Double O and MQ came down the first time. They showed up out of nowhere. That’s how it was in those days. People would just come in and hang out. You know, like skinheads would just show up and you’d just be talking to them like, “Oh, we’re from Corona,”  and we’d be like, “There are skinheads in Corona? Fuck, man, really?” Cause I’m thinking like that’s DTC Land, that’s just straight up ‘Hood’ you know what I mean, there are skinheads over there? So MQ and Hoya started hangin’ out. I was buggin’ out then, MQ was a graffiti writer, I had seen his tag for years. I just never knew who MQ was. He’d be bombin’ with Scam and Nom. They would catch all these straight-letter tags,  they had a very distinctive style. I don’t think they had a crew. They all bombed together but they didn’t put up a crew.

As far as Hoya, he’s a character, you know from the fucking first second I met him I was like this guy is cool, man, a trip, absolutely. When they came in they definitely brought a different dynamic to the whole thing—actually, ironicly enough, a much more sober dynamic. You know I think that at that point I was probably the youngest person hangin’ out, you know, I was maybe 17. But I was hanging out with a lot of older guys. I was hangin’ out with guys who were like 20 when I was 13, you know what I mean? They were degenerates, like fucking punk rock degenerates, and I thought, oh, those guys got it figured out, you know what I mean? But most of the people were kinda really all into that whole obliteration thing. Everybody’s like I’m gonna get as fucked up as I can, you know, Hoya and MQ were like I ain’t drinkin’, I’ll just smoke some weed, you know, it’s like fucking everybody’s all doing their thing. Hoya shows up, you know, MQ shows up, they’re kind of like straight-minded people, not straight-edge, not what I’m saying, you know, they’re really observant and funny. These guys are cool, I’m gonna hang out with them. They got a whole other perspective on the scene.