Demonstrating My Style

Toby: Yo, so when did you first hear about the fam, and when did you become part of it?
Freddy: Well, I became part of the fam, I would say, around ‘92. I had actually just moved up to New York in ‘91.

Toby: I met you in ‘90, the Agnostic Front (AF) tour.
Freddy: That was even before I officially moved into the city, but I was on the road with my brother when we met. I was born in Passaic, New Jersey. My family relocated to Florida. I lived there for a bunch of years, and then I moved to New York City when I was 16, officially. You know, as a kid I always came up to New York for the summers, this, that, Jersey, New York, but I officially moved to the city, L.E.S., when I was about 16. And my connection to the fam was  initially you, Toby.
Toby: Oh, that’s right.
Freddy: Contrary to popular belief, that’s really the way I met everyone. Started with you, and then once I met E, I met Nark. Then, once that happened, E took me to Hoya’s house and I met him. They all kinda knew who I was because of the Madball stuff. The first seven inch, Ball of Destruction, they had all heard about that through the hardcore scene. So they kinda knew who I was. That’s how it all kinda happened. We all started hanging out, and then we all started realizing that we had a lot in common. We were part of the hardcore scene, in one way or another, but we were all like b-boys too. We all liked hip hop and the whole hip hop culture. We were all into street stuff, you know what I mean? I was, I think, the youngest of the bunch back then. Nark seemed younger than me, but he’s actually, a month or two older than me.

Toby: What year did Droppin’ Many Suckers come out? The crew was more like a graffiti thing/street thing, down with hardcore/hip hop, but before people actually had bands that were actually putting out records and touring on them, and traveling outside the tri-state area, you guys came out with Droppin’ Many Suckers.
Freddy: The second seven inch, that was my—you know, it’s funny, because Hoya wasn’t even on that. Roger still played on that, but soon after that, Hoya joined the band. But, you know, I was tight with them. I was hanging with them at that time. It’s funny, because Hoya, Ezec, all these guys are in the picture. If you look at the front of the seven inch, it’s just me and there’s no band and all the heads are cut off, because we were up in the air about who the band was gonna be. It was obviously Matty, Willy, guys from AF but, we didn’t wanna continue riding the coattails of AF in a way, you know? So we kind of just made the image with me, some people behind me, it kind of left if mysterious, like maybe it’s the dudes from AF, maybe it’s a couple of other guys, who knows? And it just so happens that those guys behind me are Nark, Hoya, Ezec—my boys. And at that time, soon after that, Hoya ended up being in the band, so it’s kind of appropriate.

Toby: Was it your idea to name it “Droppin’ Many Suckers”?
Freddy: Yeah, that was my way of giving props, you know? And I wanted to figure out a cool way to throw the letters in there, but I wasn’t gonna call the record DMS. Let me use some kind of street slang or something, with the letters in it. And I think we’re probably one of the first groups in hardcore to take street slang and throw it into our music. I don’t think a lot of bands did that throughout the years. Roger wrote a lot of the lyrics on Droppin’ Many Suckers, because I still didn’t know how to write then. I was still learning. But, come Set It Off, that’s when we really started throwing in a lot of slang and crew stories. Guys like Scot E. and Double O had already been down for years, and there were a lot of things happening. And you can hear it on that record, it reflects on the record. The same with all the records after that.

Toby: Set It Off was like your first full-length, and you guys started hitting Europe, you started getting a fan base and touring, and when you came back you were hanging out with everybody and there’s the same stuff. And so, even now you’re playing music and going to shows, you’re still coming home and hanging out with your friends, not always necessarily getting into trouble, but you were still in the streets.
Freddy: Madball was always a positive thing, because I was always a rambunctious, rebellious kid, even before Madball. I was not the best student and stuff like that. I always had a rebellious side. So music kept me out of trouble for the most part. But we still managed to get into things. We live, we learn, right?

Toby: When did you start taking other peoples’ bands with you and hooking them up?
Freddy: It started with Crown of Thornz, which was Ezec’s first project, first real band. Also, the Bruisers, Al Barr’s first band. There were
a few more.

Toby: You looked out for a lot of bands over there, and brought ‘em out there, man.
Freddy: Yeah, I mean, you know… it’s a brotherhood, and when we all started doing stuff, we had a little bit of a head start, with the whole AF connection. But at the same time, we had to bring it. We had to have something that appealed to people. I don’t think the AF connection was gonna give us a career. It was gonna give us a head start, give us a little push in the beginning, but we had to bring it with our own flavor.

Toby: You actually got your DMS tattoo, gigantic, on your leg while you were in Europe on tour with Madball.
Freddy: Yes, indeed.
Toby: I remember because I ran into you over there. I was a roadie or something, I wasn’t even in a band then. Some festival or something and you got it done. Crazy big.
Freddy: Yep. And I waited a few years, you know? I waited some time. I definitely earned that.

Toby: Hell, yeah.
Freddy: We were all boys, and I was part of the fam, and it was all good, but I waited to get that because I was waiting for the right time, the right moment. And that time came somewhere in Germany. We definitely brought the crew international notoriety, or whatever you want to call it. But that was a good and a bad thing. The good was that we were paying homage to our family, our brotherhood. The bad thing was that people started wanting to be a part of it. It was relative to the music, in a sense, but we had to start explaining to people that, you know, we appreciate you being fans of our music and our band but when it comes to the crew, it’s more personal. It’s more intimate. It’s a family thing. It’s an exclusive thing.

Toby: That especially happened after your bigger record, Demonstrate My Style, because a lot of kids started getting the tattoo, going, “Oh yeah, because I love the album!” They didn’t know any better in Europe. They’re fans of the band. They think it’s like a thing that everybody can get. I remember all that. There was a couple of Madball shirts in the beginning that had the letters on it, but only because of that record. But you shut that down quickly after that.
Freddy: Yeah, that was a little bit of a mistake on our part, because we were trying to give the crew props, and just trying to give the guys back home props, and the guys locked down props, and ourselves props, because we had this unique brotherhood. And that’s cool, but at the same time, like I said, fans are gonna start gravitating towards it and wanting to be part of it, and then we gotta explain that one thing’s got nothing to do with the other. Now, people get the Madball tattoo. I love that. That’s, like, the most flattering thing. I’m very honored that people respect our band that much that they would get the Madball tattoo.
Toby: I got one.
Freddy: It’s an honor, for me, that somebody would have that. But when people started with the DMS thing, that’s when things got touchy. And it’s partly our fault, ‘cause like you say, we put it on shirts, we put it on album titles and stuff like that, but it wasn’t meant for people to just jump on board. It was us giving props to our thing. At the end of the day, it’s our thing. Now, we had to do some clean-up work for a few years, and just kind of let people know that the one thing’s got nothing to do with the other. We appreciate you loving our band very much, but don’t get a DMS tattoo. Don’t go home and make a shirt that says “DMS” on it because there’s a lot more to that crew than you know. Like I said about earning stuff, I earned my shit, and it’s not something that people should take lightly because there’s a lot of history that goes with it, and a lot of different things. Blood, sweat, tears...and more.



Toby: You feel like the music and the band definitely kept you off the streets and out of trouble? It definitely helped you vent.
Freddy: Definitely. Me, Hoya, Ezec. A lot of us. Music saved all our lives in a sense.
Toby: That’s why nobody’s doing a 9 to 5.
Freddy: Yeah. God knows, if we weren’t doing music, who knows what we’d be into, you know what I mean? But whatever. We do music. That’s what we do. And luckily enough, it did give us an outlet, and it also gave us a lot of…it was a big learning experience. It still is. We traveled the world and we became more cultured, and we brought that back to the L.E.S. and Queens and everywhere. It helped us grow as people, but I think it helped the crew even, too, because there would be guys that would come with us, that were part of the fam, that would come as roadies, and they would come and be techs and tour managers, etcetera, etcetera.

Toby: Do you think you inspired other people in the fam to start doing bands and try to do it, too?
Freddy: We all inspired each other. We were one of the first ones, and then E came soon after us with his stuff, and we all just continued to help each other stay off the streets and travel the world, and it’s great. I mean, you know, we’re still street guys, but it doesn’t hurt to become more worldly and learn about different things and cultures and people. That’s Evolution.