RELEASE DATE NOVEMBER 28, 2025
WE MUST FIGHT!
(the complete Last Rites demo)
Nine classic punk songs on a 12” 45rpm record + booklet & goodies
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE “LAST RITES DEMO”
1981 had just started when I quit M.I.A. in early January and left Vegas to live with a buddy of mine (Robert) in San Diego (specifically the far eastern suburb of El Cajon). Darby Crash had died a month earlier, his death eclipsed by that of John Lennon around the same time. There was a change in the air. Living at home had become intolerable, and as a young man I needed to leave. So I moved to San Diego and started working at the Wherehouse Records near the stadium. But change was still in the air: after a few weeks my roommate joined a band in the San Fernando Valley and left me living alone for the first time in my life. Now solo with full living expenses, it was all I could do just to pay rent and utilities. I didn’t eat much. I couldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t make enough money to do anything. I remember Chuck Dukowski came in to the record store to drop off some flyers for an upcoming Black Flag show (I knew who he was and had seen his photo in Flipside), but I couldn’t afford the gas to get across town, let alone pay the cover. I had never been to a punk show, other than local bands at a few parties back in Vegas (I know, that still counts, but you know what I mean). The Vegas scene back then was maybe a few handfuls of people, extremely small.
Somewhere toward the spring I got a call from Mike. He and Chris had moved from Vegas to Orange County, and they wanted to start M.I.A. back up — what was I doing? Not a damn thing. I quickly packed my things and within a few days left my misery in San Diego to crash at Mike and Chris’ apartment right by the Newport Beach Pier, just in time for summer. I first got a job at Perry’s Pizza with Chris, and then later I got hired on at Peer Records, both right on the boardwalk by the beach. It was a pretty magical summer (even though being a punk at the beach was dangerous).
Of course, there was a foreboding event. The very same evening I arrived in Newport Beach, there was a knock on the door. Two policemen were looking for a runaway girl (come to find much later, my wife thinks it was her they were looking for hahaha). Mike told them there were no runaways and invited them in to look around. They went back to Mike’s bedroom and found no missing girl, but they did see these nice 70s Marantz speakers in his closet. The speakers matched the description of speakers that were stolen from a nearby home. It turned out Mike had stolen the speakers, and he was cuffed and taken to jail.
Mike was released on bail pending court action, so we were back in business, at least temporarily. That weekend we decided to go to a Black Flag show in Santa Monica at the Civic. It was a big event, and there were hundreds, maybe a couple thousand punks there. I had never seen anything like it, not just because of the number of people, but because of the raw energy that was sizzling through the crowd. Each band that came out stirred that energy a little more until Black Flag, fronted by Dez Cadena, came out (Ron Reyes sang a few songs during the set as well). The place went nuts, and I moved right up to the edge of the stage to get a good look at what was happening. Mind blown. That was my first true punk rock gig, and it was a doozy. I was hooked.
M.I.A. was now different. The Vegas band consisted of Mike Conley on bass, Chris Moon on drums, Todd Sampson on vocals, and me (Nick Adams) on guitar. At the time Todd was only 16 years old and couldn’t come out to California. We tried to find a singer, but nothing really panned out and one day Mike just said he would be the singer. I called my Vegas buddy Paul Schwartz who was the best bass player I knew, and he moved to California to play bass in M.I.A. I think we played a few parties, and also a handful of shows at the Cuckoo’s Nest that summer. More importantly, we went to every show at the Nest we could. It was a learning experience for me, watching Greg Hetson (Circle Jerks) downpick his choppy riffs, or seeing Ron Emory (T.S.O.L.) work his fluid style, or just watching the chaos of the Vandals. I even got to see Henry’s first show with Black Flag. All of this changed how I felt about punk music, and music in general. There is a word for it: formative.
Every Sunday night we would listen to Rodney on the ROQ and hear the latest punk music. We really wanted to be played on the radio, and we had this tape from a rehearsal, and someone told Mike how we could just hand it to Rodney for his consideration. So one Sunday evening we drove to Pasadena with our crappy rehearsal tape, and me and Mike knocked on the studio back door. Rodney opened the door just a sliver and eyed us warily, a couple of bad news leather-clad punks. He took the tape, and then we listed intently to the show driving all the way home. And the next Sunday. And the next. He never played the tape. He never played it because it was awful!
So I decided we needed a proper demo tape. Mike got a $300 donation from Chad and Frank, a couple of weed dealers he knew. From the phone book I called the closest studio to us, which turned out to be JEL Studio on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach, and talked to Bill Trousdale, an engineer. I said we needed a demo and we had $300; Bill said we might be able to record and mix one song for that much money. I told him our songs were short and we’d be well-rehearsed.
As I said earlier, just a few months of seeing punk bands in the California scene had changed everything about M.I.A. I had added a lot of aggression to my playing style, and we were faster, tighter, and angrier than the band that hailed from Vegas. We rehearsed a lot in our two bedroom apartment over a garage on 41st Street. We had a few songs we brought with us from Vegas (Tell Me Why, Gas Crisis, I Hate Hippies, Can’t Take it No More) but also wrote some new stuff (Angry Youth, New Left, President’s Skin, Fucking Zones, and Mike’s opus on criminal life, Cold Sweat). When it came time to record, I think we were full of nervous energy, fast and focused — Chris aptly called it “lightning in a bottle.” We blasted through nine songs in short order, only doing second takes on a couple songs, added a few overdubs (hand claps, piano, and a little bit of cheesy theater) and moved on to mixing. We mixed seven of the nine recorded songs before the money ran out. Now we had a demo!
We drove back to KROQ in Pasadena and handed our new demo to Rodney. But he still didn’t play it! In the meantime, we had met Greg Link (who would later transform into Bad Otis), who lived in Costa Mesa and did screen printing, flyers and artwork for punk bands. He knew a lot of people in the scene and somehow took a shine to us where we had mostly been rejected as outsiders. He got us a gig in Reno with 7 seconds in September 1981. We drove there in Paul’s janky red International pickup, had a great show and got to meet the great Reno scene: Paranoia fanzine, Seven Seconds, the Wrecks, Section 8 — I mean, Reno had a kickass scene at the time. We gave Kevin Seconds our demo tape and then drove home. Shortly after, Mike was sentenced to detention for a few months; after detention, he would move back to Vegas for a year or so. M.I.A. was again defunct.
It was during this time I got a call from Tim Yohannan at Maximum Rock n Roll. Communist Tim loved our song New Left and wanted it for a compilation he was putting together, Not So Quiet on the Western Front (Alternative Tentacles). Tim had also passed our tape along to Bo Clifford at Bomp Records, who was putting another compilation together, American Youth Report (Bomp Records). And then Bo passed the tape to Felix Alanis, who wanted the rest of the demo for a split LP with the New Jersey band Genocide called Last Rites for Genocide and M.I.A. (Smoke Seven Records). After these records came out in 1982, one Sunday evening I finally got to hear M.I.A. get played on Rodney on the ROQ. The demo had been a success, but now there was no band……..
— Nick
M.I.A. @ Cuckoo’s Nest, summer 1981 photo: Tom Backer