Carl Begai

(Please note: If you have no idea who the Misfits are you might want to click here for a history lesson. It’s significant to what you’re about to read…)

By Carl Begai

As mentioned in Part 1 of this interview, Joel Gausten’s accomplishments as a writer go hand-in-hand with his conquests as a musician. He lays claim to having performed and / or recorded with Pigface, Electric Frankenstein, the Misfits and The Undead and has been forced on occasion to defend those claims – for the record, successfully – particularly with regards to the Misfits. Gausten raised the ire of their fans in early 2009 by posting what he said were bootleg rehearsal recordings featuring himself on drums on his MySpace page, with many of the discontented pointing out that Gausten was never a member of the band. That said, how dare he suggest he performed with the legendary horror punk outifit? The Misfits had been around since the 1977. Gausten was clearly blowing smoke; as if he’d been kicking back with the band at the age of 12…

“(Laughs) Pretty close; I was 17, and that was just another happy accident. It was 1996 and there was actually a scene for a 17 year old punk rocker. I was into it full force. Being in New Jersey at that age, you couldn’t not love the Misfits because they were the quintessential punk band. At that point in time they hadn’t reformed yet, and there was this whole wonderful mystique about them because they hadn’t been around. If you were a kid in New Jersey in those days and you went to a record store and saw a poster of Doyle (guitars), that was a very cool thing because we all loved the Misfits. Being the rambunctious pain-in-the-ass that I am, I was booking some shows that were doing pretty well, I thought ‘Why don’t I find the Misfits and have them reform?’ (laughs).”
(continue reading…)