Mega Watt

"I always enjoyed playing OC. I never bummed on it. Never. It's a little kind of different gig, kind of like playing a small town on tour. Like Kearney, Nebraska. A big theory of my music, you know, is to make the stage safe for you to be insane and try stuff and don't worry about anything else. We talk about things important to ourselves. I remember in the [pre-Minutemen] Reactionaries and the first Minutemen, we had a lot of songs about Pedro, and we went up to the Hollywood scene, and they never heard of Pedro. For me, coming from Virginia, that was my life for years—and no one knows about it. So I spray-painted 'PEDRO' on my bass —people only here call it that, so everyone thought it was my name. It's a test if people live here—you know if they say, 'Pay-dro," they've never been here; they're from, like, HB or something.

"Pedro in the old days, there was always some punks in the old days, but it wasn't that big. We kind of stuck together. I always thought of Pedro as a thermos bottle—it wasn't that trendy in those days, still had kind of a stoner '70s thing. I don't see many people from the old days, but that's okay. Nowadays, when I see someone I consider new, they've been into it for 10 years. It's not that new, but it is in my mind because I don't remember them from when I was new. But like Joey Ramone said about punk, there was always room. If people think you don't belong, come over here. And I'm proud to be a part of it."

We Go Speedro performs at a benefit for an all San Pedro compilation CD with 400 Blows, Fishcamp, Toys That Kill and the Rolling Blackouts at Que Sera, 1923 E. 7th St., Long Beach, (562) 599-6170. Sat., 8:30 p.m. $5. 21+.