Old Punk Guitarist Really Wishes He Sold Out

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Former punk band guitarist, Gavin Lewis, wishes he had sold out years ago when given the chance.
Former punk band guitarist, Gavin Lewis, wishes he had sold out years ago when given the chance.

BALTIMORE, MD – The former guitarist of a punk band has admitted that he wishes he had sold out when given the opportunity years ago.

“Man, looking back on it, we really should have sold out instead of trying to be true to the punk scene,” said Gavin Lewis. “Being punk back in the 90s was cool and we all looked at selling out as a bad thing but… turns out selling out was totally a good idea and maybe if we would have I wouldn’t have to get up a 6 a.m. to drive to a job that I hate.”

Lewis, guitarist for the now defunct band Spume, is now a scheduler for a construction equipment company.

“I see Green Day, a band who opened for us, out there still making huge amounts of money and I just sit there and stare at the screen and just think that maybe we should have sold out because working a desk job fucking sucks and selling out is way fucking better than this,” said Lewis. “If I could go back in time I’d slap myself and my band mates across our dumb faces and tell us to sell out as fucking fast as we can. I’d take with me a picture of this bullshit cubicle and show them that this is the future. I guarantee a picture of this cube would scare the shit out of us back then. It scares me everyday now.”

According to Lewis, Spume was approached prior to a concert in the early 90s by a record label representative.

“Yeah, this dude came up to us and said he was with Capital Records and that he wanted to sign us to a recording contract, but we were punk, and we thought that selling out was bullshit so, of course, we told the guy to go fuck himself,” said Lewis. “After we told the guy to fuck himself, we stood on stage with our backs turned to him and his friends and refused to play. A couple of the punk kids thought that was awesome, but those kids didn’t buy any of our records and none of our merch so… yeah. The dude takes off with his big money contract in hand, and then a couple years later we broke up because we were poor as shit, and we needed to get real jobs.”

Lewis hasn’t talked to his former bandmates in years but says he is sure they all wish they had sold out as well.

“Jim (Goligoski) is a sales rep for a window company in Georgia and I think Tom (Bowman) is, like, a substitute teacher or something like that. I look them up on LinkedIn every once in a while, but I haven’t really talked to them in a couple years,” said Lewis. “But I’m sure, if you talked to them, they’d tell you they’d rather we sold out than selling windows or teaching a bunch of dumb kids. Yeah. We would have been huge. ”

Peter Bergan, Artist Rep for Capital Records from 1987 – 2012, remembers offering Spume the rejected contract.

“That one was just weird,” said Bergan. “My assistant and I showed up to this shitty venue in LA and thought we were going to make these guys millionaires. Instead, they actually tell us ‘no’ and threaten to piss on us. I thought that was a little odd, but whatever. Things worked out for us in the end. We ended up walking down the street and seeing a new band that absolutely blew us away. That band? None other than the Butthole Surfers. I think we came out on top in this case.”

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