Interview by Sammy JC

This year’s F Yeah Fest, the brainchild of 23-year-old promoter Sean Carlson, takes place in Echo Park and downtown Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday. The Set List will be running a series of articles to introduce readers to the festival and the bands involved, beginning with musical curator Keith Morris.
As a founding member of hardcore pioneers Black Flag, Keith Morris quickly established himself as a powerful creative force in the nascent ’70s American underground. After leaving that band in 1979, he became the lead singer of the Circle Jerks. With both groups, he helped to propel the musical ideals and aesthetics of punk rock across America, setting the standard for DIY-style music careers -- decades before any band would be labeled as “indie rock.”

Q: How did you get involved with Sean Carlson and the F Yeah Fest?
A: I met Sean when he was an intern at Epitaph Records and later he had asked me to do spoken word at one of the earlier Fuck Yeah Fests. We were upstairs at the Echo and there were so many people inside that it would have taken me a half hour to get to the stage so I never made it. So I go outside and there were as many people out front on the sidewalk as there were inside the club.
And I’m really into this because there’s all this chaos. It got to the point that it was difficult to see the bands. It was so thick; it was difficult to breath. And I go looking for Sean and he’s nowhere to be found.
So I walked out to the front, decided to walk over to the bus stop and get a bus ride home. I’m sitting there on the bus bench and Sean is sitting on the bus bench drinking whisky or scotch or some really cheap booze.
I’m like, “Dude, this is your music festival. Why aren’t you over there in charge, chiefin’ out, acting presidential?” He was like “Dude, there’s so much anarchy. I just had to throw in the towel.” So I said, “Look, give me a ding when you want to do this again, I would like to be part of it.” I’ve now been working on it with him for three years and he’s been doing it for about five.

Q: Even though Circle Jerks are not playing at F Yeah Fest this year, you are the festival’s musical curator. What makes the music at F Yeah Fest different from other music festivals, particularly among the many this summer in Southern California?
A: Well, it’s actually really simple. If you look at the roster of bands, it’s not a roster of bands where we gotta charge $40 to $50 for a ticket. We have certain local bands that we want and certain national bands we want. If you notice, none of the bands are anyone who would be on any of these other festivals. But maybe in a couple years if somebody blows up they might be.

Q: In your opinion, what’s the state of the music industry?
A: The scenario is all of these people that work at the record companies became more important than the most important part of what they’re doing, which is finding good music to turn loose on the public. But the fact is no matter what’s happening, people are always going to want to listen to good music. Just like women and cosmetics. Women are always going to want to put on make up, So there ya go …

Q: When you formed the Circle Jerks in 1979, did you ever imagine you’d still be performing 30 years later?
A: Well some of the stuff we wrote back then is just as important now. With the events in the world and a lot of the anger it’s just as important now. Actually, now we have even more things to be angry about.