| The Vandals – The Legend Of Pat Brown Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Pat Brown was a real guy and was good friends with the early members of the Vandals and was a legend in the early OC punk/skater scene. Here is the story I heard about him. He was a notorious punker back in the day that pulled some harcore shit, including trying to run over some cops. The song memorializes some of his finer moments. He blasted the storefront of an asian massage parlor named "Cirlcle Massage" with a shotgun after they charged him $50 for a BJ. He burglarized a music store. "Hello marshal amps" implies that some of the equipment he stole was later used by the band. On a hunting trip the trigger slipped and someone almost died. Pretty self-explanatory. He was apparently pretty reckless and pretty harcore. He rolled with a shotgun on his seat and wasn't shy about using it. "Me and joey know" -- he was really good buds with Joe Escalante, Vandals bassist. Who knows whether he actually drove around with a sawed-off shotgun on his seat, or that he would regulary shoot said shotgun. Legends have a way of growing over time. But one fact is clear -- the guy tried to run over some cops with his car. The details of this story vary, but this was what made him legendary. I was always under the impression that after he burglarized a stereo store he was at the cuckoo's nest [an now-defunct Costa Mesa bar that the punkers frequented and brawled with the cowboys from the nearby Zubies bar -- all of which is memorialized in the song Urban Struggle] when two [not three] undercover cops dressed up as punks rolled up on him and he tried to run them over with his car. I don't know why the cops were at the cuckoo's nest undercover but it seems like from the song that perhaps it was to investigate pat for the stereo store break-in. I heard that all of this transpired in the parking lot at the Cuckoo's nest. I also understood the line about him having holes in his car to imply that the cops shot at him. Either way, he certainly tried to run over some undercover cops and was in fact sent to jail for it [attmepted murder]. I also heard that he was a skinhead. Now this is suspect for a couple of reasons. First off, the guy who told me this was a skinhead and he said that Pat was a legend in his own right with their boys. The bias is obvious. But secondly, he was a skater and a punker and he could have been labeled a skinhead by association, especially to an outsider who knows nothing about skinheaads or punkers. He hung around with some crazy guys and they all caused alot of shit. Perhaps there were some skinheads or just some punkers with shaved heads, but I doubt that he was a member of an organized skinhead gang. He died in 1996 from head injuries sustained in a biking accident. | |
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