Pheaturing Punky Meadows

Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Wednesday. How are you? The only thing worse than a diehard Bernie bro who is still discussing his loss three years after the fact is a diehard Bernie bro who chose Trump over Hillary. The "well if Bernie can't win then let's burn it all to the ground" theory comes from a place of privilege. While I don't think it helps anyone to agonize over what happened during the 2016 election instead of how we can change what's happening now, there is another election coming up soon and breaking down why people voted last time could change the results of 2020. In a recent Vice panel called Conservatives and Progressives Debate Feminism, one woman claimed she voted for Trump as a joke. However, it's this moment that is getting a lot of attention... Immediately after declaring she voted for Trump as a joke, she tries to take it back. Nice try. Also, another Trump supporter on the panel compared Obama smoking weed to Trump joking about sexual assault which is of course, ridiculous. Smoking weed isn't even a crime anymore in a lot of states whereas sexual assault is and will be forever, a crime everywhere. If we can learn anything from this it's that a lot of people are still uninformed. In 2020, let's all work hard to take our right to vote seriously.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the millennial Democratic representative starlet that liberals love and conservatives fear, just made a great point about the minimum wage using croissants. Everyone loves the buttery, flaky French breakfast treat known as the croissant. Croissants should be as affordable for everyone as bagels, sliced bread, or any other bread-based breakfast adventure. When Ocasio-Cortez noticed the price of a single croissant at the LaGuardia airport, she used the opportunity to make a point about minimum wage.

Granted, airports are notorious for jacking up prices of everything. I wouldn't be surprised that if in 2040, airports charged you to flush the toilet. Especially in New York City, airports can get away with charging seven dollars for a croissant because they know they can. You're trapped in a sad, sweaty tunnel with a bunch of tired grumpy travelers and you had to throw out all your food and water at security. At that point, I'd pay twenty dollars for a croissant. Since 2009, the federal minimum wage in the United States has been set at $7.25. However, 29 states have agreed this is too low and have raised the rate in their states. In New York City, the minimum wage is $13.50 for small businesses and $15.00 for larger ones. That means that if you work a minimum wage job in NYC, your airport thinks it's perfectly acceptable for you to spend over half of your hourly rate before tax on a snack. Senator Ted Cruz couldn't help himself when he saw Ocasio-Cortez's tweet and fully missed the entire point, as Cruz tends to do...

Of course, he went for a fully extreme "liberal Democrats want free everything! They don't want to work and they expect everything, even croissants to be free!" Nope. Not what she was saying, Ted. Even though this is about croissants, it says a lot about the communication issues happening right now within our government. Democrats: Hey, maybe we could increase the minimum wage so that working people can actually live in the cities they work in? Or at the very least, be able to afford breakfast?
At a sit down in the Oval Office with the NATO Secretary General struggled to say the word "origins." Although the report allegedly exonerates him, President Donald Trump railed against the "oranges" of the Mueller investigation... not one, not twice, but at least four times. In calling for a counter-investigation of the Mueller investigation, a banana republic-y thing to do, Trump kept dropping the word oranges. After saying "no collusion, no obstruction" (drink!), the man with the nuclear codes said, "I hope they no go and take a look at the oranges... the oranges of the investigation. The beginnings. The oranges of, uh, the investigation. The beginnings of that investigation. You look at the orange of the investigation... you will win Pulitzer prizes." As many a person has noted, the president's skin is orange! Just like the fruit! The jokes just write themselves. Maybe the guy who famously wants to do his daughter made a Freudian strip. I mean, uh, Freudian slip. At the same meeting, Trump also misstated his oranges, falsely stating that his father was born in Germany. He wasn't. The president's juiced brain and stumbled speech had the Internet diagnosing him with dementia. As tweeters and pundits were quick to note, Trump is clearly aware that he has the wrong word, as he tries to clarify the "orange" with "the beginning." Does the President of the United States have dementia? And more importantly, can we joke about it?
This one goes out to all the bros in the comments who say "what about Joe Biden?" whenever I write about the fact that current President of the United States Donald Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by 23 women, and bragged about his pussy-grabbing habits on tape. Former Vice President who doesn't know how to retire Joe Biden was accused of inappropriate behavior by former Nevada assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who described her encounter with Biden in an essay for The Cut. It happened on the campaign trail in 2014, when Flores was running for lieutenant governor. "As I was taking deep breaths and preparing myself to make my case to the crowd, I felt two hands on my shoulders. I froze. 'Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?' I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, 'I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?' He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked." Biden's team released a statement, saying that the vice president has no recollection of smelling Flores' hair or what shampoo she used, but is certain that Flores didn't give off the impression that she was uncomfortable at all. While the statement is not an apology, it's not as bad as his treatment of Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. In a comment to The Daily Beast, Flores noted that Biden may not recall the kissing incident because "he is so used to behaving in that way that it is no big deal." A pic search for "Joe Biden" shows just how frequent this weird behavior is.

For what it's worth, Stephanie Carter, the women in the above pic, has called the viral photo "misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends." 
Son-in-law-in-chief Jared Kushner, the evil twin of Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, hasn't had everything handed to him by his father... sometimes, they're handed to him by his father-in-law. It was reported last month that Papa Trump demanded top-secret security clearances for both Jared and Ivanka Trump, despite concerns of the intelligence community. Now Tricia Newbold, a White House security adviser who has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has told the House Oversight Committee that the Trump administration overruled career officials to give out 25 top-secret security clearances to people who are said to pose risks to national security. Newbold told the committee that clearance applications had been denied for reasons including "foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct," all of which sound pretty frickin' bad. The Democratic-controlled House committee are now moving to get to the bottom of this scandal, and has announced that they will start authorizing subpoenas on Tuesday, which was yesterday. It looks like there's a storm coming.
If I had a TARDIS I would go to Little Rock, Arkansas to see Bill Clinton when he was governor. Knowing my luck though I'll get there just as Hillary and Bill are making out in a hammock...

Where is her hand going? Hahaha. Ever go to a museum and see a painting of someone that could be you? This guy did.

I think that's crazy. SO, they tell me I'd see some crazy sights at Walmart. I didn't believe it until I saw this...

I wasn't looking for buns. A few weeks ago in a show-and-tell outside the White House, President Donald Trump whipped out maps to tell the press that ISIS has been defeated. That wasn't the only thing he whipped out to show off.

He loves those boys. Avengers: Endgame is just a few weeks away, and Marvel Studios released new posters honoring the heroes on both sides of Thanos' snap. I think they went too far with the posters though.

Poor Simba. Now from the home office in Port Jefferson, New York here is...

Top Phive Real Dumb Instructions
5. Warning: May contain nuts. On a package of peanuts.
4. Do not eat. On a slip of paper in a stereo box, referring to the styrofoam packing.
3. Access hole only.. not intended for use in lifting box. On the sides of a shipping carton, just above cut-out openings which one would assume were handholds.
2. Warning: May cause drowsiness. On a bottle of Nytol, a brand of sleeping pills.
And the number one real dumb instruction is...
1. Warning: Misuse may cause injury or death. Stamped on the metal barrel of a .22 calibre rifle.

This is a hard one. If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Okay, so there's this teacher who want to quit, but I don't think she should. She wanted to come back onto the Phile and tell us what happened lately. So, please welcome back to the Phile...

Me: Hello, Ms. Laststraw, why do you want to to quit teaching now?

Ms. Laststraw: The other teachers are so gossipy and cliquey like they had never graduated high school.

Me: When did you start teaching?

Ms. Laststraw: I started teaching at 30 after having worked in different types of jobs.

Me: Okay, so, what are the other teachers doing to upset you?

Ms. Laststraw: They talk shit about each other all the time. The one teacher they all told me to avoid turned about to be the only teacher I could stand. Like me, she also worked “in the real world.” The principal wanted me to lower my standards (which were exactly the state standards for that class. Nothing higher) because “they didn’t grow up talking about Shakespeare at the dinner table, like you.”

Me: Hmmm... so, were your parents teachers?

Ms. Laststraw: Umm... neither of my parents graduated high school so I don’t know why he assumed I was in some over educated household just because I had a few degrees.

Me: What do you think his problem is then?

Ms. Laststraw: He's just a major asshole.

Me: Awe. Okay, so, how are your students?

Ms. Laststraw: The students are okay, but I can't stand the other teachers.

Me: Well, just think,.. you only have a month to go. Don't quit yet, Ms. Laststraw.

Ms. Laststraw: Okay, thanks, Jason, now I better get back to class.

Me: Ms. Laststraw, the teacher that wants to quit, kids.

I think we all know which accessory is more terrifying. Uh oh, someone that terrifies me is here. Please welcome back to the Phile...

Me: Hello, Sister, what's up?

Sister Xtian: I had sex last night, even though I know I'm not supposed to.

Me: Uhhhh... okay. And?

Sister Xtian: I said to him please don't break my heart and he said reassuringly that his penis would not reach that far.

Me: Ummmm... no comment.

Sister Xtian: Ha! Now I'm gonna go and look for a guy wearing grey sweatpants.

Me: Do I dare ask why?

Sister Xtian: I can tell from his imprint that his dick is a work of art.

Me: Great. Good luck then. Sister Xtian, the nun who doesn't give a damn, everybody. Why do I bother with this?

From the man who brought you, "The Great Lakes have record deepness," we now have, "The noise from windmills will give you cancer." I'll give you a second to spit out your coffee. Okay great, now let's talk. The president is going after wind and windmills now. During his speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, Trump said, "If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75% in value. And they say the noise causes cancer." This all came after he attacked Hillary Clinton for being an advocate for wind energy, in case you were wondering why he would decide to go off on windmills. It's unclear who "they" are in terms of the people who say the noise from windmills causes cancer, but it's certainly not scientists. Trump didn't provide any factual evidence to this claim, but he did add that birds don't like the noise and said, "If you loved birds, you'd never want to walk under a windmill again." Weird flex, but okay. If wind-related noise causes cancer, why isn’t there a warning label on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Damn, Trump just got roasted harder than he roasted those windmills.

The 96th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...

Relax. Brian Nash will be the guest on the Phile in a few weeks.

A passerby noticed a couple of city workers working along the city sidewalks. The man was quite impressed with their hard work, but he couldn't understand what they were doing. Finally, he approached the workers and asked, "I appreciate how hard you're both working, but what the heck are you doing? It seems that one of you digs a hole, and then the other guy immediately fills it back up again." One of the city workers explained, "The third guy who plants the trees is off sick today."

Today's guest is an American guitarist known for his glam image as a member of the band Angel. His latest solo album "Fallen Angel" is available on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. Please welcome to the Phile... Punky Meadows.

Me: Hello, Punky, welcome to the Phile, man. How are you?

Punky: Great to be here, Jason. Big fan.

Me: Thanks! That's cool. So, where are you from?

Punky: I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm really based out of New Jersey, that's where my band is and I fly back and forth all the time between North Carolina and New Jersey.

Me: So, your old band Angel is getting back together, right?

Punky: Yeah, we have just signed a record deal with Cleopatra Records, and will start recording this month.

Me: Is it with the original members?

Punky: All original members, myself and Frank Dimino, along with current member Danny Farrow. 

Me: You must be excited, right?

Punky: I am real excited to be making a new album and signing with Cleopatra. I strongly believe this will be one of our best and really want to give Angel fans something special.

Me: You have been back on the road for a few years now. Does it feel good to be back on the road? 

Punky: It feels great. I love playing, of course, I'm a musician guitar player and the album has done so well, everybody loves the album so I play that and we're also playing a lot of Angel classics for the fans. It's great, I love it.

Me: You left the business after the break-up of Angel in the early 80s. It was like three decades before you came back. What made you decide to try music again?

Punky: Well, I never stopped playing. I left L.A. in 1988 after Angel was over and I was just tired of the music business. I love playing but the music business is such a cut throat business. They're sharks out there and I was just a kid and was taken advantage of and stuff. I have up the music business but opened up my own businesses on the East Coast in Washington D.C. and Virginia and Maryland there. I was very successful with that and I had good businesses then I got into the stock market as well. I bought some property then after I did that for about eleven years I decided to sell the business and just did the stock market full time. Then I retired from there and moved down to North Carolina. Then about thirteen years ago I guess I went on Facebook for the first time and started to see all these Angel fans and people who loved Angel and there were people who were posting Angel fan pages and things like that. It's funny, when I was playing back before social media we played in a town and people would say that they loved us and we were great, then we would move to the next town and hear the same thing again but we would never see the same people again really. I didn't realize how many Angel fans there were. We didn't make a lot of money but at least we made a lot of people happy and people would say I was their inspiration and I'm the reason they play guitar today. I was really intrigued with the whole thing again and they would post pictures and the pictures would look cool and I fell in love with it all over again.

Me: Were you still doing some music in those thirty years. Punky?

Punky: Yeah, I never stopped writing. Every night I play guitar. I still play every night now when I'm watching TV. No one could watch TV with me because I play along to the soundtracks on the commercials and I'm always writing. I have a little tape recorder that I put down really cool ideas. I never stopped playing, I just wasn't in the music business.

Me: So, how did this album "Fallen Angel" come to be?

Punky: About five years ago I got an offer to do an interview with WRAT in New Jersey. When I did that interview it was broadcast worldwide and when I did the interview their whole website crashed because people were tuning to hear me and I was pretty dumbfounded by that. It was such a big deal. So they finally got the website back up and people go to hear the interview. Afterwards on Facebook people were writing on what a cool interview it was. Keith Roth the DJ who did the interview said in all the seventeen years of interviewing everybody from Robert Plant to Keith Richards and on down he'd never seen that happen. I was pretty dumfounded myself about that, that was really cool. But anyway then I started to get offered all these record deals and Keith Roth and Danny Anniello of Main Man Records got me a deal, and they were cool guys. I've known Danny for a long time, he's a friend of mine so I decided to go with Main Man Records. So, Danny flew down to Charlotte, we wrote a bunch of songs together. We both loved the same kind of music. We both loved pop music and and we also liked it to be heavy too. Like power pop more or less. We recorded the album, it came out great, it got rave reviews from all over the world, it charted on four Billboard charts which was great. For nowadays that's great as most people stream records, but people were buying my record which is great. It's a very diversified record, which is cool. There's something for everybody on there.

Me: Where and what was your first come back gig?

Punky: Our record release party was at B.B. King's in New York and that was great and sold out and people loved it. My very first time playing in so many years I was pretty nervous because I hadn't played in a long time. But it went off good and it's been great ever since.

Me: That's cool. Was it weird having a new album out and it did so well?

Punky: Yeah, it was. We were really excited about the record. We knew it was a good record. When I would record Angel stuff I'd listen to it back once or twice when we recorded it but I didn't really much attention after that because I was playing every night and that sort of thing. But this record I listen to it all the time, it has a really good vibe to it, it kicks ass all over the place and it's the kind of record you can play in the car with your windows down.

Me: I'm thinking you and your album would be really big in Japan. They love this kind of music, more than here in America I think. Do you find that to be true or am I wrong?

Punky: Well, its funny, when Angel first came out in Japan it was Aerosmith, KISS, Queen and Cheap Trick were their biggest bands. We went and played Japan and it was like Beatlemania. I could tell you all kinds of crazy stories of it when we went over there. It was just nuts. We did ten major cities over there and it all sold out, it was crazy. We had to rent whole two floors of a hotel in Japan because they'd be thousands of kids all over the place waiting to see us and stuff. We had five body guards a piece, we couldn't go anywhere without being mobbed and our hair being pulled out and everything else. I think it was because rock and roll was an import to Japan, it hadn't started there yet, it was something that they craved, they didn't have their own rock and roll acts so to speak. Just like it was in Russia and a lot of places, rock and roll was something they never really heard and they were dying to hear it. I guess it was because our image too, our music us well, but mostly our image. I suppose to this day it's even like that. I just think they appreciate music in general and that's what is really cool about it. They love their rock and roll. More power to them and I love them for that.

Me: So, who were your musical influences, Punky?

Punky: I love the Ventures and all the blues guitar players like Clapton, Hendrix, Page, all those kind of guys. That's where I cut my teeth. The first song I learnt was the Ventures' "Walk, Don't Run" and "Perfidia." I still play those songs to this day, those are great tunes. I know that's when I first saw the Fender Stratocaster when I saw the Ventures and I thought wow, what a cool guitar.

Me: So, how hard was it to record a new album after such a long time?

Punky: Actually, Bobby Pantella, he's actually the drummer in a band called Monster Magnet, but they only tour about once a year in Europe mostly, and he has a recording studio that we did most of the recording. Danny knew Bobby so I talked to Bobby on the phone, we discussed how we wanted to do things. Recording is different nowadays than when I was in Angel. When we started recording the basic tracks we would all get in the same room together with amps, guitars, drums, bass and stuff and we would sit down and do take after take until we finally got it and it had a good vibe and was tight and that sort of thing. Nowadays how we do it is I'd play to a click track then after I've done with that Bobby comes and puts the drums on. We have to play along to a click track because we have to have good timing because with Pro Tools, how it's done nowadays with copying and pasting and all that sort of stuff. It was not like that back in the day. I was concerned about that because I was used to getting a good vibe with the band and making sure we were tight and the music gelled.

Me: Who else in on the record?

Punky: Felix Robinson from Angel. Felix is one of the best players out there. He could play anything, he could play funk, jazz, soul, country, rock, blues, everything. Felix is a really talented musician, he's a keyboard player also so he was my first choice as far as bass goes. We had Bobby playing drums, and we had Felix of course. We wanted to find a singer and we had a lot of people sending tapes in but I didn't want an 80s sounding singer. I was someone 70s sounding, but also someone that had a modern feeling to it to. I wanted to give the fans what they wanted but at the same time I wanted it to sound fresh and have a modern feeling to it to. A lot of people said this album has that big rock feel of the 70s and stuff and still has modern feel to it as well. A lot of singers came in, they were good singers and stuff. Then we got Chandler, I heard his tape and he was singing the heavy metal stuff that I'm not crazy about. He sent some other stuff in like acoustic stuff where he's playing with some kids, and I thought I like the way this guy sounds. So we gave him "Straight Shooter," put him in the studio and let him record that and after I heard that I knew he was the guy. He was perfect, he's got that soulful voice and he could sing melodic and he could sing anything. Chandler is such a natural singer and he really is good. Chandler was friends with Charlie who is a keyboard player. We weren't looking for keyboard player but Charlie said we got to get him into the band, he knew every Angel song there is.

Me: How did you first get interested in music and playing guitar?

Punky: Well, when I was a kid I first saw Elvis Presley of course. I got in trouble because this older kid took me to the movies when I was such a kid baby and I saw Elvis' Kid Creole or something and I was memorized. I got in trouble because my parents thought I was lost or stolen or something. They finally found me and the police were looking for me. There was a picture of me in the paper with my crew cut and stuff. After I saw Elvis I wanted to comb my hair and keep my upper lip up all the time and keep singing like Elvis and that sort of thing. Then I picked up the guitar when I was about fourteen, I got my first little crappy acoustic guitar. I remember playing "Peter Gunn" with the top string with my thumb. I said, "Dad, listen..." My dad said, "That's good, son, if you learn to playa couple of other songs I'll get you a better guitar." So I practiced and practiced and that guitar was really cheap and hard to play but I learnt a lot of songs and my dad took me to a pawn shop and I got a cheap electric guitar but I remember it was the coolest guitar ever and smelt like cherry when I opened the case up. Then I started learning the Venture songs, and "Twilight Zone" and all the TV theme songs. We lived in D.C. and Virginia was near us so we had a long of country influences too. When the Beatles came out of course everything changed for everybody. I had Beatlemania like everybody else and all I wanted to do is play the guitar.

Me: You must of picked up the guitar really quick. You were a teenager when you were in the band the Cherry People, right? What was it like when you first started?

Punky: Yeah, I was really good at it. I was really focused too. I get really focused when I get into something. In fact before the Cherry People we were called the English Setters, with the whole British Invasion thing. Out very first show was at the junior high school and we all were white shirts, with black pants and Beatle boots and Beatle haircuts. We played at the auditorium there and all the girts started screaming. I sang "Boys" by the Beatles and "Stop in the Name of Love" and we did some other Beatles songs to and the girls screamed and I thought how, I knew this is what I wanted to do. The English Setters became the Cherry People and we would go to Georgetown which was like Greenwich Village in New York and we would go there and we were like fifteen and playing nightclubs. People would love us but the cops would raid the place and we would have to run out and hide because we were under age. We got our chops down then with the Summer of Love we wanted to make it big so we went to New York. We knew we couldn't do it in D.C. so we went to New York City.

Me: When did you first get signed and how?

Punky: A manager saw us and thought we were like the Monkees, so cute. We were playing all "Sgt. Pepper" and we were signed to a record deal on Heritage Records, a subsidiary of MGM. We recorded an album but it was all studio players, musicians that played on it except for one song. We did all the singing on it so it was like a Monkees kind of thing. That was the Cherry People thing, then after that we went to California and were on "American Bandstand" with Dick Clark. We did some tours around California and New York and things like that.

Me: What happened after that? How did your style of music change?

Punky: We came back and that's when I saw Jimi Hendrix. I just flipped out when I saw that and I thought that's what I want to do, I don't want to do the Monkees, I wanted to do Hendrix. So we kind of left that whole scene and went back to Washington D.C. where we knew we could get work as a house band. We played three years straight in the same barn. Every night we would play six sets and when we got our chops down we started writing our own songs. We just got better and better and tighter and tighter. The Cherry People kind of stayed there and that's when I really learnt to play really. Then after we played I would go to after blues clubs in the black neighborhoods and they had an open mic where we could sit in with these blue players. We had to be brave because those cats could players circles around us and they would teach you about the blues. That's all I wanted to do, play the blues because that's where it was at. I would get up and play and they would give me all this encouragement and stuff.

Me: So when did Angel come to be?

Punky: I went to Boston with Mickie Jones and we formed Daddy Warbux that became Bux. Ralph Morman was the singer in that. He actually went on and sang with Joe Perry and Savoy Brown. We put Bux together and made a record with that. Then I went back to D.C. again as I knew I could get work there with my reputation there. Gregg Giuffria saw us again and said let's put a band together again and this time we put together Angel. We put it together upstairs in a club in a loft where we worked at. It was just Mickie, Gregg and I and we started writing songs up there. Then we started auditioning singers then we saw Barry Brandt, we thought he was the drummer and we didn't like the singer, we saw Barry Brandt. Mickie knew Frank so we got Frank and then the we got Frank we put Angel together. We showcased ourselves at Bogey's and people went crazy.

Me: Wasn't the band discovered by Gene Simmons?

Punky: Yeah, KISS came in one night, they had been playing at the Capitol Center, they saw us and freaked out and Gene and Paul and Ace came to us and said, 'You guys are fucking awesome." Glitter hits D.C. because before that it was all t-shirts and jeans and we were just all glittered out and that kind of stuff. Gene loved it and I used to do this pose where I'd hold my hand up over my head and point to my guitar neck and play with one hand and Gene made that same pose and said, "Punky, that's classic." That's how we got a record with Casablanca because KISS thought we were so great. 

Me: Did you ever open for KISS?

Punky: Our manager said there's this guy Neil Bogart who has a new record company called Casablanca, let's see if he'd be interested. Our manager calls Neil Bogart at Casablanca and says he's got a band called Angel and they're really good. "KISS says they're really great. Would you like them to audition for you?" Neil said, "I'll tell you what, KISS is playing at Anaheim in a couple of weeks. I'll have Angel open up for them and check the band out and see what they're like. Let me call Gene and I'll call you back." Then Neil calls back a few minutes later and says, "I'll tell you what, I'll sign the band sight unseen because Gene says under no circumstances will Angel ever open for KISS." Of course Gene and I would cross paths on the road all the time and stuff and we were all friends.

Me: KISS was all dressed in black and you guys were all dressed in white. Where did that come from?

Punky: It came from Casablanca and our manager too. It was a no brainer. We were all glammed out like the New York Dolls kind of look because we thought that was cool. Because I was a big Hendrix fan and had my white Strat and named it Angel, that's why we were named Angel. It's a no brainer of course Angel would be all white. That was presented to us and we thought that was a pretty cool idea. We went into the studio and took some pictures and we had costumes made and that sort of thing. 

Me: Why did Angel split up, Punky?

Punky: What happened was Casablanca. Neil Bogart unfortunately got the axe from Casablanca for I think they said misappropriation of funds. After that happened to him Casablanca just fell apart and it was just run by a bunch of college kids and they weren't doing anything. We had a live album out and they weren't promoting it. We kind of just drifted apart. We couldn't do anything with another record company because we were still signed to Casablanca so we kind of split off. Gregg and I went in one direction and it just kid of fizzled out. It wasn't like we broke up because we didn't like each other. Our hands were tied and we couldn't do anything and we wanted to do something so we just disbanded Angel so we could all do other things.

Me: That's so crazy, Punky. Thanks so much for being on the Phile, Punky.

Punky: It was my pleasure, I hope to see you at one of my shows sometime.

Me: I will try. Thanks, Punky. Good luck in the future. Come back when the Angel album comes out.

That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Punky Meadows for a cool interview. The Phile will be back on Monday with Nile Rodgers. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.

I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon