Rob Ruckus has a history in Vegas. It’s a good one. He witnessed the birth of this city’s punk scene in the 1980s—both from the stage, as a member of The Vermin, and from the crowd as a regular presence at Vegas’ generator-run desert band gigs. He appeared, with former bandmate Dirk Vermin, on two seasons of the A&E reality series Bad Ink. He was one of Southern Nevada’s first advocates for medicinal cannabis, and one of its first budtenders. He makes cool, silk-screened Vegas T-shirts (check out his Etsy shop, Hardcore Las Vegas). And he continues to perform music locally, with The Souvenairs, The Shakewells and Self Abuse.
Now, Ruckus is building on that unique local history as the caretaker of the recently opened Punk Rock Museum’s Jam Room. He spends the day surrounded by instruments and amplifiers belonging to the likes of Joan Jett, Fishbone and Rancid, keeping them in performance-ready shape and handing them to awestruck museum patrons to play. The Weekly caught up with him after another blissful day of tuning guitars and gluing smashed basses back together.
Rob Ruckus
How was the museum’s first Punk Rock Bowling weekend? It was one of the greatest weekends of my life. I mean, I got to play guitar with one of the Ramones [C.J.]. I got to hang out with Lee Ving. I handed a bass to Louiche [Mayorga] from Suicidal Tendencies every day. I ran sound for Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and The Casualties. Don Bolles from the Germs. Pinch from The Damned. Everybody was doing guided tours over the weekend and hanging out. It was absolutely amazing—a huge family reunion.
Speaking of family, the museum’s Vegas wall is amazing—all that local punk history. Did you have a hand in that? Originally, Danny [Breeden, frontman for Vegas punk band FSP] was going to curate it by himself. Danny has most of his own artwork, but he didn’t have a lot of the other stuff, and I did. I’m somewhat of a hoarder when it comes to old punk rock stuff; I have tens of thousands of albums, flyers, posters and sh*t lying around. So when they first said they were going to do this, I was like, “Just come over to my house and take whatever you want.” … I called Robert Picardo and was, like, “Hey, do you have something from Subterfuge?” And luckily, he still had their kick drum head. My Rickenbacker bass went in. Dirk [Vermin] had donated his bass before I became a part of it; he belongs in there, too.
And the sign for the Underground. Absolutely. If it wasn’t for [former owner] Wayne Coyner … Half of the records I have behind me right now came from the Underground. He was our Punk Rock University. You wouldn’t even have to look through the racks; he would tell you what you wanted. Like, “Hey, I just got this new Misfits or Dead Kennedys or Discharge or whatever record that I think you’re gonna like.” And he was right 99.9% of the time. … The Underground changed a lot of lives.
When I was last at the museum, you talked about gluing Fat Mike’s bass back together, and doing painstaking work on other instruments to make them playable. Is that another secret talent of yours? (Laughs.) Nope. I’m not a luthier. I’m a punk rocker that’s been playing music for 40 years, breaking his own sh*t and having to fix it quick while you’re still onstage.
Do you have a favorite instrument in the Jam Room? My absolute favorite is Chett Lehrer’s setup from the Reagan’s In album by Wasted Youth. It’s his Marshall amplifier and his 1969 Dan Armstrong guitar. Now, those Dan Armstrong guitars are basically a big piece of plexiglass called Lucite, and they’re just heavy as hell. So Chett sanded down the top and the bottom of it to make it thinner, and then drilled a whole bunch of big-ass, like, inch-wide holes into it, which changed the tone of the guitar. So if you plug in that guitar, it sounds exactly like Reagan’s In. It’s one of the most amazing things to me, because I grew up on that album.
A lot of kids’ first version of “F*ck Authority” was by Pennywise. Well, mine was by Wasted Youth, and it was back in the early ’80s. To be able to pick up that same exact guitar that recorded that album, which makes that high-pitchy, screechy sound, and to be able to play those songs on that guitar … to me, it doesn’t get any more special.
You sound really happy, Rob. I’m the happiest I’ve been in years, man. But it took 40 years’ worth of work to get to this, so I deserve it. One of my favorite things about this is being able to call up my mom and go, “Remember when you used to ground me for crawling out the window and jumping down the second story of the house to go out and play gigs out in the middle of the desert with these terrible-sounding bands? Well, now we have a museum. I’m in it, and I work there.”
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