0:00 [Music] Welcome back to an exhilarating time here on the Careful Boys where we have Paul Gomez. Everybody, let's go. So, this is definitely one of the crazy stories that you've shared here. It's we're literally just like hanging on the edge of our seats here and all this stuff. You literally just uh got this crazy deal from Nike and you basically walked away cuz you're like, I can't take that deal. You're making more money doing a bunch of other things and then suddenly you're getting a deal from Innercope. No, it was Warner Brothers, but it was Intercope. Tom was at Innercope. So Tom like one of the one of the best human talk about a story. Guy started in the mail room at Warner Brothers as a kid and became the president and head guy at Warner Brothers. Wow. And founded Inner Scope with Jimmy and Ted. Wow. So he's very very very very gnarly. He's he's uh
0:52 super was super like you go through his house and he's all these letters from Tupac to him. Like I actually totally break from that, but I I got to ride up in the elevator. The first time I was going incope and I was on the elevator with Tupac's mom and Biggiey's mom. What? First time I was in the elevator going up with them to Tom's office. I was like both of them at the same time. That's crazy. Crazy stories. Like what the how did that happen? They were just I just was going I had I become I Tom drugged me in some crazy meetings like I was I was I I'll share this story. Let me get back to this one. Yeah, these side stories are insane. No, I have a million side stories are psycho. Like Bob said we should write a book cuz nobody would ever believe the stories that we have. It's like you people go there's no way this guy's for real and they go oh wait he's for real. There's another So before he gets that story so we have a mutual friend named
1:42 Tall and he works uh he runs Nitro Circus now which is Rob Derk's like action sports um production company and uh he was telling me you guys are you guys familiar with Agenda? Mhm. Yeah. Giant streetwarevention. Convention. Uh Tall told me you saved Agenda one year. No, I didn't save it. I've made it. I put ASR out of business and made Agenda what it was and it sold for millions. Two years later. Yeah. He said like he's cuz Agenda was here. ASR was here and then he said you did some move. Then I flipped the script that flipped the script on the whole thing and Agenda became the new biggest ████ and sold for a gazillion dollars to magic. And I was like, me and him were just ████ like eating hummus and Peter bread while he's talking. I was like, damn, that's so Paul. That's ████ crazy. So small cuz he took me to this Israeli restaurant in Vegas. It's actually really good. And I was
2:32 like, what? Shout out to Tall Coopermanman. He's he's Dude, that guy I love that guy. He it it was not to get off track, but he lost some family in in the October. Yeah. He's a wonderful human. And we just lost a really dear friend, Dingo, too. So, it's been a rough ride. So, shout out to Tom. I love you, brother. So, back to So, um Nike and um so I call Tom and he's like I'm like, "Hey, this is what's going." He tells me the money. He calls me back. He goes, "I'll give you that money. I'll give you that money to um start your record label. Start your record label." I'm like, "Okay." Because by that time I it like I was involved with No Doubt and all these different bands that were, you know, I had an ANR gig bringing bands to the label cuz it was like I was always out and I had made friends with all these bands through the years. So everyone knew me and then I
3:23 had concert tours. So then I was bands I'd worked with, excuse me, had become massive like huge acts like multi-million dollar axe, excuse me. So, I call Bob back and I'm like, "Hey, I got the money." And he's like, "What?" I mean, Tom Tom's going to give me the money to start my record label. So, thank you. I'm super grateful, but I can't move forward. And it was like, and it which was crazy to me because all the music, all the all the network was coming through Bob and I, but mostly through me. God, I never it's never about me. And it was like and Rick Dvau had a huge play in it and all these things. So I was like and Bob's like I I don't want to make the deal without you.
4:15 And I'm like okay. So he called Nike and said hey Paul's got to be set up this way. So I was supposed to report how much money I make on the side to Nike. I never did. So then so then we started our we started our record label. So me and my friend Jordan Tapis, he's like one of the biggest guys in TV now. He's like s like super gnarly. But we it was called a record collection. And um the first the first guy we tried to sign was a guy named Satiron. Are you guys familiar with Satiron? Google Satiron sometime. Satiron is a a Norwegian black metal guy who thinks he's 5,000 years old. Dang. What the ████ That's crazy. And he's not being satirical. No, it's sat satirical. Did you look up satirical? Yeah. Yeah. Black metal band formed in
5:05 Oslo in 1991. Satir and Frost have been the band's core member since 93. Wow. Who thinks he's 5,000 years old? Sat and Frost are such gangster names. So Satiron cuz we're like dude that would be so gnarly to sign Satiron cuz everyone's like they were like what would you do that for? And I'm like cuz it's freaking it's gnarly, right? So we didn't sign but so we went like a eight nine months and I when I started the label I got all this money and I took Tom Wally's son Ryan my friend Jordy another guy named Mike Pitchetelli who owns um the brand effing awesome with you guys familiar with that brand. You never heard of the brand effing awesome sounds kind of stop putting the fu c i g on it but it's him and Jason deal. So they started that brand so no matter what anyone said they still had to say their brand was everyone. Nice. That's funny. So, we I
6:00 everyone who worked for me, I paid them a lot of money cuz I'm like if we'll get to this story. It's a funny one. So, um we I pay them a lot of money. So, these are kids and I was paying them like 120 grand a year. Okay. And this is like in the '9s or in the early 2000s, I'm sorry. And I'm like cuz if you have a real job and you get real wage, you don't want to lose your job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we had eight months of not signing a band. Damn. And they're like, "Why are you jump?" Because we didn't we didn't want to sign anything that we didn't like. So then we ended our first artist we signed was a guy named Harmar Superstar. Harmar Superstar. Okay. If you Google Harmar Superstar, the names are crazy. So crazy. He's He looks like George Castanza. Oh ████ But he sings like Justin Timberlake. No way. I got you. I got to give you this photo cuz if this guy sings like Justin Timberlake, dude, that's crazy. He's insane. I don't know
6:51 if you're allowed to play music on here. I could play for like 3 seconds at a time. Harmar superstar. I think you'd be able. That's not what I thought this was going to be. Wow, dude. Amazing. Harmar superstar. So we so we he was on um I forgot what lab, but we put him out and we and it just blew up. Like it it blew up. People were tripping out. Like superm models were freaking out on him. He was like he strips down to his underwear and stands on his head like do headstand harmony. in his underwear. He the label was uh record colle. Yeah. Yeah. Record collection. Yeah. Record collection. So if you Google farm standing on his head like he he gets totally down to his underwear right there. The left far left
7:43 right there. Yeah. Yeah. So show those guys that. Whoa. You're not even kidding. Dang. He was stripped down to his skiddies and girls loved him. Like it was insane. Especially when he did that. So we did. So we did that. We ended up doing the Vladimir vodka campaign. Can you pull that up? There's no music to that. Vladimir Karmar vodka campaign using a pink hat like riding a unicorn. What the hell? There it is. Superstar R. Wow. The new Blood of our Vodka front man to describe my personality.
8:35 Oh, dude. This guy kills. To describe Blood of our Vodka, I'd say lucky to have me. Blood of our vodka. Some people have just got it. So people just got it. That's awesome. So that was the first artist we signed. Wow. That's the first artist we signed. Full moon tur choice. Norwegian black metal armor. It blew up, dude. Like they were like, "What is going on with you guys?" And then we just started signing all these different bands, but we were called the record collection. And um nobody was doing vinyl anymore. So we found a way to press vinyl cuz you I wasn't going to be called a CD collection. We're going to the record collection. So we had to put everything out on
9:25 vinyl. So at this point in time, I'm sitting in a room with Tom Molly and Shawn Ferry. Do you guys know who Shawn Ferry is? Sean Ferry started Napster. Oh wow. So Sean Ferry was the first person he started in his high in his college thing was sharing music. It wasn't Sean Parker or whatever. Sean Perry. Oh, Sean Perry. Sorry, Napster. I'm pretty sure, but I am old. I'm not facteing you. That's Sean Parker. Oh, the other guy is Sean. There it is. Maybe dyslexic, bro. But hey, got you. You know, we report the news here and only the truth. Only. So, so that so at that time I'm I'm like the constant marketing guy and I said I told the record labels I'm like look everyone I mean I if you're the oldest in your
10:16 family you probably don't get this but Sean Fanny actually oh yeah whatever. See close. So if you look at that the first time I saw a naked girl on my older brother's record cover. First time I saw drug paraphernalia on my older brother's record. Everything I saw was in my brother older brother's album collection, right? So I go to the guys, I'm like, "Look, you should put everything out on vinyl and make a collectible cuz everything is on the CD." And back then, if you got a CD, it was watermarked, so you couldn't share it and you couldn't do these things with it. And so I'm put everything out on vinyl. We're putting it on vinyl. And like, oh no, no, we're going to do this, that, and the other. What's the number one most collectible thing now for kids? Vinyl. And I'm like, "You should have put it on the vinyl." Like my my daughter's got a vinyl collection as big as this wall, right? Everyone collects vinyl. I'm like, "Dude, sounds
11:06 terrible." It's like the popping and the cracking of it all. It's like whatever. But that's what makes it cool though, right? That's what makes it cool, right? So, you look at that. So, we did the record collection and we we put out like all these great records and the last project we did is we did um Spider-Man 3 with Sam Ramy. His last that was the last Sam Ramy era of doing Spider-Man 3. So we did the soundtrack with that which is was super super fun and it was like we put out seven records in seven months with John Fishante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So we had like Omar Rodriguez produce one, we had Ian Mccay produce one from Bugazi. We had all these different people make records and we were just doing so much different stuff that people weren't into. And at that time like what are you guys doing? We had this band called the Rolling Blackouts from Lumita. Like my son was saying dude you guys were ahead of their time. We had um Simon Daw is now Daw and
11:56 then Blake is in a different band. We had all these bands that the Walkman we had a huge hit with this a song called The Rat. But this was like all pre anybody like into that hipster kind of scene. And like now all these records that we put out are super collectible. Wow. Right. And then as we looked at it, it just like music industry was going thing. Things at Nike were going. This is like kind of later in the, you know, going in 2010 and I was like kind of just over a lot of the stuff I was doing. It was just like and then so I had the record label. I gave it to Jordy said, "Hey, take it. It's yours." Blah blah. Do whatever you want with it. I've always I always tell people if you ever meet anyone who says my company dies, if I die, I go, "You don't own a company. You have a hobby." I Jason Khalipa I one
12:48 time I I go I told him one time he's like oh so I go get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and I go people know who you are that's really hard for people to do I tell I think I've told you that too it's like people know your name people know your guys' names that's huge that is a massive success if somebody goes hey I know you that's hard like that most people go through their whole lives anonymous well I guess it depends on the context on how they know you it's but even still it's but even still like it's like I I don't agree with a lot of the way people are known on social media these days whatever but they worked hard to get known right and I think if you look at things now we give really terrible people a voice that they shouldn't have and that sucks and that's where I could get into the American traditional but like let's kind of keep going where that goes so we
13:39 started that and then when we started bringing in executives from Nike I'm going to tell one story before I get off the music thing. So, really funny story. So, I'm with Tom Molly and uh we're going to the House of Blues and he's I'm going to bring you in this meeting. You just come just hang out. Like, all right, cool. So, it's Tom, Jimmy, David Guffin. Oh, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg. Oh, wow. So, I'm like all go sit there. I'm sitting at the end of the table like just whatever kicking it. And I'm like, "Oh, they're going after Disney." And I'm like, "Oh." I go outside and go, "Hey, Bob, I'm sitting with these guys and they're going after Disney and they're going to start this thing called DreamWorks." Oh, ████ off. That's crazy. That's so ████ dude. I was like, "Oh, this is gnarly." Are
14:29 these the days before NDAs where random people can be in random meetings? It was just a meeting at the House of Blues. It was just like at a concert. It was like No, it was a House of Blues. they have to set up a restaurant and it was like Deep and Records was right there on the corner and um Innercope was down the street and they just all kind of just came there and those guys are the guys responsible for like Aladdin and stuff like that and then they got denied something from Disney which is why they're like ████ it we'll make DreamWorks. Okay, so you guys want to hear another crazy story that this has just happened. So have you seen that movie King of Kings? I haven't yet. So it's amazing. It's it's it's it's my son called me crying. He's like dude it's the best story of Jesus ever. It's it's those guys who were at Disney, they made the Prince of Egypt. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then Disney got all woke and
15:19 they bounced and started this new thing and they just put out King of Kings. Wow. So it's a whole different crew of people who bounced from Disney. But that's how that's what happened to your point that they were trying to do something. They got and those guys bounced and started DreamWorks. So it was like but I just remember sitting there going this is crazy. It happened. And the crazy thing is when they when they uh bounced off Disney and they started DreamWorks, that's why they made Shrek because Shrek was supposed to parody everything about Disney and then Shrek ended up becoming Yeah. So that that was like their first thing that they made. ████ that's cool. So that just sitting at that table when that happened. Wow, that's insane. There's going to be a green ogre. He's going to live under just just a concept of what of what they were doing. So fast forward, we we get executives from Nike and and the whole trip, everything's kind of hectic and crazy. I'm I'm just
16:09 like I had that. So I was in Australia and I I put on this uh this we'll get into the agenda story cuz this is how it happened. So we doing the 50-y year anniversary of the US Open Surfing huge event, right? And and back this time, you had ASR, you had Surf Expo, you had these big trade shows, but they started like when I was a kid, you'd go to with your resume and try to get sponsored and they cut the kids out. And Aaron would have this little limousine that would come to that would come pick you up at ASR and then drive you over to the agenda tragend tracer was super street and whatever. And Tall was like tall and I I didn't really know Aaron, but I knew Tall and I'm like, "Dude, Agenda's rad. Like the whole street thing is like killing it." So I go to I go to tall. I go, "Hey, we're going to do the US Open surfing. We should bring Agenda to the
16:59 US Open Surfing." And Aaron's like, "I have nothing to do with surf blah blah blah blah." I go, he's a owner of agenda. Owner of agenda. And I'm like, all dude, it has nothing to do with that. Like, let's just do so tall brokered the whole deal. And so they show up at my office. I'm like, look, we're going to take over the beach. I'm going to do a I'm doing Weezer live on the beach. Wow. Free. Like cuz I had a whole network. I used to do this thing called walk the walk where it was like I would go to every different high school and I would give them a line and they got to deconstruct and redesign the line and they would compete and we would have this big runway and like I had Paul Walker, God rest his soul, one of the most wonderful humans on the planet, Paul Walker, Will I Am from the Black IPs, all the all my friends and they would come be the judges of these kids design show, right? So I told Aaron this is what I'm doing. And I'm like, "Dude,
17:50 bring agenda to Huntington Beach. Put it on the beach and let kids come to it." He's like, "I don't know, dude." Blah, blah, blah. I'm telling you, dude, it's going to be groundbreaking. I go, "I promise you if we do this within a year, ASR will be out of business. Promise you we'll put him out of business." And he's like, and I'm got me, I'm like, "Oh, crazy idea." Like, we're going to do it's going to be insane. Yeah. T me told me he was freaking the ████ out. I don't know what this guy's crazy. I don't know what he he knows what he's doing. This guy's crazy. But I put on all these big events and concerts. Like I was involved in the Warp Tour in the very beginning. I was involved in all these giant concert tours. Like I could go down the Warp Tour story. The first time they had the Warp Tour in the parking lot and I'm with Kevin and I'm like, "Oh, this thing could be huge." And he's like, "Yeah, but we we had to rent parking lots so much have everyone." So it was like Bad Religion, Pennywise, all came to my office at Bibong and sat down and we go,
18:40 "Hey, everyone take a pay cut. Let's get this thing on the road. Let's do this work tour." Longest lasting tour ever. that started from one year the next year work tour biggest thing ever Kevin's still doing it and then those guys like my friend Bill and Paul own Coachella and La Plusa you know Coachella and stage coach and all the different events so Aaron so we do this event right and it's like and I know how to run an event like you could pull up the the I had a I had probably half a million people on the beach I thought I was with the sheriff the chief of police, the chief of police, the chief of the fire department, the mayor, everyone. We're standing on and I'm like, and they're like, "Is everything going to be okay?" I'm like, "It's all good." I'm like, "Oh my god, it's not good. There's way too many people here. This is this is not good." Like, I had
19:30 no idea it was going to be like this. So, um, we do it. Aaron has the show at the Hilton or the High, I can't remember which hotel. And it just blows up. Like it just bl every like cuz I called all my friends. I'm like, "Hey, you know, you should be at the show. You should be." And like all the like Quicksilver and Bilibongs were like, "Oh, we're not doing that. We're ASR." So I like all like Ruka, Vulcom, all the young upstart brands were just like we're in. Like all the upstart kind of surf brands and then you had like the Rebel Eights and like all the other street wear brands and Bobby the hundreds. It was like it was this mesh of just insanity and it just all the upcoming guys were were down for your cause. Everyone was down and everyone was down for I mean everyone was down for Tall. Tall. It was Tall had Tall's network like he knew Bobby, he
20:20 knew Ben. He knew all the guys at Rebel. He knew all the streetear guys. I knew all the surf and skate guys. And we just and Aaron we Aaron knows how to run a show agenda and we just did it. And that was in summer that next year that they had September ASR and in January they canceled the show. Wasn't it also like um put him out of business? I mean we're talking huge business. I think I think wasn't like Aaron was also trying to sell Agenda to ASR at one point and ASR was like no way. And then I think it turned the other way around and ASR tried to sell. No, they tried to buy a Aaron was trying to sell agenda to ASR cuz Aaron's Aaron's like Aaron's one of us. He's completely high school dropout. Super one of us. He's one of us. Like he's straight up one of us. And he would never sit here and do any of this cuz he's not that guy. He's like he wears
21:10 the same uniform every day. Black on black. He's like he's like the street wear freaking Johnny Cash. So we did that and it was the next thing you know it just blew up and blew. It just got massive. Right. So this is Did he end up buying ASR or No, just went out of business. Magic ASR got bought. No, ASR's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. It went out of business. It's it's it's forever gone. We killed it. And I said, I could kill it. And I told him, I go, we could kill this thing. And Aaron and Tall and I killed ASR. Was awesome. Imagine trying to sell to someone and they're like, no, ████ you. ████ you guys. And then they're out of business. Wow. That's crazy. What if they actually wanted to buy but they didn't have any money and that was a seed? Well, they had money. They had money. It was it was just it was just a there's all these like moments in time, right, that happen like there's just there's such unique
22:00 moments in time and it was like luckily in these different times I've been had the opportunity to be involved with great people and God has blessed me in so many ways to actually listen to people and not know that I don't know it all. Right. It's like okay well this guy's the guy and then I'll they'll go talk to go you did this. someone, but you did this. And I go, I'm I'm yesterday's news. Like, it's it's I'm I'm that's old stuff. So, fast forward, I go to Australia and the US Open's like the biggest thing on the planet. We did we had Weezer play. Then we had MGMT play. We had like Passion. Well, we were caving the biggest acts on the planet. Like you had Will I Am there, you had like every celebrity like it was it was massive. Like it was huge. And then um I was I got approached by Australia because I go to Australia a lot and there used to be the biggest event in Australia. It's called the Hot Buttered
22:50 Pro Jr. It was on it was in Sydney and everything had moved to the Gold Coast. So they super banks there. All the Best Waves are there blah blah blah and everything kind of fell away from Sydney and Manley Beach and that whole area. And that's like really cool. So I went over there and I got in this bidding war between Brisbane and Sydney. And so Brisbane's offering all this money and Sydney's offering all this money. I'm like, there's a there's a big skate event in in Australia called Borama. It's in Bondi. It's like this really rad skate event. All the pro skaters go to it. And with the US Open, we had skateboarding and surfing and like I took all the dirt bikes off the beach. I'm nobody rides dirt bikes on the beach. Kill that. So I just made it like what was core to our our community. So then we go to Australia and I get pitched the whole um thing to do it there. And then I got, you know, Sydney to give me a ton of money to do it. And
23:41 this is where everything starts to go south. So my relationship with Nike is already kind of wonky. And um I'm just like it's just like it's become like we've signed like all these really high performance surfers and we went from like freedom of choice and microphone use to true performance. I'm like dude, I'm not a jock. I don't I don't even watch. Let's keep it at the high note cuz we'll start tanking on the next video. Okay. And we're bringing it down from
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