A few questions and answers with Sarah Herrera, enlightening the world on Pancreatic Cancer not being an all-bad thing. It's actually really catching on!
Coyote Music got a chance for a quick Q&A with The Tommy Lasorda Experience offshoot, Pancreatic Cancer, one of the more challenging names for a band in the context of searching online for information about them. And so here you go, more info about Pancreatic Cancer (the band).
Coyote Music: Who is Pancreatic Cancer and when & why are you releasing an album? It's right there on Spotify: Yelling "Freebird!" at Funerals, but officially drops...very soon!?
Pancreatic Cancer / Sarah Herrera: I’ve been in The Tommy Lasorda Experience since 2022, that’s my main band. Most people don’t even know I was in Pancreatic Cancer. It’s the band I was in after Exploited Cocks. It’s basically me and Jimmy from The Tommy Lasorda Experience, only it’s my brother Matt on drums. I’ve been in a lot of bands since I was about 14 or so. My first band was Taking It In The Rear From John Holmes, followed by Anarchy in Azerbaijan, RAPE!, The Fabulous Starfu**ers, Exile On The Cross Bronx Expressway, and a few others that either I don’t remember or are way too offensive for a family publication
But about the new album, sure, we have 11 songs and will probably record one or two more, then release it. It's called Yelling “Freebird!” At Funerals.
CM: Can you share a little bit about the songs on the album? [Editor's Note: while it seems overdone to include everything about every song, these little nuggets sure are tasty!]
PC/SH: "Aloha Spicoli" is about my love for the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High. I basically took my favorite quotes from the movie and tried to make them rhyme.
"Drunk In The Studio (There May Have Been Others)" is probably a skip when you listen. It’s a song we wrote when I was drunk, where the only lyrics are “There May Have Been Others” over and over. Since it’s called "Drunk In The Studio," I made sure to drink a bottle or two of Tequila before recording it, which I probably would have anyway.
"Eat Your Sacred Cows" is essentially four actual, verifiable, horrible quotes from John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. Might make you think twice about people you admire.
"Full Disclosure (I Am A Stalker)" is kind of self-explanatory, and partially true, although I’ve worked hard on this in court-mandated therapy.
"I Cried When Tatum Hugged His Son" - I’ve loved the Boston Celtics since I was little, I know – I get a lot of dirty looks in Knicks country when wearing my Celtics gear, but this is about the NBA Champions 2024 Boston Celtics. And yeah, after they won the title and Jayson Tatum hugged his son on the court, I bawled like a baby.
"I Love It I Hate It I Love It I Hate It" is an old song about what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder. It’s kinda funny if it’s not you going through it.
"Love Me Anywhere (Except In An Elevator)" is about how a great band, Aerosmith, essentially turned into a Celine Dion cover band. Great music for years, and then a hard left turn into absolute slop. Hopefully they don’t sue us; we’ve got nothing anyway.
"Milwaukee ‘73 (Or Maybe It Was ‘74)" is adapted from Chapter 12 of a novel I have been working on for way too long.
"Shitbird." You can’t print that, so I won’t bother.
"It’s Time To Get Serious About Drunk Driving" and "Let The Bad Times Roll (I Miss Her)" – no comment on these, for different reasons.
CM: You've got a Spanish last name, some of your songs have been in Spanish. Can you share a little about growing up as a lunatic punk rocker in a traditional Hispanic family?
PC/SH: I have no idea. My mother is Anglo, my father is from Colombia but never spoke Spanish in the home growing up, I think it was a point of pride for him. People see the last name Herrera and know where I’m from and start talking to me in Spanish, and I have the comprehension of a four year old. However, I do really want to learn and The Tommy Lasorda Experience has released a number of songs that I (tried to) sing in Spanish, including "Soy Mitad Latina Pero No Puedo Hablar Español Ni Salva Mi Vida (I’m Half Latin But I Can’t Speak Spanish To Save My Life)" and a bunch about pool, which they play regularly at my pool hall when I come in because (surprisingly) everyone there speaks Spanish and loves pool. The lyrics? Wrote them in English and used Google translate. It was actually kinda of cool, the words prostituta and puta rhyme in Spanish. They didn’t in the original English
CM: Do you have any stories about embarrassing things that have happened to you?
PC/SH: The list is very long, but this is fresh in my mind since it happened last weekend. Saturday I was up at 9, had a hard week, and I was doing shots of Jägermeister by ten. By 4 o’clock I was texting people bizarre stuff apparently (I’m scared to look) and by 7 they took away my phone. My on-again off-again (mostly off-again) boyfriend Eddie took my phone, went onto my Facebook page and posted my cell number and home address. It was up for like 5 days before I realized it. Everyone thought it was hilarious – me, not so much so. Some of those voicemails are pretty disgusting, and they all think it’s hysterical and want to use the best one as an intro to a song someday. To me, it’s slightly less funny.
CM: How 'bout any fun facts about you and/or the band that most people wouldn't know?
PC/SH: I’m dyslexic. We have actually recorded many of our songs backwards, and then just had our producer reverse them in the studio.
I love virtual reality porn. Cannot get enough. If you see horizontal lines in my hair, you’ll know why
I really actually think less of people when I see them using Gmail. I mean, they scrape keywords from your e-mails and sell them to advertisers, for Christ’s sake, it’s right there in the terms of service. Same basic rule as with social media – if you’re getting something for free, you are the product.
There is only one insult that I would ever take offense to. You can literally call me any epithet in the book, and I’ll probably laugh along with you. But call me “ordinary” and I’ll take you outside and whip your ass. Or as rightfielder Bobby Bonilla once told a reporter in the locker room when he was on the Mets and wanted to fight him, “I’ll show you The Bronx.”
CM: That's some great stuff, Sarah. Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us!