[video]
Go ahead. Don’t come to this show. I dare you.
Air guitar.
Same month The Skabbs recorded at the same studio. Don’t remember Dave Tarling, but he may have worked with us. I remember Spot because he rolled around the studio on skates.
(via wussypillow)
Among some of the early, and now lost Skabbs treasures was a song Steve Salazar brought to the band called “Have A Drink”. I think it was something Steve wrote just prior to the knowledge that he would soon be joining a punk rock band (something that would have been about as foreign a notion to him as jumping out of a plane), and it showed. Still, it added a bit of variety to our fledgling act, which was a good thing.
Have A Drink was intended almost as a lounge song. Indeed, Salazar’s invitation, “Testing 1-2-3, Have a drink with me, Sugar” was sweet, intoxicating and hard to resist. Unfortunately no recordings exist of The Skabbs performing or at least rehearsing this number, but Salazar’s demo is around here somewhere…
I do recall rehearsing it though in Steve Evans’ practice space in Lawndale. We had rigged the 10 X 11 foot room with a decent PA system, utilizing a pair of speakers called “Sound Caddies”, which looked like something your elementary school might’ve used for rallies in the cafeteria. 9/10s of the rehearsal recordings of The Skabbs currently in existence feature unfortunately muffled vocals as originally heard through the Sound Caddies.
As with the demo of Have A Drink, Salazar insisted on playing guitar, and as far as I know this is the only song Steve Salazar played guitar on in The Skabbs. I don’t recall exactly what Steve Evans and Andy Thoreson did on this song because Salazar even played the solo. Unlike most other Skabbs songs, the beat on this one was light and breezy with Salazar playing a bright rhythm over Andy Gonzalez’s snare clicks.
Another song lost to the ages is our vocal take on the theme from “Bonanza”. Why we did that I have no idea, but we did, complete with the dum da da dum dum bass line and ascending slide guitar runs. Some sample lyrics: (during the bridge) “Here comes Pa, There goes Hoss, Here comes Little Joe” (then, ending the song) “We are the Cartwrights living on the Ponderosa, Happy and clean and I’m a closet queen, How do you like my vest?, Crushed velvet from France!”
I do recall performing both of those songs at our first ever gig at a house party in Sierra Madre sometime around Halloween of ‘77. I think a recording of that show did exist, and I found about a 2 second snippet of Bonanza on a reel to reel tape once, but the rest was recorded over at a later rehearsal. Damn us and our tape recycling ways.
Kind of random, but as it happens the bass guitar I’ve been playing since the late 70s is exactly like this one. Other than that, no connection.
My dad’s the bass player. His punk band (not famous) Algo, in the late seveties/early eighties.
Revised flyer to include our buddies Sterile Jets who have been added to the lineup, and to correct the name of one of the other bands. Oops!
Ok, just about time to kick out the jams, mofckrs!