Okay, first of all, I can't use the suavest pic of Jon ever, because it's on an artist's site and probably copyrighted more ways than I can count. BUT YOU CAN GO TAKE A LOOK AT IT HERE! In the meantime, here's the GOOFIEST picture I could find:
Suave in other ways, I suppose...
Anyway, now for the mini-musical-history. NJon helped me a lot with this, typing until he just got sick of it. He indicated there's probably a lot more of the one-offs than he could be bothered to list, but this is still as definitive as you're gonna get, I imagine. His comments follow each project!
- The Encyclopedias: 1978... a few rehearsals. I sang... well, kind of. Very Residents influenced. (probably not worth mentioning....)
- The Idle Rich: 1979-1980... super hardcore punk band in High School. I played guitar (which I'd learned six months prior) and screaming. We wanted to be as fast and gnarly as The Middle Class. Actually headlined over the Adolescents on their first two gigs and played a cupla times with Agent Orange. Our debut gig was at a biker bar on Nov. 23rd 1979 opening for The Weirdos and The Suburban Lawns.
- Alliance for Progress: 1980... weirdo Joy Division influenced band with ex-Idle Rich drummer on congos. One gig band. (Probably not worth mentioning)
- I won't mention The Nutrients... nope, I won't mention them.
- Worm Farmer: 1981... I played guitar in this weirdo punk band with my brother Brick on drums. We disbanded after lots of great rehearsals and one fucked up gig.
- Renfield Brick: 1982... I played guitar with my brother Brick's super weirdo rock/punk band... the singer/guitarist/songwriter... well... he's a whole book of a story. He died just a few years ago, probably looking about 50 years older than he was. Loved that guy though.
- The Straight A's: 1981-1982... I sang and played guitar. Rock 'n roll/punk stuff. I was very into this but the other guitar player wound up pretty ill. The drummer wound up dead at his mother's house years later of a heroin overdose. He was 21. He was also the drummer of The Suicide Kings when he died.
- The Cop Outs: 1982... this was a real serious attempt to throw a band together with Scott Drake (Humpers) and a handful of stupid little junkie suburban oafs. The tunes I wrote for this wound up as early Claw Hammer songs.
- The Electric Tombstones: 1982-1984... Guitar, keyboards and vocals. We actually recorded a whole album which was kidnapped from us and taken to Georgia where it never saw the light of day. We did manage to get a single out of it. The other singer/guitar player wound up (a cupla years back) playing keyboards for Tom Waits on tour.
- Pontiac Brothers: 1985... I quit these guys to persue a career in bronze casting.
- The Suicide Kings: 1986... I played guitar in a sea of stupid junkies. Very fun and very frustrating. Crazy crazy stories here.
- Beatrice and his Little White Things: 1986... featuring Beatrice, ex-singer for The Naughty Women, the gnarliest drag-punk-metal band in the L.A. area. (I got some fucked up stories about the Naughty Women!). Got back into music after a call from my older brother Brick and formed this little quartet which never passed rehearsing. Then I met Chris Bagarozzi in Sept. of '96... That's when we started Claw Hammer, which was originally gonna be a solo thing for Gimme The Keys.
- The Red Aunts: 1990-1991... I played drums, co-wrote tunes, roadied, drove, guitar tech'd, and basically managed this in the first year until they learned their instruments. Very fun times. Recorded two EP's with them. Played a million little gigs in and around Long Beach.
- Blunder Tongue: 1992?... Me, Bob Lee and Rob Walther hooked up with Ren Estaire of Lubricated Goat for this 45 on Sympathy for the Record Industry. Chris was outta town with Down By Law.
- In Slow Rider I played both saxophone and percussion. Very very cool and fun times. Opened up some huge shows for Ozomatli.
- The Cougars was a legitimate band in 1995. We recorded a full CD for SFTRI, but split up when the marriage went astray.
- Don Howland dubbed me an actual member of the Bassholes in 1996... Nothing's come out of that though. Just pride.
The following projects are one-offs, guest appearances et cetera.
- I co-produced (with Sally Browder) The Bottom Feeder's "Big 6" album in 1996.
- I played saxophones, harmonica, bass, hammond organ for a million In The Red Records recording from 1996 to about 1999... I completely lost track...
- I played saxphone on some rare singles with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in 1996... but I never got any copies...
- I played sax and harmonica on two Red Aunts records, clarient on a Muffs' record...
I find a lot of this really interesting - especially the bits scattered around the late 70s (2nd or 3rd wave? I get confused) SoCal punk scene. Something should also be noted, both here and on the Claw Hammer discography, that Claw Hammer complete was a backup band on Wayne Kramer's "The Hard Stuff" LP in 1994, and Jon later joined his touring band and went overseas. Lotta freaking stuff here. As usual, if you can fill in a gap, please email me.
