Local punk crew Victims Family teams with Portland band for West Coast tour
With a partnership dating back nearly four decades, guitarist/vocalist Ralph Spight and bassist Larry Boothroyd have been making a uniquely hectic jazz-punk noise as the core of Victims Family since forming the band in 1984 when they were just a couple of scrawny Santa Rosa teenagers.
Bringing together the lyrical venom of the Dead Kennedys and the eclectic punk virtuosity of The Minutemen and NoMeansNo, Victims Family created a ferocious stew of hardcore, jazz, metal, funk and math rock with original drummer Devon VrMeer. Embracing the DIY punk ethos of the time, the young trio booked its first national tour in 1985, honing its chops while sharing the stage with such bands as NOFX, Tales of Terror, the aforementioned DKs and Social Unrest.
The band issued its debut album Voltage and Violets on Mordam Records the following year, unleashing Spight's vitriolic social commentary on salvos like "Homophobia" and "God, Jerry, & The P.M.R.C." in addition to writing likely the only instrumental tribute to jazz guitarist George Benson ever performed by a punk band. Victims' follow-up effort Things I Hate To Admit further refined the group's sound with more ear-pleasing, barbed wire hooks on such future fan favorites as "World War IX" and "Corona Belly."
VrMeer's departure to start a family led to his short-term replacement by Eric Strand before roadie Tim Solyan stepped in and completed what many consider to be the band's classic line-up. Victims Family crafted what still stands as one of the outstanding punk albums of the decade with 1990's White Bread Blues while furthering their reputation as a blistering live act with multiple U.S. and European tours, sharing the stage with the likes of Nirvana and Primus while having future stars Mr. Bungle and Green Day serve as opening acts.
The line-up released a second album, The Germ, in 1992. It was the band's first effort for Alternative Tentacles, but the grind of the road eventually led to a two-year hiatus. A reunion would produce another solid studio effort (Headache Remedy) and a live album that captured Victims' volatile onstage chemistry before Spight and Boothroyd moved on to band projects Saturn's Flea Collar (with the bassist switching to drums) and Hellworms (another trio that featured Bluchunks/Walrus drummer Joaquin Spengemann).
Victims Family put out another album with yet another drummer (Apocalicious in 2001 featuring My Name drummer David Gleza behind the kit) before the principles moved on to explore other creative outlets. Spight would front his own band the Freak Accident -- which released its latest album Outer Space Is Boring two years ago with a trio line-up featuring Spight with bassist Henry Austin Lannan (Othered, KnightressM1) and local drumming institution Stark Raving Brad (The Hellbillys, The Mutaytor, Marginal Prophets, Undercover S.K.A. and many others) -- in addition to anchoring Biafra's lauded new band The Guantanamo School of Medicine on guitar, while Boothroyd would tour and record extensively with celebrated experimental outfit Triclops! and Bay Area supergroup Brubaker, though he eventually would be brought in to play bass with Biafra's band. In the midst of the pandemic, the bassist released the ambitious debut studio album by Specimen Box, a complex project that featured the musician constructing four wide-ranging suites of experimental sounds from 60-second recordings he compiled and edited from over 100 collaborators.
Boothroyd has since constructed a second Specimen Box album entitled Remote Communion, taking a more song-oriented from a smaller pool of musicians and vocalists (working with "only" 60 contributors) slated for release on the Valley King Records imprint in mid-December with a stunning 3-D cover by noted Bay Area artist Alan Forbes. A third volume is in the works. Despite the challenges presented by the drummer's busy schedule as an in-demand drum tech, semi-regular Victims Family reunions that bring Solyan back into the fold often find fans traveling long distances to catch another brutal live set.
More recently, the trio celebrated its 40th anniversary with a special show in Petaluma last November. VF has also embarked on several tours with like-minded Portland, OR-based powerhouse art-punk band Nasalrod. The two groups teamed up to release a split album in 2024. Entitled In the Modern Meatspace, the five hectic and bruising tracks that fill the Victims Family side of the split mark the first new music released by the band since 2012, while the songs from Nasalrod offer a similar dystopian viewpoint on technology, social media and gun violence.
For this run of West Coast shows with Nasalrod, Victims will be bringing in drummer Brian Polk from Denver band Joy Subtraction to fill-in for an absent Soya with plans to focus rarely heard album cuts from Apolcalicious and other deep tracks from Hellworms and Saturn's Flea Collar. Fronted by high-energy singer Chairman (aka Jeffrey Couch) and powered by legendary Fear drummer Spit Stix, Nasalrod has been making its kinetic style of ferocious art punk for over a decade, releasing its first 7-inch single in 2012.
Nodding at points to such influences as '70s power-pop icons Cheap Trick, the '90s noise-rock of the Jesus Lizard and a variety of experimental bands including the Minutemen, NoMeansNo (who they have been known to cover) and Mr. Bungle, Nasalrod has established itself as one of the most explosive live band's on the Portland scene. Rounded out by bassist Mandy Morgan and guitarist Mustin Douch, the group released its debut studio effort Building Machines in 2017. The songs from that album made up the bulk of the crew's intense 2020 in-concert document Live at Romtoms that was issued on CD and DVD.
The first Bay Area date of the two bands' tandem tour stops at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma with local skate-punk band Right to Remain opening on Friday, March 7. The following night, the show moves to the Ivy Room in Albany with support from experimental rock percussionist Moe! Staino's (Moe!kestra, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum among many other projects) and his post-punk ensemble Surplus 1980. After heading to Nevada for shows in Reno and Las Vegas as well as a date in San Pedro, the tour heads back north to hit the Crepe Place in Santa Cruz on Thursday, March 13, followed by a Friday night show at Cafe Colonial in Sacramento. Noise Clinic opens the Thursday show, with Human Body (featuring Kai Kln guitarist Sherman Loper) playing Friday.
Victims Family and Nasalrod
Friday, March 7, 8 p.m. $20 (all ages)
Phoenix Theater
Saturday, March 8, 8 p.m. $21-$23
The Ivy Room
Thursday, March 13, 8 p.m. $15-$20
The Crepe Place
Friday, March 14, 8 p.m. $21-$23 (all ages)
Cafe Colonial
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