Angry Samoans - The Angry Samoans

The Angry Samoans

The first Angry Samoans gig was on October 30, 1978, opening for Roky Erickson and the Aliens in Richmond, California. Erickson was sick and did not make the show (Aliens band members covered for his lead vocals) but remained a lifelong friend and inspiration to Gregg Turner. The next night the Samoans played an "all-LA bill" at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Franciso, opening for Shock and the Zeros).

The Samoans' first release, Inside My Brain, was one of the earliest hardcore punk albums to come out of the 1980s LA punk rock scene. Between this recording and second album Back from Samoa, the band released a four-song EP as "The Queer Pills," allegedly using the pseudonym in order for the EP to get airtime on Bingenheimer's KROQ radio program. Their 14-song, 17-minute hardcore album Back from Samoa, released in 1982, featured lyrics with such themes as the trendiness of poking your eyes out ("Lights Out"), finding Adolf Hitler's penis ("They Saved Hitler's Cock"), and dissing your father ("My Old Man's A Fatso"), sung over hyper-distorted guitars and "early LA/OC hardcore" drum beats.

In the mid-1980s, the Angry Samoans returned to their roots in mid-'60s American garage rock (they had long cited many 1966 bands such as The Velvet Underground, the 13th Floor Elevators and Shadows of Knight as among their musical influences). The next two releases recorded during 1986-87, the Yesterday Started Tomorrow EP and STP Not LSD, were largely in this neo-1960s garage/psych style.

Singer/bassist Todd Homer left at the end of 1988 and formed The Mooseheart Faith Stellar Groove Band with Larry Robinson, formerly of 1970s teen pop-soul band Apollo. In 2005 Homer co-formed The Hollywood Squaretet, a free-jazz band with comedian/drummer Larry "Copcar" Scarano, formerly of Comedy's Dirtiest Dozen (HBO) and the 1960s New York rock band The Bougalieu.

Turner left in early 1992, releasing an album in 1993 with The Mistaken before forming his next band, The Blood Drained Cows. The latter act has issued two albums to date, and occasionally feature autoharp player Billy Angel (née Miller) from the Aliens.

During the mid- to late 1980s, Mike Saunders moonlighted in several electric/acoustic two-guitar duos (no rhythm section) such as The Clash Brothers (with Bob Fagan), The Sons of Mellencamp (with Turner), and The Gizmo Brothers (with Kenne Highland), performing at various small clubs during that period in San Francisco, LA/OC, and even Boston (with Krazee Ken Highland from The Gizmos and Hopelessly Obscure).