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following our sojourn to the great Northwest we were often mistaken for actually hailing from there (This offers great insight into the complex mind of your typical club booking agent). Soon there was a very short-lived, extremely frenetic climate in San Francisco, as we had inadvertently caused a scene (in the literal sense). This was 1991. There were a lot of really good shows for us that year, especially at a little (and I mean little) hole in the wall called The Chameleon (which, like a lot of good things, is no longer extant). Unfortunately, like anything that takes off, all the fucking losers suddenly come out of the woodwork. Soon everyone's in a garage band, all covering the same songs. Everyone's band has a gimmick, like costumes, or using thrift store instruments. Not that any of this is necessarily bad, taken at face value. The problem is no one has enough balls to try any of it until it's been proven to work. No one wants to play shows where there are more people in the band than in the audience (and we were only a four-piece). The Mummies were renowned for using shitty equipment, and I guess that’s how you got ‘that’ sound. Did you figure a lot of the greater sixties garage bands were forced to live by the same ethic and got stuck with that sound? In a way, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it an ethic. Besides, back in the sixties, this equipment was pretty state of the art. Transistor organs? Shit, that was like high-tech. Anyway, it was all about the sound for me. The guy in The Fabs played a Farfisa. If you wanna sound like that guy in The Fabs, you go and find a Farfisa. For me, the sound on those old records was 99% of the appeal. The playing's generally shitty, as are most of the songs. What kind of equipment did you record on, and what kinds of reverbs and the like were you using? We recorded nearly everything we did on a rack-mount cassette 4-track. Despite those 4-tracks, we recorded things live, and mostly premixed on two tracks. By premixed, I mean I would manually ride the mixer during the recording, and adjust levels on-the-fly, like boosting the guitar track during the solo (or turning it down when it sucked). That made it pretty damn easy to master stuff later, as there wouldn't be a whole lot you could fix or twiddle with. Also, it left two tracks open to use for things like reverb. We used outboard reverbs and echo boxes occasionally, but the best reverb always came from room acoustics. We always recorded wherever we could make noise for a few hours. The only time we ever recorded in a legitimate recording studio was at the BBC when we were in London (Incidentally, this was the last time The Mummies ever recorded. You can blame John Peel for that). Anyway, Mike [Lucas] of the Phantom Surfers used to work in this huge concrete and steel furniture warehouse, which is where the first couple of singles were recorded. Later on, our rehearsal space (which was the other place we tended to record) didn't have the best acoustics, so we'd record, then blast the recording through an amp in a bathroom or hallway with a strategically placed mic, and re-record a spare reverb track. And we always had Fender
outboard reverb units sitting around, since 3/4 of The Mummies were in the Phantom Surfers at some point. We also used Echoplexes on a couple of tracks, and I had this really great Kay reverb that sounded like complete horse shit (I gave it to Darin [Raffelli] from Supercharger years ago when I was through with rock ‘n’ roll). I think that's what we used for the guitar solo on “A Girl Like You” (but cranked through an amp in a very large bathroom and rerecorded). My advice is to save your money, and fuck them expensive reverb units: that's the Budget Rock way. It's this re-recording method that gives you that sound that's on the verge of completely falling apart into utter oblivion. It's priceless, and at the same time, worthless.
MUMMIES DISCOGRAPHY 1990: 1990: 1990: 1990: 1990: 1991:
“That Girl” 7” “Food, Sickles And Girls” 7” The Fabulous Mummies 7” Shitsville 7” “Skinny Minnie” 7” Northwest Budget Rock Massacre split 7” w/The Phantom Surfers 1991: The Mummies Vs. The Wolfmen split double-7” w/The Wolfmen 1992: Larry Winther & His Mummies 7” 1992: “Stronger Than Dirt” 7” 1992: The Mummies Play Their Own Records! 1992: Fuck CDs! It’s The Mummies! 1992: Never Been Caught 1992: Fuck The Mummies (bootleg) 1993: “Planet Of The Apes” 7” 1993: “Uncontrollable Urge” 7” (bootleg) 1993: Live At Café The Pit’s split 7” w/Supercharger 1993: The Mummies and Supercharger Tour ’93 Flexi-7” 1994: “Gwendolyn” 7” 1994: “Peel Sessions 7” (bootleg) 1994: Party At Steve’s House 1994: Tales From The Crypt 1995: Get Late! 7” (re-issue of earlier Estrus promo 7”) 1996: Double Dumb Ass… In The Face double-7” (re-issue of “That Girl” and “Food, Sickles And Girls” 7”s) 1996: Runnin’ On Empty Vol. 1 1996: Runnin’ On Empty Vol. 2 2003: Death By Unga Bunga - Best Of (CD only)
When choosing material to cover, how do you work it? When I want to cover stuff I try to avoid tracks I really like cause I know I’ll fuck them up. Well, I think you're naturally inclined to pick songs you like. The trick is to be objective about how your version sounds, and that's hard. If you can bring something to the song, like a really unique sound in the recording, or total fuck up the rhythm or something, then that's worth it in my mind. Our very first recordings were attempts at capturing that sound from those original garage 45's, though not necessarily one for one. That is, we'd try to get the drum sound from one record and maybe the guitar sound from another in our version of a completely different song. Or our take on “Come On Up”, which was suitably different enough from The Rascals’ version, made it worth doing to me. It's a godawful boring song, but fun to play - and easy, so you can really fuck around on stage while still managing to play it. After a few singles, there was a big shift in our recordings. I wanted a sound that was completely “us”, and not some attempt at aping the past. It certainly didn't mean going into a studio and doing things “the right way” either. I wanted something that was as close to what we sounded like live as possible, and that's when you get to the sound on the Never Been Caught LP. That's the quintessential Budget Rock sound. That's the sound that all the lo-fi garage bands that came after us tried to ape - or in a lot of cases outdo. Again, a case of The Mummies making it safe for bands around the world to sound like shit.
After “making it safe for bands around the world to sound like shit”, what happened to The Mummies? Where exactly did those covers come from? Which English rock-guy bought the Mummies' budget rock mobile? How exactly do you tour Europe the budget rock way? And who the fuck is Rick Rubin? Find out next issue of UNBELIEVABLY Bad, Fuck the Mummies – Part Two.
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