H-Bombs (feat. Peter & Mitch) - Live 1978

Cambridge Inn

Duke University

Durham, NC

March 18, 1978

soundboard recording

BIG THANKS to the taper and batchain for the share!

*Keep scrolling for "WHAT ALL GOOD dB’S FANS 
MUST KNOW ABOUT THE H-BOMBS"*

H-Bombs members admit they had more flyers & 'zines than actual gigs...
Hank Numb photos / Jerry Williams collection

Repercussion: see below to read about the connections between H-Bombs and The dB's.

Highlights: The 96-Second (sic) Blowout medley is a particular favorite, but also check out the “freaky” distorted vocal effects on “Bomb Scare” (how many young, impressionable minds were blown by this one performance alone?!?) 

batchain says: Guessing this is from a 2nd or 3rd generation cassette. The band did record some of their shows to reel-to-reel. The sound though is remarkably good.

ROB SEZ: Those who know the 3-song H-Bombs EP get to hear live versions of them all here. I recommend you bring your sense of humor to this listening experience…

Disc 1

01 Intro

02 Death Garage

03 Wrong Kind of Girl

04 You Love It

05 Postcard Romance

06 In a Little While

07 Money from England

08 Mind Your Manners

09 You Told Me

10 Twilight

11 Danger Danger Danger

12 Big Black Truck

Disc 2

13 The Lonely Bull (Herb Alpert Cover)

14 Bomb Scare

15 Baby Hang On

16 Take Me Back In Your Arms Again

17 Looking 'Round Corners

18 96 Second Blowout/Baby What's Wrong With You/Seeing Eye Dog

19 Sixty-five Comet

20 Caroline

21 A Heart Is Not A Home

22 Dunbar Street (aborted)

23 Komm Gibb Mir Deine Hand (Beatles cover - in German)

24 B & G Commercial

25 You Can't Catch Me (Chuck Berry cover)

MP3@320

Disc 1

Disc 2

MF linx (MP3@320):

Disc 1

Disc 2

H-Bombs:

Peter Holsapple: guitar, vocals

Mitch Easter: guitar, vocals

Robert Keely: bass, vocals

Chris Chamis: drums

WHAT ALL GOOD dB’S FANS MUST KNOW ABOUT THE H-BOMBS

After the demise of The Sneakers, members Mitch Easter, Robert Keely and Chris Chamis formed a short-lived band with Peter Holsapple called H-Bombs in the fall of 1977. The few shows they did are the stuff of local legend in Chapel Hill & Durham, N.C. Other than one 7-inch EP released on Car Records, there would be no other H-Bombs releases — despite fanciful discussions of a double-grooved 10-inch album.

Writing for the essential “NC Music History Dot Com” blog, music journalist Fred Mills has this summary of the H-Bombs’ brief musical “career”:

“Chapel Hill’s H-Bombs may have only enjoyed a brief existence — roughly, from the start of UNC’s fall semester in 1977 to the end of the spring semester in ’78 — but the handful of highly memorable gigs they performed, and their helping to jumpstart the Triangle punk/new wave scene, meant that they left behind an influential and relatively sharp-looking corpse. Not only did the quartet inspire numerous other musically-minded individuals (including yours truly, who didn’t pick up a guitar but did embark upon a career as a rock writer that, for better or for worse, is still going strong), in the wake of the band’s demise several of the cadaver’s vital organs were ripe for harvesting: Guitarist/vocalist Peter Holsapple would move to New York and join Chris Stamey’s dB’s, bassist Robert Keely and drummer Chris Chamis would form the much-loved Triangle combo Secret Service, and guitarist/vocalist Mitch Easter would eventually go on to Let’s Active fame.”

Read the rest of Fred’s most excellent essay and browse through the other stuff on the NC Music History blog.

Sam Hicks, in an online article called “How North Carolina Got Its Punk Attitude,” gives some background info on the H-Bombs. Hicks describes them as a “neo-punk group”:

“Peter, Mitch Easter, Robert Keely and Chris Chamis played at street festivals, around campus, The Mad Hatter (previously The Town Hall) or Cambridge Inn on the Duke campus. At the first H-Bombs show, Peter and Robert handed out 2-4 page ‘flyers’ called Biohazard Informae, which began a long history of 'zines & music working together toward a common goal.

“Although this band really can't be considered 100% punk, they were pretty strange, and would later play with punk bands who said they could drive a crowd away with the best of them. In mid 1978, with college over [Holsapple dropped out after year 3] and nothing in Chapel Hill but ‘the same 40 people to play to’, the band dissolved.

“The ‘Death Garage / Big Black Truck / 96-Second Blowout’ single (CRR-5) was recorded at Mega Sound Studio in Bailey, NC [with initial recordings taking place in NYC]. The single featuring three H-Bombs songs was released in 1978 on Car Records after the band had already broken up. Peter & Mitch are actually the only people on the record, but since these were songs Peter had written & performed with the group, the cover says, ‘Peter Holsapple of The H-Bombs.’ ”

Read the rest of Hick’s article at Perfect Sound Forever.

Here's what Peter himself wrote about the H-Bombs in 2004:

“The H-Bombs, which was me, Mitch, Robert Keely from Sneakers on bass and Chris Chamis on drums, existed for about a year or so from 1977 to 1978. There were a handful of gigs in the Chapel Hill area, many of which got taped apparently. There’s even a film made by Richard Kern (now a big name in NY underground filmmaking) of us at Duke University, performing with our friend Jonathan Sharpe seated in an easy chair, reading the paper through the whole set.

“Most of the stuff we did was either written by Mitch or myself, with Robert’s ‘Twilight’ being an exception and a brace of irritating covers (like ‘Komm Gibb Mir Deine Hand’ and ‘I Fought the Law’). Our first gig was at a Chapel Hill street fair, preceding the Apple Chill Cloggers (!) We had more posters than gigs. I would bet that Robert still has all of them somewhere, tucked away in his archives. Biohazard Informae, our little fanzine, was also a product of that time.

“I think it was a good band, but who knows? I was never in the audience for it. By the way, Chris Chamis, who served nobly as a dB's sound man for a spell, and I saw each other for the first time in years at Ziggy’s in Winston-Salem a month or so ago. Chris plays drums for an excellent Beatles/60’s band called Backbeat. If you get the chance to see them, do so.

“ ‘Money From England’ was about alleged cash that was supposed to arrive to help Ork Records in NY put out an H-Bombs recording. Suffice to say, it never arrived. I recently came into a live CD of the H-Bombs that is almost listenable! We sure had a lot of material!”

(from The dB’s Online message board)

At the risk of turning a musical footnote into a PhD thesis, here’s a few lines from Peter and Mitch about the band in a 2007 feature story about Mitch by Fred Mills in Magnet magazine:

After Sneakers, Stamey headed to New York and started The dB’s, while Easter and Holsapple teamed up to form the H-Bombs back in Chapel Hill. Debuting at a street fair in the fall of 1977, their timing was perfect: Punk was in the air, and the H-Bombs’ marriage of pop and garage proved hugely influential locally.

“The H-Bombs was a short-lived group, but it served a great purpose,” says Holsapple. “New wave was just hitting the area, and we seemed to fit right in the niche.”

“I was a little too old to totally buy into the punk scene,” says Easter. “I was still listening to what Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne were doing. But I was pleased that we got something going on.”

If I get up a real head of steam, I might re-type Will's alleged review of a (mythical) H-Bombs album. The review was published in 1978 in The Daily Tarheel, the campus newspaper of UNC-Chapel Hill. I call it "alleged" not only because the album did not exist, but because the article was actually a reprint of a review Will wrote for TDH (using his nom de plume) of The Sneakers' (actual) album. In the review, Will turns flowery music crit phraseology into a low-brow art form...