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"*
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H-Bombs members admit they had more flyers & 'zines than actual gigs...
Hank Numb photos / Jerry Williams collection |
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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):
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.”
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.’ ”
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!”
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...
