EL SMASHO

Take No Prisoners, 1993



Please feel free to ignore the clumsy banter and Goober & the Peas videos ... fast-forward directly to enjoy two sets of blistering Midwestern rock action captured live in the basement of the Capital Theatre, a dilapidated bomb shelter in Flint, Michigan. Early Sunday morning during a vicious snowstorm after a sleepless night spent with a beautiful underage punk rock girl in Ann Arbor (utterly chaste, let me assure you) and once again adversity made us stronger.

Get a load of that guy's hammer! Whatta maroon. As usual, Tim (drums) is the only one who escapes with any dignity (turn down my backup vocals, please). The Smashettes do more without moving than we could do with all of our nervous stage twitches, but of course, the real hero here is The Dave Hill, who pulled out all the stops on his introduction and ultimately promises far more than we could deliver.

"Big and loud, dumb as fuck/With my hands down the pants of Lady Luck." HAW HAW HAW HAW!

In all seriousness, this footage captures the band at its peak, a professional three (four?) camera shoot for a Flint public access TV show hosted by Jerry Humphrey, a great guy who set us up with many, many fun shows in my hometown. It's really great to see this again, particularly on a public forum.

From the original poster's comments: "This show was part of a series shown on Flint, Mi's public access channel. The show focused on local mid-Michigan bands during the 1990's. Ben Hamper (Rivethead author)and Jerry Humphrey host this zany documentation of Flint's excellent underground music scene." More info coming here soon.

Good Lord, thanks to my old friend Camie Vog for hipping me to this.