If somebody informed Michael Ubaldini that dusty copies of his previous band’s data from 4 many years in the past would promote for lots of of {dollars} every, he in all probability wouldn’t have believed it. Not that anybody was actually speeding to inform him. Particularly not the internet-savvy younger followers of his obscure, ‘70s power pop band the Earwigs that followed him to his present day gigs as a singer-songwriter begging for copies of “She’s So Naive” pressed on 45s for a mere $20 every. To Ubaldini, 61, it (naively) appeared like he was getting the higher finish of the discount.
“Some kids came up to me at a gig one time and asked if I had any of Earwigs’ original 45s which had become a collector’s item but at the time I didn’t know it,” stated the Orange County-based musician who nonetheless gigs often in OC and Nashville, Tenn. “I told em ‘yeah I got couple of those.’ They said ‘Can we buy em?’ So I sold them to the kids for $20 each thinking I’d gotten a really good score, but they must’ve felt guilty about what they paid for them because they were offering to give me some other records on top of what they paid me.”
Not lengthy after the doubtful car parking zone sale, Ubaldini went on-line to seek out that the 45s packaged in flimsy, handmade cardboard sleeves with the photograph of the band pasted on the entrance (referred to as the “alt sleeve” to the unique band emblem cowl) had been being offered for over $300 on websites like Discogs.
After his preliminary shock subsided, Ubaldini tried promoting the data himself. “I had a few more and I put one online “bidding starts at $100, buy it now for $350,” he stated. “I went to breakfast and came back and somebody bought it.”
The Earwigs carry out at The Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa
(Courtesy of Michael Ubaldini)
The very best quantity paid for a uncommon bootleg copy of the 45 document containing the catchy single “She’s So Naive” and “Here Come the Earwigs” was offered on Discogs for about $500.
This revelation, alongside together with his need to lastly give his previous band a correct album launch, sparked a current revival for The Earwig’s largely forgotten legacy. On Saturday, The Earwigs–fronted by Ubaldini alongside the band’s unique drummer Dave Reed, guitarist Oscar Munoz and bassist Jerry Adamowicz will play a long-delayed album launch social gathering at The Mamba Sports activities Bar & Grill in Huntington Seashore for “The Earwigs—Orange County 1981: The Lost Debut Album” restricted version vinyl urgent. The primary two pressings offered out in simply 5 days through pre-order. Every of the pressings of 100 copies is made in a unique coloration that are being stocked in document shops from their native OC to London and Japan.
The once-popular band began in 1978 and performed at legendary Costa Mesa venue the Cuckoo’s Nest alongside celebrated bands from the early OC punk scene like The Adolescents, T.S.O.L., Agent Orange and Social Distortion. ”We had been a part of that scene however we weren’t a punk band—we had a little bit of a mod affect blended with the vitality of the Buzzcocks and the Ramones,” Ubaldini stated.
Although they by no means fairly slot in with the bands credited for bringing Orange County punk to the world, the pompadour grit that mixed Hamburg-era Beatles with sped-up bubblegum pop songs about teenage love and suburban angst carved a short second within the music historical past of the area.
So how did the Earwigs achieve this unlikely cult following unbeknownst to its founding member?
Ubaldini thinks it began when radio DJs like KROQ’s Rodney Bingenheimer and KNAC’s Sue Mink began taking part in the band’s music on their radio exhibits continuously within the early ‘80s. Fans recorded the tunes off the airwaves onto cassettes that got passed around before they even had an official record to sell. Their songs became sought after among fans of power pop/ ‘70s garage rock and sped-up rockabilly. The underground success was driven by the catchy, saccharine-yet-explosive single “She’s So Naive.”
Although they had been getting airplay, the band’s album, which they recorded in 1981, didn’t see daylight as a result of the ill-fated Rock-A-Mod Data, which the recorded the album for, folded earlier than it might be launched.
The band’s unique lineup broke up by 1982 as members grew up and went their separate methods, solely to reform with a barely totally different line up for a pair extra years earlier than calling it quits for good in 1984, by no means releasing any extra music. Ubaldini continued to play roots rock and honky-tonk music in OC and fashioned a brand new band known as Thriller Practice that obtained signed however solely lasted for one document. For years, late Occasions reporter Mike Boehm championed Ubaldini as a dynamite frontman and songwriter.
“A tall, lean, dark-and-handsome, denim-and-leather type, Ubaldini fits the old-fashioned mold of the classic rock ‘n’ roll rebel as well as anybody on the O.C. scene,” Boehm writes. “Mystery Train is built on sturdy old models, full of cranking, Stones-Creedence guitar riffs and rockabilly licks. It also is largely concerned with that oldest of rock ‘n’ roll subjects: unbridled, gleeful, exuberant sexual lust.” Ubaldini’s native success spent a few years gaining steam although by no means fairly taking off.
“Meanwhile all this time I’d be playing in other bands or my own projects there would be someone in the crowd that would yell ‘Earwigs!’ at me,” he remembers. “‘Play some Earwigs!’ It always struck me as funny. And I would never play those songs because I’d written so many others since then.”
Through the years, Ubaldini says he’s gotten presents from small indie labels wanting to place out a number of the Earwigs’ previous singles. These had been principally dangerous offers that promised little or no revenue for the songs Ubaldini wrote as a youngster.
“I wasn’t gonna get anything out of it [from any of these small labels], he said. “I thought I might put it out one day but I’m not gonna put it out and just get ripped off. I’ve been through too much in music to get ripped off again.”
The unique lineup of the Earwigs
(Courtesy of Michael Ubaldini)
Earlier this 12 months, Ubaldini, impressed by the revived curiosity in his music, lastly took the leap and began to remaster the previous album of 17 tracks that he by no means put out, opting to press it independently. A brand new batch has arrived in time for the band’s final one-off present to commemorate their unlikely cult standing. The frontman is happy to promote copies to die-hard native followers who helped preserve his music alive.
“I just want to release this Earwigs thing, it deserves its place, it’s part of that time and all these kids wanna hear it,” Ubaldini stated. As to why the music itself appears to have caught on even after the revivalists bands like Jet, The Strokes and The Strypes have come and gone, he attributes it to the timeless, straight-ahead nature of the music. “It seems like the songs never got dated really because we stayed away from the synthesizers and we just played rock-n-roll.”
Ubaldini wonders if the thriller of the band that by no means made it massive is what stored individuals interested in his previous music. “People had recorded our stuff and made bootlegs of our music for all these years and it kinda took on a weird life of its own. It’s kinda mind blowing when I think about it,” he stated. “There was not one ounce of promotion or anything. It was truly all because of the underground scene.”
