LANCE LOUD: VOCALS
KRISTIAN HOFFMAN: KEYS
ROB DUPREY: GUITAR
KEVIN KIELY: BASS
PAUL RUTNER: DRUMS
These were the Mumps throughout the majority of their existence.
JAY DEE DAUGHERTY, Santa Barbara High School alumnus with Lance and Kristian, was the Mumps' first fantabulous drummer, before he was seduced away by one wily and singularly persuasive Ms. Patti Smith.
AARON KIELY was the earliest original bass player until the siren call or Vermont lured him back to the provinces.
The lovely JOE KATZ joined Mumps on bass during their final burst of activity.
After the Mumps broke up, Joe Katz continued to work with Kristian as a member of Klaus Nomi's live band, playing on several early Klaus Nomi demos as well.
Kevin Kiely re-entered the scene briefly as the first bass player from Kristian's post Mumps lounge-abilly band "the Swinging Madisons", but was soon replaced by Joe Katz in that as well.
Paul Rutner remained the stable drummer for The Swinging Madisons throughout the entirety of their existence.
Influences
All the usual suspects, including many you weren't allowed to mention during Ye Olde Punque Roque heyday:
Pre school consisted of steeping ourselves in these staples:
THE KINKS!!!
THE NEW YORK DOLLS!!!!
ABBA!!!
And, in no particular order:
Beatles
Bowie
Bryds
Velvet Underground
Move
Idle Race
Stooges
Small Faces
Sonics
Jobriath
Sparks
Standells
Stones
Human Beinz
Eno
Roy Head
Bonzo Dog Band
James Brown
Roxy Music
Mrs. Miller
Fats Domino
Alice Cooper
Tiny Tim
But later we were equally inspired by the gifts of our comtemporaries:
Television Cramps Blondie Ramones Sex Pistols Talking Heads Pere Ubu The Electric Eels The Contortions
Sounds Like
The Kinks crossed with The New York Dolls, with just a smidgin of Sparks, a petite soupcon of the Small Faces, some naked lifts from the Yardbirds, and a couple of late career bass lines influenced after a fashion by Kristian's tenure as a member of The Contortions and James White and The Blacks.
Directly below is the MAGIC iTunes Button that will take you DIRECTLY to the wonderful mystical land where you can purchase downloads of the entire FANTASTIC MUMPS CATALOG! Press it today, and BUY EVERYTHING!
ALL MUSIC GUIDE calls Mumps "The great lost band of the CBGBs era. Lance Loud was a genius frontman! Gloriously off kilter!" MOJO said "They were everything the NY Dolls pretended to be - I love it!"
Along with Blondie, Television, and the Ramones, MUMPS were pioneers of the NYC CBGBs/Max's scene from 1975 - 1980.
They were the first NYC "punk" band to play California, and they amassed a huge cult following on both coasts for their wild and unpredictable stage shows, led by the maniacal gyrations of the notoriously charismatic Lance Loud, the acclaimed "First Reality T.V. Star" (in PBS' award-winning, polarizing and scandalous 12 episode documentary "An American Family", ultimately gracing the cover of Newsweek Magazine and inspiring rabid commentary by everyone from Dick Cavett to Margaret Mead).
Lance's best friend from high school, Kristian Hoffman, who also appeared briefly (as a mermaid with braces!) in "American Family", was Mumps' principle songwriter, and his literate 60's pop informed compositions claimed a lost punk bubble-anthem territory somewhere between the Kinks, Abba, and the New York Dolls(for whom Kristian designed the infamous "Bendover Girl" logo). Lance was no slouch in the songwriting department either, penning three of Mumps' biggest crowd pleasers: "Muscleboys", "We Ended Up", and "Teach Me". Famed rock historian Alan Betrock in Phonograph Record Magazine said "To choose from an array of such dazzling originals as 'Anyone But You','Not Again', 'Ideal', Awkward Age' and ' I Like To be Clean' would be an impossible task!"
Soho News called Mumps "a hard driving, tightly pulled together powerhouse package with a genuine teen idol out front."
The Mumps first single, "Crocodile Tears", was one of the biggest indie hits of the entire punk era, and has since been included on countless seminal compilations. New York Rocker called it "Utterly irresistible", Melody Maker dubbed it "Smart Anglophile Power Pop - rewarding and enjoyable"!
Despite the fact that Mumps never scored the "big record deal", unlike many of their possibly less deserving cohorts, their legend lives on and has resulted in two CD restrospectives, the most recent being a fantastic two disc CD/DVD set with a full color 24 page booklet, called "How I Saved The World".
Dennis Sweeney of "The Splatter Effect" 'Zine writes: "This collection is a testament to greatness above and beyond almost anything else from that generation. Mumps' music is without a doubt the apotheosis of the organ pumping, teenage angst, party-til-you-drop wave pop. There's no need to describe each song separately because every cut is a minor masterpiece!"
Here is an Historical Overview quoted from the liner notes of:
The SYMPATHY FOR THE RECORD INDUSTRY
CD/DVD 2 Disc Mumps Retrospective Compilation "MUMPS - How I Saved The World"
Kristian Hoffman first met Lance Loud in Mr. Baker's art class at Santa Barbara High School. Lance was pinning dead avocado leaves to the neck of a huge papier mache sculpture of a dodo bird. This vision set the tenor for many of their subsequent adventures together.
Even though they recorded a pre-release version of the Rolling Stones playing "Brown Sugar" at Altamont, and claimed authorship of that revered composition until "Sticky Fingers" was released, Lance's and Kristian's shared obsessions for the Velvets, the Stooges, The Kinks, Sparks and the Small Faces might never have led to forming a "real" band had they not run away to New York City as teenagers and witnessed the explosive birth of the New York Dolls. This was all the encouragement they needed.
It wasn't enough for Kristian to just design the famous "Bendover Girl" insert for the NY Doll's first album - Kristian and Lance HAD to form a band. So conscripting S.B.High School alumnus Jay Dee Daugherty, along with shy Vermont transplant Aaron Kiely and D.C. guitar god Rob DuPrey, the Mumps were born.
Mumps rehearsed, wrote a set of crazily varied glam pop kitsch ditties, and opened for Cherry Vanilla at Trude Hellers for their live debut to a crowd that included David Bowie and Tomata DuPlenty.
But it wasn't until their friend Richard Hell dragged them down to the Bowery to the then unknown club named CBGBS, that Mumps found their spiritual home where they could grow and blossom into one of the most popular and revered acts of the late 70?s NYC punk movement.
Jay Dee Daugherty was famously seduced away by Patti Smith amid tears and recriminations, and Aaron Kiely returned to Vermont. But the new Mumps with heartthrob Kevin Kiely on bass and rock solid Paul Rutner on drums emerged more powerful than ever.
Mumps found their real voice with critically lauded compositions like "Crocodile tears" and "Anyone But You".
Mumps combined Lance's hyperkinetic energy and impromptu witty asides with dayglo thriftstore/pimp finery, a methedrine rush of crazed leaping, falling and posing, a catalog of bitingly sarcastic yet hummable originals, and a scorching rock assault that belied the preciousness of their Britpop forbears to make their shows inimitable blasts of barely contained musical chaos.
Regular weekends at CBGBS and Max's opening for Television, Blondie, the Ramones, and other popular art rock congregations of the time like Isis and Orchestra Luna, plus incessant east coast touring, led to ever increasing popularity and soon they were headliners.
Malcom McLaren told Mumps "Besides Richard Hell, you are the ONLY interesting band in N.Y.!" and returned to London to retrofit Mr. Hell's look and attitude and a dash of the Mumps crazed panache onto the still glam boogie Sex Pistols. John Cale wanted to produce "Before the Accident", but Mumps vetoed the early Sparks-flavored composition in favor of going to California to record "Crocodile Tears"in the Beach Boys' famed Brother Studios.
As the first NYC "punk" band to play Los Angeles, Mumps were welcomed with open arms (and beds!) by all of the L.A.underground?s congnescenti and nascent punks-in-waiting: the Screamers, the Germs, the Zeros, and future members of the Go-Gos, the Bags, the Dickies, and the Gun Club. The Mumps unquestionably inspired a legion of aspiring L.A. musicians to take their rock dreams more seriously and get out there to DIY. Playing with the Dead Boys, the Quick, Devo, Cheap Trick, and Van Halen(!) quickly brought Mumps the kind of screaming adulation they also received in Philadelphia, Boston, San Franciso, and Washington D.C.
The rapid release of Mumps first single "Crocodile Tears" produced by the saint of L.A. Pop Earle Mankey led to nationwide underground radio play, and rave reviews in England and France.
With John Hewlett (of 60?s brit outrage-mongers John's Children) and Joseph Fleury (who also managed Sparks) as managers it seemed the juggernaut was unstoppable.
But somehow, as nearly all of Mumps contemporaries went on to label deals and internationally released albums, the Mumps remained curiously unsigned. Was it Lance's flamboyantly outrageous open sexuality? Was it that the Mumps were too "pop" in a market increasingly geared to punk-by-numbers? Was it that the Mumps were perceived as cashing in on Lance's notoriety from the controversial PBS documentary "An American Family"? Was it that Mumps' live shows could be inspiringly energetic, but of maddeningly inconsistent technical prowess?
It mystifies and rankles to this day that Mumps were never given a chance to give their best compositions the studio treatment afforded even the most marginal NYC outfits like the Tuff Darts. But at the time it just caused Mumps to turn inward and blame eachother. Your first band is like your family - and you fight and blame the way brothers do - not like "professional" musicians. So even though Mumps returned to New York to a second wave of adulation even greater than the first - the first audience of artists and musicians and East Village bohemians had given way to genuine hordes of screaming salivating panty-throwing teenage girls, as documented in so many articles of the time - Mumps became disillusioned with their lot and doubtful about their future.
After a self released second single, "Rock and Roll This, Rock and Roll That"? received wide critical praise and admirable sales, but still failed to inspire a label to sign them, Mumps agreed that if a scheduled demo session for Sire records failed, they would call it quits. Without the manifesto statement of an album to back them up, and help them position themselves alongside their contemporaries as artists to be reckoned with, Mumps felt the battle was no longer worth it.
Seymour Stein, for reasons unknown (although Lance insisted at the time a single unperformed blow job was to blame), passed on a demo of songs that inspired such teen tribal rioting at their live shows that even Mumps themselves were a little scared.
Of course the two hours in Sire's basement with a studio hack did not quite capture the voodoo that made the girls go wild, but wasn't it the label's duty to see beyond that? But they didn't - and so, unceremoniously, Mumps passed into history.
But with the explosion of the internet and the 1995 release of the "Fatal Charm" compilation, it was apparent that a whole new generation of pop/punk aficianados were ready to lap up what the major labels had denied them - and now we?re ready to prove once more that Mumps can still make you Scream - and Scream Again!
Thanks for stopping by please read the http://www. punkglobe. com/ INTERVIEW ON ME IN THIS MONTHS PUNKGLOBE !!And PLEASE SIGN GUESTBOOK Thanks mate Rotten
Me? Rock God? Naaah...Bands like you are Rock Gods!! Happy to know you like Italian beat bands like Equipe 84 & The Rokes, my fave is I Corvi!! Rock On, guys!!!
Yep, just little old balding-head me again, Mr. Hoffman. A revamped personal music site that needs my "Mumps" there or it is SO lacking of any "Fatal Charm!" Glad you survived your Canada exploits! Happy you're home! Mike
Kristian, It was so nice meeting you last night and to be with you on that special day. You're such a warm and friendly guy. Happy Birthday again and I hope you'll enjoy your birthday dinner this coming week end. Hope to see you again...soon
I talked about The Mumps in a radio interview last week. It is posted at www. randynow. com as a podcast on June 25th. The Sharksins podcast. LOVE THE MUMPS! Dash
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