Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Scabs!

I love a good musical mystery as much as anyone here at WFMU. One of my favorites involves a song I heard on my local college radio station almost 15 years ago, driving home at 4 in the morning, and then shivering in my idling car for 10 extra minutes so I could hear the most-likely-stoned DJ back announce the set and add the song to my ever-growing list of potential aural conquests. I'd bet you a thousand bucks that any of my WFMU compadres could share their experience about a song like that, but since I got here first, we're going to talk about west coast kiddie-kore greats, The Rolling Scabs.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Sort of. It was sometime around 1991 and I'd heard this ridiculous song played by what sounded like a couple of snot brained pre-teens who'd maybe heard a Flipper record, and then picked up instruments for the first time. They didn't have a guitar player -- at least not in the band's theme song, (MP3) which was now locked sturdily in my cranium (thanks to the obviously heisted bassline from "Now I Wanna be Your Dog" by Iggy and the Stooges) -- and it seemed like they were making up the lyrics on the spot. Since there was no such thing as instant musical gratification (i.e. the internet) in those days, I got my first copy of the song the old fashioned way: I poised my finger on the record button on my home stereo and with my free dialing finger, I annoyed the shit out of the local DJ until s/he played it.

Fast forward about 8 years. I am in California visiting friends who live in the the Mission District (pictured below... no it's not usually that sunny there) and am harboring a record shopping jones that won't quit. If you've never been there, San Francisco is kind of like dying and going to record shopping heaven. In addition to Amoeba Records and the innumerable smaller shops that speckle the left coast paradise, records are often also on sale in delis, coffee shops, launderettes, and bars. I can't remember where I was when I finally found the Rolling Scabs record, but I'm sure my heart skipped a beat when I saw that wonderful goldenrod nightmare staring me at me squarely from the dusty bin for a measly $2.50.

Owning the record began answering questions that my cruddy radio-tape version of "We're the Scabs" hadn't even begun to ask. Not only were the Rolling Scabs a pair of 12 year olds being backed up by musicians with names like Tony Fag and Susan California, but the record had been recorded live at the famed Gilman Street Project punk dive, and perhaps most shockingly, it had been dedicated to "the living memory" of lead vocalist Giuliano "The Scab" Bourbon, 1975-1990.

Huh?? One of the little kids sporting the MDC t-shirts was dead? This quote from the liners revealed the shocking details:

"...last summer, word filtered out that Giuliano "The Scab" Bourbon was really dead. His live for the moment philosophy played itself out in a tragic accident of which the details are still sketchy. Apparently, the boy genius had rigged up a way to hitch rides hanging from a rickety elevator in the Connecticut mansion he was living in. Well, on this fateful day, Giuliano would not make it all the way down. His natural curiosity would get the best of him and his short life on this earth was brought to a confusing finish."

Hmmm, anyone smell an elaborate music scene in-joke unfurling here? Was this whole Rolling Scabs legend/death story some sort of complex hoax? Maybe, maybe not... But the fact that the above liners were credited to one "N. Tufnel, retired musician and noted rock historian" didn't lend a whole lotta credibility to the story, since everybody knows that "N. Tufnel" is short for "Nigel Tufnel" of Spinal Tap -- the greatest, most elaborate musical hoax of all time.

True or not, the rest of the record was just as good as the one song I'd already heard. To wit, the Rolling Scabs draw a line in the sand, and then dare others to cross it in the epic "My Mom Smokes Pot" (MP3). Consider the lyrical questions raised in the following passages:

"My mom smokes pot! All she ever does is sitting on that bed (sic), coughing off her big fat head! Yeaoaaah! Looking at the mirror watching her warts!... Marijuana has a first name, it's W-E-E-D! Marijuana has a second name it's J-O-I-N-T! And we smoke it every day blaehehahea! Marijuana has a way of fucking up the U.S.A. Today!"

Then there's the tribute to the never-realized Rolling Scabs world tour, "Around the World in 80 Seconds" (MP3) which confuses various Asian cultures with one another in a classic, ignorant-twelve-year-old kind of way.

"We're gonna go to China, buy some chopsticks, eat some rice. Sumo wrestling, find an oriental girl, do everything I wanna do in China... Eat some sushi in Japan, visit the Great Wall..."

Truly, the stuff of legend... But as is so often the case with many great things, my copy of the Rolling Scabs 45 fell behind the stereo (in the cosmic sense, that is) and was entirely forgotten about until I took it upon myself to unearth a true diamond in the rough for this blog. In the hopes that the internet had caught up with the band's considerable legend, I googled them before creating this post and came up with the usual results... a few radio playlist pages from freeform pals KALX and WPRB, but one curiously well-informed post regarding the band, written in a similarly ambiguous manner as the above-quoted liners... Could this guy be holding out on us? What's he hiding? Could he somehow be involved in a coverup? The world may never know, but in the cultural DMZ that you and I know as 2005, it's clear enough to me that hoax or not, the Rolling Scabs were just too good to last.

Comments

[Jen Abb]

Mike, A four song EP and you only serve up 3 MP3s. You're killing completists like me.

[RentThisName]

You tell'im Jen!

Mike, PLEASE?

[mike]

The Rolling Scabs sound a lot like Human Skab, a Washington state mohawked preteen who released a truly awesome and chaotic cassette, _Thunderbolts and Saddle Bags_ or something like that. Human Skab ranted about elementary school and being punished, but he also served up the postapocalptic epic "Mining The Radiation." The Blake Babies sampled him on a track.

[jeff]

more pre-teen punk agro? dude, wwjd? (what would jacko do?)

[Lil Mike]

Thanx to Mike Lupica for putting up the Rolling Scabs music and story...

Those kids were hilarious, the guy who posted about Human Skab is right on ... these kids were influenced by that as well... we'd seen the Skab cassette and when these neighborhood brats showed up and we decided they should be performers, they adopted the name Rolling Scabs...

and although the story was
kept tongue in cheek on the liner notes... as unbelievable as it seems, it's mostly true... so we decided to roll with the absurdist tone...

probably, because we were a mess, and you wouldn't believe it anyway

Giuliano really did die in an elevator surfing accident... there really was an escaped mental patient playing guitar.. the drummer really was known as Tony Fag...

I am the certifiably nuts long haired guy in the middle of the live yellow sleeve picture... the retarded mental patient is the big leaping dude behind me... Giuliano is the singer

it's a fairly rare release ( less than 800 copies known to have ever existed)

I still get occasional people tracking me down about it, awhile back a kid from Italy recognized me on the street from the sleeve...

There's more info the release at a blog entry I did at

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&friendID=950818

[Lil Mike]

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&blogID=9432239

direct blog link to Scabs entry

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=950818&blogID=9432239

[michael dean]

hey ! thanks.

that's me on bass, and my drummer, from Bomb, tony fag, on drums.

There is sort of a guitar player, or two, li'l mike, and a guy named reiner. He's in and out of mental institutions a lot. neither of them could play, so they're way down in the mix. I think that was lawrence livermore introducing us.

We discovered the scabs, or did they discover us? they broke into my house. I was fucking my girlfriend and i looked up and they were standing over me. they broke in another time while we were out. We came in and they were banging on our drums and guitar. Instead of calling the cops we called tim yohannan and booked them a gig. We wrote the set list on the way to the gig. And yup, it was all made up on the spot.

michael w. dean

[michael dean]

By the way, the reason lawrence says "OUCH!" in the intro is one of the scabs kicked him because they wanted to play, NOW!

[Melinda]

Wow, 12 year old kids. How cute and cool.

[b mulvey]

all the recent talk about eyeball skeleton triggered something in the memory banks about hearing some weird-ass little kid rock thing at (prb say like, 1999), that was vaguely similar - sure enough, here's mr. 'hey you kids' filling us all in.

[mcr]

early 90s I heard it on wprb and found it at the record exchange...still one of my most prized records!

[ccc]

cool that any young kid would sport an mdc shirt...I had some NJ staties real unhappy with my mdc shirt

[isa bourbon]

hey this is my brother, giuliano. He died August 1, 1990. IT was in my aunts house. she has an elevator, he was elevator surfing when he fell and the elevator came down on top of him. i was born the same year he died. I cant believe he was this famous. i heard some of his stuff its pretty funny. Do you know where i could buy his album it means alot.

[Pierre Sage]

many lunar cycles past

before THEY took grunge commercial -- to the Bon Marche

before THEY took the right to play
from KCMU, 90.3

the scabs rolled across the aural sea

ONCE

my mind decoded the wavefronts and rarefactions

it was too cool to be REAL

once

mother didint wouldint couldint souldint

no vinyl in hand
only a virtual receipt

;ONCE is again

nice
and
weird

that was
1991
this is
Pierre Sage

[betsey bruner]

You are talking about my son, Giuliano Bourbon. I was absolutely amazed to find his name on this Web site. Who are you?
Betsey (Bourbon) Bruner

[Rita Bourbon]

This is my step-son and we are thrilled to see that his memory is alive somehow. Can we buy CD's? Let me know?

[manuel]

I heard the song "my mom smokes pot" on KUNV, the college radio station in Las Vegas, on the 7 inch radio show,my little sister and I were way into it. I used to tape the radio, and I taped that song, but I lost the tape, thanks for posting the songs on this website.

[Alexandra Bourbon]

My name is alex and Giuliano was my brother. I was 7 when he died. I would love to know where i could get an album or any sort of memorabillia on the band. Thank you so much for keeping the legacy going. Thanks, Alex

[Mousette]

Giuliano Bourbon was a creative, high-spirited, and fiercely independent boy. His independence no doubt stemmed from his somewhat unstable lifestyle, being bounced between boarding schools, his father's home in Santa Barbara, his mother's home in Northern California, and his aunt and uncle's in New York, where he met his untimely death. At that time, his family was not in touch with his enormous musical and artistic potential, in spite of the fact that Montino, his father (an American, born in Italy), is a professional ethnomusicologist and Indian Classical maestro. Montino spent about 12 years of his life under the direct tutelage of the world famous Indian sarod master, Ali Akbar Khan, at his school in San Rafael California. At this time of his life, Giuliano's family was more concerned about his grades in school and a number of instances in which Giuliano had gotten himself in a bit of trouble with his school's administration. (nothing serious; just boys being boys)
After Giuliano's death, which was devastating to his family, Montino began displaying Giuliano's guitar on the wall of his stone music building (the Kiva), and often brings it out at concerts and informal gatherings and plays it in a number of world music styles, including classical Indian.
It is somewhat ironic that Giuliano, with one informal recording, has reached a level of fame and notoriety that his father, after devoting an entire lifetime to music performance, composition, and education, has yet to achieve.

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