The Slackers

The Slackers:
Where Were You in '92? (Fay-Get Records, 1994)
Circle A Your Day - (Nation of Kids, 1995)
Split with Fun Girls from Mt. Pilot (House O'Pain, 1996)
+ 1 Bonus track

I don't have the greatest explanation as to why, but it seems no band truly epitomizes Huntsville's concept of punk rock like The Slackers. Maybe it's because most of their members were crucial components of so many other important bands, or that their style and attitude mapped out the template we'd see in most other bands after them for several years to come.

Either way, at the time, you could not have convinced me there were any cooler four guys on Earth aside from these chaps. On the front lines you had the prematurely balding, righteously outspoken, homemade tattoo gallery and bassist/singer Joey Tampon (15E, Shitboy from Outerspace) whose comically nasal outbursts were glued together with the barnacle encrusted, gravel filled, razor blade gargling vocal chords of Heiko Schrepel whose snarling growl was tailor made for this band. On guitar, you had a very young Robert Daniel (The Peeps) who occasionally chimed in on vocals, and like Schrepel and Tampon, seems to have shared a good bit of writing duties. Of course, holding it all down on drums was Matt Seward, brother to Andrew Seward of Against Me!.

Lyrically, The Slackers covered all the hot button issues of the day. Every tune was an unrelenting attack on figures of authority, the pompous bourgeoisie, conformity, society on the whole (but most especially in the South), poseur punks, and of course, those fucking audacious, fancy pants, limousine-riding, money making rockstars (which is semi-ironic considering Heiko went on grace the Vans WARP Tour and Hot Topic stores across the country as the bassist for One Man Army). Semi-irony aside, these dudes sing it with a burning, urgent conviction and enough "fuck you!'s" to make for a pretty entertaining drinking game.

As it usually works in punk rock, the game is all about instant gratification - or at least "ASAP" gratification. You start a band because you want to play shows and put out records. So as soon as you know 4 or 5 songs, it's time to get on stage and into the studio - which explains why so many of the first E.P.'s by these bands are really sloppy. That's probably the case with "Where We You in '92?" which I would guess was definitely not recorded to a click track. But with "Circle A Your Day", they're starting to get the hang of it, and by the time their last recordings came out, they were a pretty tight band - not to mention economical. The Slackers wasted not an inch of vinyl, cramming never less than 4 songs on a side. For the most part, this is their whole discography aside from a few other compilation tracks and 9 or so unreleased songs that NOK! was later selling as part of a box set. All together, they equal up to about half an hour of music.

The bonus track here is (again) from Recess Records' "Play at Your Own Risk, Vol. 2". Rumors around this time were that The Slackers were in talks with San Francisco punk staple Lookout! Records about putting out a record, but the band's demise came when they ventured out to San Fran - a one show tour - to play that coveted mecca of all things punk in the 90's - Gilman Street. Legend has it that they were kicked out and banned as a result of Robert repeating an offensive lesbian joke throughout their set. I'm not entirely clear on the details or exact cause of this next incident, but according to a story Joey told me while we were on tour together as The 3D's, there was an altercation and they ended up leaving a scared and teary-eyed Heiko behind in Oakland, California, and traveled all the way back to Alabama without him. The band played their last show at The Tip Top Cafe shortly after, having members of the audience come on stage and sing in place of Schrepel (I used to have this on video tape but loaned it to Joey and never got it back).

Matt Seward moved away to go to school at Montevallo. Robert Daniel was playing with in the Peeps at the same time as The Slackers and continued doing so afterward. He started a short-lived rock n roll band called The Deadlines, replaced me as the guitarist of The 3D's, and now plays with The Counter Clockwise. Joey "Tampon" Tacon started many more bands, including The 3D's, The Radioactives, and Joey Tampon and the Toxic Shocks before finding Jesus and becoming a Baptist minister. Heiko came back to Huntsville briefly to get some clothes, sell off the remainder of his possessions, and moved back to California for good. As mentioned before, several years later he was on the WARP Tour as the bassist for One Man Army. According to his Wikipedia page, he's now playing with U.S. Bombs.