Bay Area punk trio Victims Family celebrates four decades of music in Petaluma
Talented Bay Area punk trio Victims Family returns to action with this intimate, sold-out show celebrating their 40th anniversary at the Big Easy in Petaluma Saturday night.
With a partnership dating back over three decades, guitarist/vocalist Ralph Spight and bassist Larry Boothroyd have been making a uniquely hectic jazz-punk noise as the core of Victims Family since forming the band in 1984 when they were just a couple of scrawny Santa Rosa teenagers.
Bringing together the lyrical venom of the Dead Kennedys and the eclectic punk virtuosity of The Minutemen and NoMeansNo, Victims Family created a ferocious stew of hardcore, jazz, metal, funk and math rock with original drummer Devon VrMeer. Embracing the DIY punk ethos of the time, the young trio booked its first national tour in 1985, honing its chops while sharing the stage with such bands as NOFX, Tales of Terror, the aforementioned DKs and Social Unrest.
The band issued its debut album Voltage and Violets on Mordam Records the following year, unleashing Spight's vitriolic social commentary on salvos like "Homophobia" and "God, Jerry, & The P.M.R.C." in addition to writing likely the only instrumental tribute to jazz guitarist George Benson ever performed by a punk band. Victims' follow-up effort Things I Hate To Admit further refined the group's sound with more ear-pleasing, barbed wire hooks on such future fan favorites as "World War IX" and "Corona Belly."
VrMeer's departure to start a family led to his short-term replacement by Eric Strand before roadie Tim Solyan stepped in and completed what many consider to be the band's classic line-up. Victims Family crafted what still stands as one of the outstanding punk albums of the decade with 1990's White Bread Blues while furthering their reputation as a blistering live act with multiple U.S. and European tours, sharing the stage with the likes of Nirvana and Primus while having future stars Mr. Bungle and Green Day serve as opening acts.
That version of the trio released a second album, The Germ, in 1992. It was the band's first effort for Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles imprint, but the grind of the road eventually led to a two-year hiatus. A reunion would produce another solid studio effort (Headache Remedy) and a live album that captured Victims' volatile onstage chemistry before Spight and Boothroyd moved on to band projects Saturn's Flea Collar (with the bassist switching to drums) and Hellworms (another trio that featured Bluchunks/Walrus drummer Joaquin Spengemann).
Victims Family put out one more album with yet another drummer — Apocalicious in 2001 featuring My Name drummer David Gleza behind the kit — before the principles moved on to explore other creative outlets. Spight would front his own band The Freak Accident in addition to anchoring Biafra's lauded new band The Guantanamo School of Medicine on guitar, while Boothroyd would tour and record extensively with celebrated experimental outfit Triclops!, though he eventually would be brought in to play bass with Biafra's band.
In the midst of the pandemic, the bassist released the ambitious debut studio album by Specimen Box, a complex, decade-long project that featured the musician constructing four wide-ranging suites of experimental sounds using 60-second recordings he compiled and edited from over 100 collaborators. Boothroyd has since constructed a second Specimen Box album entitled Remote Communion, taking a more song-oriented from a smaller pool of musicians and vocalists (working with "only" 60 contributors) released on the Valley King Records imprint in late 2022 with a stunning 3-D cover by noted Bay Area artist Alan Forbes.
Despite the challenges presented by the drummer's busy schedule as an in-demand drum tech, semi-regular Victims Family reunions that bring Solyan back into the fold often find fans traveling long distances to catch another brutal live set. In recent years, the trio embarked on several tours with Portland, OR-based powerhouse art-punk band Nasalrod, with whom the band released a split album earlier this year.
Entitled In the Modern Meatspace, the five hectic and bruising tracks that fill the VF side of the split mark the first new music released by the band since 2012. The trio recently played a string of shows in support of San Diego band Pinback and will be joining NoMeansNo drummer John Wright and his new project Dead Bob for a run of Canadian shows next month. For this 40th anniversary celebration at the Big Easy in Petaluma Saturday night, Victims Family will be joined by Japanese-born, SF-based experimental punk duo Electric Machine Gun T--s and Lethal Limits, the melodic punk solo project of Oakland musician Jeff Corso, who has played with an array of bands including Coffin Party, No Dice, Second Opinion, Nightstick Justice and Crystal Logic. While advance tickets to this show quickly sold out, there will be a limited number available at the door.
Victims Family 40th Anniversary Show
Saturday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m. $16-$20
The Big Easy
