The Vandals
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
The Vandals were founded in Huntington Beach, CA -- also home to the Crowd and T.S.O.L. -- by guitarist Jan Nils Ackerman in 1980. Their inaugural lineup was completed by vocalist Stevo, bassist Steve Pfauter, and drummer Joe Escalante. Their riotous early shows around Orange County got them banned from several venues, but also worked up enough buzz that their 1982 debut EP, Peace Thru Vandalism, was released by Bad Religions Epitaph label. It featured signature early numbers like Anarchy Burger (Hold the Government), the local radio hit Urban Struggle, and The Legend of Pat Brown, about a real-life roommate of Escalantes who went after some undercover cops with his car at a Vandals show in Costa Mesa. The following year, they appeared as themselves in director Penelope Spheeris punk drama, Suburbia.
The Vandals continued to play around Orange County when they could over the next few years, including a tongue-in-cheek benefit show for the Young Republicans in 1984. The following year, they issued their first full-length LP, When in Rome Do as the Vandals, on the small National Trust label; it featured new bass player Chalmer Lumary, as well as the local radio hits Lady Killer and Mohawk Town. Substantial personnel shifts ensued over the next few years; ex-Fallen Idols singer Dave Quackenbush joined up later in 1985, and Escalante switched from drums to bass. More members came and went; guitarist Warren Fitzgerald came on board in 1987, and drummer Josh Freese joined in 1989, completing a new Vandals lineup that would endure for over a decade afterward.
The album Slippery When Ill, a snarky piss-take on country music that was later reissued under the title The Vandals Play Really Bad Original Country Tunes, was released in 1989. The group subsequently signed with punk indie Triple X, with which they made their first big splash via 1991s Fear of a Punk Planet. With their back catalog out of print, the Vandals next re-recorded much of the bands early material on the 1994 live album Sweatin to the Oldies. In the meantime, Fitzgerald moonlighted as the guitarist for Oingo Boingo until the groups dissolution in late 1995. Freese also began to branch out with recording sessions for Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves; by the late 90s, he had become an accomplished session drummer for a wide variety of pop and alt-rock acts, and also served stints in Guns N Roses (the inactive, studio-bound incarnation) and Maynard James Keenans prog-metal side project, A Perfect Circle.
With the California punk revival in full swing by 1994, the Vandals switched over to the Offsprings new imprint, Nitro Records, for which they cut two albums -- 1995s Live Fast Diarrhea and 1996s The Quickening. Later in 1996, Escalante and Fitzgerald formed their own label, Kung Fu, which was designed to ensure the bands financial independence in the wake of their growing cult popularity on the punk scene. They inaugurated the label at the end of the year with the holiday album Oi to the World: Christmas With the Vandals, and soon set about signing other acts as well. The Vandals returned to Nitro for the 1998 set Hitler Bad, Vandals Good, and completed their contract with 2000s Look What I Almost Stepped In. Having built up Kung Fu into a viable enterprise, they subsequently left Nitro to stick with their own label. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald embarked on another side gig, playing lead guitar with the newly electrified Tenacious D on their 2001 debut album. Freeses session career was also booming by this time, and although he remained a studio regular, he was often replaced during live gigs by a rotating cast of four to five drummers, the most prominent of whom was Brooks Wackermann (later of Bad Religion). Now firmly committed to Kung Fu, the Vandals returned in 2002 with Internet Dating Superstuds.
