The Pietasters

Circa fall 1990 - long ago in a town far far away: a bunch of punk: mod skinhead types had been sent to the mountains to do some learning. Chris Watt and myself were living in a house and shared the same love for punk: ska: soul: reggae: rockabilly: garage... basically they loved music: and beer: and women. A succession of bad cover bands followed. We enlisted Ben Gauslin to rock the drums and Tom Goodin was playing guitar. We sucked.About that time: Tal Bayer moved back to town. He was very much into ska and reggae and suggested we play some of the catchy songs that we loved to drink to. It proved an easy style to cover and our friends loved to sit outside skipping classes while we worked for hours to learn Madness: Specials: Bad Manners: Bosstones: Skatalites: Business: and 4 Skins covers. Pretty soon we were playing parties all over town and realized we could get free beer for playing. Then we were invited to play the clubs in town. Our shows became drunken riots. People got caught up in the beer fueled adolescence and started to speak in tongues.About the same time: our friends in The Skunks asked us to play a local ska night at Hennesseys Bar in Georgetown. We still sucked: but people kept asking us to play shows. We were 18-21 and loved getting free beer and hanging with all the punks and skins in DC. We played at almost every shitty bar in town: twice. And we were glad to be playing. A strange manager of a bar befriended us and helped us record our first record: it\