Local punk luminaries headline rare show at Bottom of the Hill

By Dave Pehling

SAN FRANCISCO — Veteran Bay Area punk band Victims Family plays a rare show when it headlines the Bottom of the Hill 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.

The line-up released a second album, The Germ, in 1992. It was the band’s first effort for Alternative Tentacles, 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! and the Bay Area supergroup Brubaker, though he eventually would be brought in to play bass with Biafra’s band. More recently, the bassist released the ambitious debut studio album by Specimen Box, a complex project that featured the musician constructing four wide-ranging suites of experimental sounds from 60-second recordings he collected and edited from over 100 collaborators. He also played with violinist/vocalist Emily Palen in the bands KnightressM1 and Othered. 

Still, semi-regular Victims Family reunions bringing Solyan back into the fold often find fans traveling long distances to catch another brutal live set. The trio embarked on a brief string of West Coast dates with Portland, OR-based punk band Nasalrod in addition to a 35th anniversary gig and an appearance at AT’s two-day Tentacle Fest in Berkeley in 2019. 

The band served as the opening act for an epic experimental punk triple bill last November at the Great American Music Hall with Oxbow and NYC provocateur Lydia Lunch and her explosive new band Retrovirus, but this show at the Bottom of the Hill marks the band’s first local headlining show in nearly three years with the added attraction of new material being played live for the first time. The trio will be joined by Uncle Sea Monster, an instrumental surf band featuring Limbomaniacs/M.I.R.V. guitarist Marc Haggard, and Frack!, a sludgy, noise-punk trio from Sacramento that uses a lap-steel guitar and released their debut album Accelerant on Forbidden Place Records last year.

Victims Family
Saturday, May 21, 8:30 p.m. $15-$18
Bottom of the Hill