Tongue (6)

Tongue was started in El Sereno/Pasadena Ca. in around 1992 Rik Collins and Liz McGrath met at an underground show Rik was throwing in Downtown Los Angeles, shortly after they decided to start a band. After a couple lame guitar players Rik pulled in long time friend Jason Coda on rhythm and he brought in Todd Shiroma on lead, he also brought in Chris Cunningham on drums The first line up was born. Later, Ivan X joined the band around 1995 after Jason and Todd spun out in a drugged out abyss, Chris moved up to Humble to be a hippy if you can believe it, and Rik stalked Kevin Steger until he joined the band on drums, this line up would remain for years. Briefly Sharon Needles of Butt trumpet/Betty Blowtorch came in on rhythm guitar, and Jerry I cant remember his last name, also of Butt Trumpet played drums, there are some recordings around of that time, actually recordings exist from all the different fazes. Also Pat Butterworth of Shoegazor sat in on several recording for the first album and played several live shows in between Chris and Kevin, he was a great drummer. Drugs were rampid in the band and they were probably one of the most dysfunctional bands of all times but that's what made it exciting, any given night you didn't know what would happen, from on stage fights to full on comedy, to drugged out drama but they were always blisteringly intense live. You either Loved them fanatically or hated them with a passion, they were banned from many a club in their day. It was the time of Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Spam, 90's Butt rock and they hated it! it was right before the Green Day pop punk revival and they hated that too, nothing new about it, so they did their brutal take on punk but in the process went way beyond that label and for those that got it, they didn't forget it. They quickly gained ground in the Los Angeles area played with a lot of bands toured the U.S. twice, numerous west coast and south west tours and broke up right before they were scheduled to go on their first European tour, their last show was at the now long gone Al,s Bar on Halloween in 2000, that night they played with Dayglow Abortions. They recorded two albums, Faulty Parts (cannibal City Records) and Sweet Meat (Hello Records) both labels are no more and these Cd's are hard to find, they did one rare single Killer Tongue Attack on Last Resort records. Tongue played and toured with an extensive list of bands Raw Power, Agent Orange, The Dickies, Fear, DRI, Shoegazer, Crack, Dr. Know, The Adz, Barfeeders, SMD, AFU, Thretning Verse, The Casualties, At The Drive In, Los Mongos, 400 Blows, Oppressed Logic, U.S. Bombs, Shleprock, the Fixtures, What Happens Next, Ill repute, The Crowd, The Stains, Throwrag, Groovy Rednecks, Imperial Buttwizards, Green Jelly, Vandals, Lunachicks, Bad Acid Trip, Syphic, Texas Terri, Rosemarys Billygoat, Haunted Garage, The Voids and on and on, man too many to remember. It was a good time in the LA club scene with Al's bar still around and a local fave hang out. Many of these bands still play around and some have fallen. Dez Cadena of Black Flag fame and now The Misfits sang with Tongue live at a show in Hollyweird (check the pics out) he sang with Liz on Booze Cruisin off the second CD. Blaze James (TVTV's) helped us a lot and co-produced our first CD with Doug Green, John Miner did our posters, Shit Ed was well Shit ed, Tongue started a magazine called Censor This with Ed, he was always down for us. Aw too many stories, I'll keep adding more as they come my fingers are getting tired of typin, Oh yeah Liz plays in a band called Ms. Derringer now and is a respected artist, Rik plays in his own band The Woolly Bandits and used to tour with Sky Saxon and The Seeds, Decry and The Stains.