Skabbs
Idle Threat
A collection of never before issued recordings from 1977-78 Lawndale, California punks, The Skabbs. In tandem with the birth of punk, these music obsessed nerds, bored and listless at the end of the 70s, became disenchanted with the increasingly plastic tendencies of modern music. The Skabbs concocted some truly outsider sounds, melding jagged Devo-esque rhythms with lightning-fast technical touches that predicted the Minutemen by a few years. Sadly, the band was cut short in 1979 when songwriter and frontman, Steven Joseph Salazar dies at just 26 years old from a life-long heart condition. In their grief, The Skabbs choose to disband burying Salazars legacy of songs with their sorrow. In retrospect, The Skabbs steadily became a scene unto themselves, making a proto-punk sound guided by a mission to simply make music that sounded less gross than Foreigner. With the exception of being recorded by SST producing genius Spot, The Skabbs were considered too weird for the art crowd and just terrified the hippies. Limited Vinyl LP (w/mp3 download).