Maniax - A Brief History

Everything old is new again. Sorting through dusty, decades-old demo tapes really takes you back, for better or worse – were we really that young? Are we really that old now?

Fall 1979: Rob and I moved from Boise, Idaho to Fresno, CA – and our first day at Tenaya Middle School just happened to be Halloween. Soon after, during seventh grade, we became good friends with Nich Urbina and Eric Dansby, who were forming their own punk/new-wave band The Insanez. They asked me to join as lead singer, even though I really couldn’t exactly “sing” – maybe scream or rant in that “little angry kid” mode that 12-year-olds think they can fix the world through three-chord rave-up. But with the rule-smashing attitude of punk back in the day, it really didn’t matter. Jamming in Nich’s rec-room, we kicked out the jams with gusto, cranking out songs like “Model Baby (Barbie Doll),” “Dead Puppy,” “Slit Wrists,” and “Fig Rock,” our ode to the San Joaquin Valley. Juvenile? Yes. Rudimentary? Certainly. But being so young, these shock-novelty sketches were distilled from our youthful notion of what “punk” might be to our young ears. Naïve as we may have been, we managed to create and experiment despite of our inexperience – the sound of things almost falling apart, soon shifting our sound to more in-your-face, raw sonic assault coupled with more overtly political lyrics – at least what seems “political” for a 13-year-old in junior high.

Summer of 1980: The Maniax rise from the ashes of the now-defunct Insanez. At first, it was just me on vocals (and penning semi-socio-political lyrics), Eric on drums, and Nich on guitar – then my twin brother Rob was added to the line-up on co-lead vocals. In those early days, the punk movement – or at least its localized incarnation in Fresno – was truly DIY. Raised on a steady diet of everything from The Clash, Plasmatics, Black Flag, Devo, some KISS riffs tossed in for good measure, the Maniax sound was strictly lo-tech & lo-fi to say the least. We weren’t really a “garage” band but rather a living room band, rehearsing in either Nich’s den or Eric’s house, much like the countless other “bedroom punk rockers” dotting the nation during the ultra-conservative Reagan Era. We didn’t just break the rules - there were no rules to break.

Our recording studio? During our improv jam sessions, we just used one of those ancient hand-held tape recorders (you know, the ones that take two thumbs to press Play & Record at the same time) plugged into a mic to capture vocals, guitar, and drums all in one take. No bass for us –  one thing that gave us our patented Maniax sound. (Were we unwitting precursors to the White Stripes?)

Like many young punks in Fresno, although we came from tract-home suburbia rather than hardcore streets, we were avid fans of seminal MAXIMUM ROCKANDROLL broadcast from KPFA in Berkeley. Every Tuesday night was a like some sort of eye-opening window to vital, burgeoning punk scenes around the world – and we got our first taste of upstart bands spanning the globe. Just for kicks, we decided to record a few rough demos at home on Palo Alto Drive – and mailed them off to Tim Yohannon, Jeff Bale, Jello Biafra, and MRNR crew. Amazingly, the following week, we were on the air! The rest is history – sort of. We were the first band in Fresno to dare send tapes to MRNR to get airplay – and when they welcomed us with open arms, the floodgates for other local bands swung wide open – and a nascent local scene we were all-but too young to take part in was transformed, nurtured, & maybe even changed forever. We kept sending more songs, they kept getting played, and somehow a small but cult following built up – what the hell was going on in Fresno, and who were those Maniax? We were pre-teens who picked up a guitar or pen and just did it.

Before we knew it, in January of 1982, we were asked to headline our first-ever live show at a MRNR-sponsored “All Fresno” gig at legendary Mabuhay Gardens (“The Mab”) in San Francisco. Sharing the bill with us were fellow Fresno punkers Capitol Punishment, Toxic Shock, and NBJ. More than anything, I think we were all scared of making fools of ourselves – but in spite of this being our first and last live show ever, we somehow made it through our set with barely a glitch – well, Nich’s new-fangled effects-box guitar didn’t help. Hearing the dusty Memorex tapes now, most of this live gig is clumsy and ragged, but still has its own kind of naïve charm – so we tossed a tune or two on our “Lost Tapes” CD for posterity, including “White World,” based on our collective experience being bused across town in the name of “desegregation.” Still, we had a fun time meeting Tim and the Gang, and all our parents tagged along as trusty chaperons – our Dad even got interviewed by the radio, comparing the Bay Area punk scene to Dick Dale ’60s surfer stomp back in his day. Months later, a full-page photo from our Mab gig graced the pages of Thrasher featuring a piece on us.

One thing that many people have asked us over the years is: how did you get that sound for “Off to War?,” our infamous track we contributed to the Not So Quiet on the Western Front MRNR Alternative Tentacles compilation, along with other Fresno bands. Simple: we didn’t think about it, we just did it. Truth be told, many of the Maniax’s songs were created on the spot with no pre-planning, but more improv, so it’s likely a case of lightning in a bottle maybe, or just dumb luck. One mic, one amp, one tape recorder – that’s it. At the time, my lyrics seemed so “important” , but now they just seem…well, I’m just glad you can’t decipher most of them buried in the mix.

In the summer of 1982, for a brief time we hooked up with bassist Eric Holt, a local punker a few years our senior who played a wicked bass guitar. One track included here, “Last House on the Left,” is our homage to Wes Craven by way of the White House – and my feeble attempt to cop The Gun Club’s “Sex Beat” psychobilly style. I don’t know what ever happened to Eric, but he was a real cool guy – even if that stolen amp from Fresno’s now-defunct Festival Cinema you sold us never quite worked!

The songs unearthed for our “lost tapes” CD were never meant to see the light of day and are rough first-take rehearsals, most made up on the spot, ranging from the stridently serious (“KKK Is Not OK”) to angry rants like “Xmas Drone” and “Cool Blue Hairspray,” about posers who treated an ideology & movement like a trendy costume to be donned – and just as easily discarded – for attention. Ironically, in eighth grade, a bunch of us tried to host a so-called “Punk Day” – but the ensuing threat all but shut down the whole school, as our principal wasn’t very happy. Funny what a little hair dye, studded bracelets, and safety pins can do – but in those days, coming to school in jack-boots or shaved head or plaid shirt tied around your waist was “dangerous.” Nowadays “punk” bands on MTV who use the clichéd remnants of an bygone authentic punk movement as a mere marketing gimmick are more like teens playing dress up at the local mall – about as threatening as a half-off sale at Hot Topic. But back at the dawn of the early ‘80s – before the Internet, DVDs, cell phones, digital downloads, pay-per-view, Google, YouTube, and webisodes – a weekly trip to the late, great local Tower Records on Blackstone at Barstow held a genuine air of excitement for our little gang – what new hardcore 7”s were awaiting in the bins? We scooped up indie EPs by MDC, Minor Threat, Bad Religion, The Neos, SSD, Minutemen, Crass, Chron-Gen, The Fartz, DRI, and the rest – in a fever dream that punk rock could change the world, or at least your own life. (If only I had kept all those limited edition 7” EPs now and not given them away to Mike Waldhart’s Aussie pal Matt – have you seen what this stuff sells for on Ebay these days?!)

As bonus cuts for this compilation, we’ve included a sample of the “reformed” Maniax a few years later (Gregg on vocals, Gary Shuster on guitar, and Rob playing a box (!) since we didn’t have a drummer at that point, now that’s DIY) on tracks that, for all their crude recording sound, manage to somehow sound like early Black Flag – witness “Stupid Fashion Scam” or “Corporate Crucifix.”

For collectors, we’ve also tacked on a few of the pre-Maniax Insanez tracks to give you a taste of the proto-punk sound where the Maniax style evolved from. You might know later on Eric and Nich formed The Zipperheads (and later Eric joined bands as disparate as ska-inflected Kyber Rifles and alt-rockers Supreme Love Gods, who released several CDs on Rick Rubin’s Def American label via Sire/WB and still plays around with Bev and other Fresno acts). After the Maniax, I helped form the more overly political band Think Tank with the late, great Mike Waldhart (RIP), Matt Dunlap, and Bobby Arias (actually, Think Tank V.1 included our high school pals Gary Shuster on guitar and Scott Vick on bass), which later released a six-track 7” EP (“What Now?”) in 1986 on Mind Matter Records and played several West Coast shows, including many at Fresno’s Knights of Columbus Hall in the mid-80s.

But to this day, I’m sure my ex-band mates share a nagging sense that we weren’t able to quite capitalize on our initial opportunities and realize our full potential – as Jello Biafra once exclaimed on the radio before playing a Maniax cut: “Call us! We’ll put you on the cover of Tiger Beat! We can pull strings!” One afternoon during eighth grade, I remember coming home after-school and receiving a phone call from seminal noise-punk band Flipper: “Hey, guys, can you go on tour in Germany?” Our parents: “You can’t, you have a math test tomorrow!” And so it went…

The same goes for actually playing live shows. The funny thing was, apart from regular radio airplay, the Maniax never really played out much. We were booked bills for several local shows (& have the flyers to prove it!), but something always went wrong – the promoter pulled out, the cops shut down the park, soccer practice. And anyone who has ever played a live gig in front of a sold-out audience knows the visceral rush of performing live, whether it’s 500 or 5,000 people. I can see why rock stars get addicted.

But we were far from rock stars – we were just “angry young punkers” holed up in the San Joaquin Valley, trying to do something – anything – to keep out of trouble or just stave off the latest bout of teenage boredom. So be kind when taking a listen to these tracks “recorded” at home circa 1980-1982 – we were too young to know any better.

Gregg Mitchell
Los Angeles, CA
May 2008