Tag Archives: Dangerhouse Records

The Weirdos – Unofficial Releases

This index features only vinyl and includes unofficial releases

B. Unofficial Releases

1. Weirdos ‎– It Means Nothing
Label: Punk Vault
Catalog Number: PV-4
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1988

Notes: recording of the bands first demo session, recorded in Hollywood in 1977

Tracklist
A ‎– It Means Nothing
B ‎– Neutron Bomb

2. Weirdos ‎– Ranting In A Rubber Room!!!
Label: None
Catalog Number: None
Format: 2 × Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: 1992

Notes: Recording of a Weirdos rehearsal, recorded in Hollywood in 1977.

Tracklist
A1 ‎– Message From The Underworld
A2 ‎– Bad
B1 ‎– Life Of Crime
B2 ‎– Go Kid Hugo
C1 ‎– Scream Baby Scream
C2 ‎– Teenage
D1 ‎– Why Do You Exist?
D2 ‎– Do The Dance
D3 ‎– Destroy All Music

The Weirdos – Releases

>> return to The Weirdos page >>

This index features only vinyl and includes official releases

A. Releases

1. Weirdos – Destroy All Music
Label: BOMP!
Catalog Number: Bomp 112
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: 1977

Notes: Some copies of the first pressing came with a folded Weirdos Fan Club insert.

Tracklist
A1 – Destroy All Music
B1 – A Life of Crime
B2 – Why Do You Exist?

2. The Weirdos ‎– We Got The Neutron Bomb
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SP-1063
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1978

Notes: Around 5000 of the pressing made, but only about 2500 sold, the rest were destroyed in a flood.

Tracklist
A – We Got The Neutron Bomb
B – Solitary Confinement

3. Weirdos ‎– Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Label: BOMP!
Catalog Number: BLP-4007
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 33 ⅓ RPM, LP
Released: 1979

Notes: The Weirdos first 12″, a “mini-album”.

Tracklist
A1 ‎– Happy People
A2 ‎– Big Shot (In The Head)
A3 ‎– Jungle Rock
B1 ‎– Hit Man
B2 ‎– Idle Life
B3 ‎– Fort USA

4. The Weirdos ‎– A Life Of Crime
Label: Line Records
Catalog Number: 6.14391
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1985

Notes: A re-release of the band’s first single Destroy all Music (BOMP!, 1977).

Tracklist
A ‎– A Life Of Crime
B ‎– Destroy All Music

5. The Weirdos ‎– Message From The Underworld
Label: Insipid Vinyl
Catalog Number: IV-04
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1991

Notes: Message from the Underworld Recorded at The Sound Factory, Hollywood, CA in July 1980. Teenage Recorded at Shangri-La, Malibu, CA in July 1978.

Tracklist
A ‎– Message From The Underworld
B ‎– Teenage

6. The Weirdos ‎– Bourbon
Label: Frontier Records
Catalog Number: Boozewax-002
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: November 2015

Notes: Cover art by Jaime Hernandez. Side A recorded in 1977; side B recorded in 1980.

Tracklist
A ‎– We Got The Neutron Bomb
B ‎– Helium Bar

Dangerhouse Records

Dangerhouse was one of the first independent labels to document the burgeoning West Coast punk rock scene. It was a short-lived enterprise, starting in 1977 and shuttering by the end of 1980, but nonetheless left an indelible mark on the punk rock history of California.

Established by David Brown and Pat “Rand” Garrett, both members of the punk rock band Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the company operated on a limited budget, supported by the more conventional typesetting and aerospace jobs of the founders. Black Randy himself got a day job in telemarketing and joined the effort as a business partner.

Despite its scarce resources, Dangerhouse was notable for its production quality. They released records by many of California’s finest first-wave punk bands, including X, Avengers, the Weirdos, and the Dils.

A. Singles and EPs (7″)

1. Randoms ‎– ABCD / Let’s Get Rid Of New York
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: PT-1
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1977

2. Black Randy & The Metrosquad ‎– Trouble At The Cup
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: MO-721
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: 1977

3. Avengers ‎– We Are The One
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SFD-400
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: December 1977

4. The Dils ‎– 198 Seconds Of The Dils
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SLA-268
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: December 1977

5. Weirdos ‎– We Got The Neutron Bomb
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SP-1063
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1978

6. Alleycats ‎– Nothing Means Nothing Anymore / Give Me A Little Pain
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: LOM-22
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: March 1978

7. X ‎– Adult Books
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: D88
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: June 1978

8. Black Randy And His Elite Metro Squad ‎– Idi Amin
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: IDI-722
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: April 1978

9. The Deadbeats ‎– Kill The Hippies
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: IQ-29
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: July 1978

10. Howard Werth ‎– Obsolete
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: DH-101
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1978

11. Bags ‎– Survive
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: BAG 199
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: December 1978

12. Eyes ‎– TAQN
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: IZE-45
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1979

13. Rhino 39 ‎– Xerox/No Compromise
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: RH-39
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1979

14. Black Randy & Metrosquad ‎– I Slept In An Arcade
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: KY-724
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1979

B. LPs (12″)

1. Black Randy And The Metrosquad ‎– Pass The Dust, I Think I’m Bowie
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: PCP-725
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 1979

C. Compilations

1. Various ‎– Yes L.A.
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: EW-79
Format: Vinyl, LP, Single-Sided, Compilation
Released: August 1979

Notes: includes The Bags, Eyes, The Alley Cats, Black Randy, X, Germs.

7" vinyl, Los Angeles, Punk Rock

The Alley Cats

January 12, 2019 Jason Davis Leave a comment

The Alley Cats were a Los Angeles-based punk rock trio featuring Dianne Chai (bass and vocals), Randy Stodola (guitar and vocals), and drummer John McCarthy. They were part of the first-wave L.A. punk rock scene. X’s John Doe described the band as having “made some of the toughest, most nihilistic music on the scene.” (further reading…)

The Alley Cats

Originally signed to Dangerhouse Records alongside other seminal California-based punk bands including the Bags, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, and X,The Alley Cats released their first single “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore” backed with “Give Me a Little Pain” in March of 1978. At Dangerous they released the album, Nightmare City (1981), while major label MCA released Escape From The Planet Earth (1982). They are among the six bands featured on the 1979 compilation album Yes L.A. and appear in the 1982 film Urgh! A Music War.

The Alley Cats were regular performers at such Los Angeles venues as Club 88, Hong Kong Café, The Masque, and the Whisky a Go Go.

A. Official Releases (7″ vinyl)

1. Alley Cats ‎– Nothing Means Nothing Anymore / Give Me A Little Pain
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: LOM-22
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: March 1978

Notes: Track B is titled “Give Me A Little Pain” on the sleeve and “Gimme A Little Pain” on the label. The runout etchings and labels indicate “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore” is side “AA” and “Gimme A Little Pain” is side “A”. Picture sleeve is a 14″ sheet folded in half.

Tracklist
A – Nothing Means Nothing Anymore
B – Gimme A Little Pain

2. The Alley Cats ‎– Too Much Junk
Label: Time Coast Records
Catalog Number: TC #22
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: 1980

Notes: includes two inserts-sleeve with either
white or black labels.

Tracklist
A – Too Much Junk
B – Night Along The Blvd.

Online Resources

Punk 77 – The Alley Cats biography

The Dils

Once labelled as “California’s The Clash”, The Dils were part of the very first wave of the L.A. punk scene. They formed in Carlsbad in San Diego County before moving first to San Francisco – where bassist Tony Kinman was briefly in The Avengers – then to L.A.

In 1977 What? Records released their debut 7″ I Hate The Rich / You’re Not Blank. Their second release was their critical high-point, issued in 1977 on the Dangerhouse label, in a pressing of 1500 copies, entitled 198 Seconds Of The Dils. The last contemporary release was a three-sided double-7″, Made In Canada. The Dils broke up in 1980.

A. Official Releases (7″ vinyl)

1. The Dils ‎– I Hate The Rich / You’re Not Blank
Label: What Records?
Catalog Number: WHAT 02
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: September 1977

Notes: First pressing released with a unique sleeve, known as the “Oils” sleeve, as the band name appears to be “THE OILS”, due to the font used in the logo.

Tracklist
A ‎– I Hate The Rich
B ‎– You’re Not Blank (So Baby We’re Through)

2. The Dils ‎– 198 Seconds Of The Dils
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SLA-268
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: December 1977

Notes: Recorded in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1977. Reissued in 2016 and included in the Dangerhouse box set.

Tracklist
A ‎– Class War
B ‎– Mr. Big

3. The Dils ‎– Made In Canada
Label: Rogelletti Records
Catalog Number: RR 001
Format: Vinyl, 2×7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: 1980

Notes: Recorded November 1979 at Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, Canada. Side D has a groove but no music on it.

Tracklist
A ‎– Sound Of The Rain
B ‎– Not Worth It
C ‎– Red Rockers
D ‎– [untitled]

Online Resources

Dementlieu Punk Archive – The Dils biography, interviews, discography, shows

The Weirdos

The Weirdos are an American punk rock band from Los Angeles, California. They formed in 1975 and broke up in 1981, were occasionally active in the 1980s, and recorded new material in the 1990s. Critic Mark Deming calls them “quite simply, one of the best and brightest American bands of punk’s first wave.”

The band was formed in 1975 by singer John Denney and his guitarist brother Dix, initially using the band names the Barbies and the Luxurious Adults. The Weirdos were originally a 1950s-inspired hard rock and roll band that, like the Ramones in New York City, predated the UK punk scene. While initially trying to distance themselves from the genre name “punk” that was created in New York, ultimately the band, in the words of John Denney, “just kinda became more like this punk ROCK N ROLL type thing and we kinda went with it because the fans wanted it. They wore us down and we just said ‘OK, fine! We’re punk rock, similar to the Ramones. Whatever you say.'”

Show List and Key Dates – This index features show dates, venues, and flyers

Releases – This index features only vinyl and includes official releases

Unofficial Releases – This index features only vinyl and includes unofficial recordings

If-Then-Else – Side project by Dix Denny and John Denny

In a 1990 Flipside interview, John Denney listed the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop as fundamental musical inspirations, adding:

“When we saw the Ramones in ’76, we already had short hair and we were already playing fast music like that in late 1975 in small venues and halls mostly, but the Ramones really made us decide to go for it even more. We came before the Sex Pistols and The Damned. They may have been our peers later, but we already had a set of songs in 1975 which were sort of Ramones meets Iggy Pop’s Stooges influenced punk songs. Well before any of the UK bands started cloning America’s punk sound and before any of the UK albums were released. I always felt we were a true garage punk band…”

Denney claimed that the band’s name dated from the early part of the 1970s and referred to his countercultural short hair, at a time when long hair on men was the fashion of the day. “In 1974 according to some left over hippies, I looked like a lobotomy, hippies thought I was weird,” Denney said. “A few months later when we formed, the rest of the band got really short cropped hair too. “We were all weird then, we were considered weirdos”.

By the beginning of 1977, the Weirdos were able to pack clubs (eventually including the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy and later The Masque) as a headlining band. Known for their zany stage costumes and antics, the band helped shape the vigorous and experimental early Los Angeles punk scene and served as an inspiration to a crop of new bands.

John Denney recalled:

“We [Los Angeles] had our own look, our own sound. It was apart from New York or London…. We were staunchly against safety pins, we tried to parody punk rock at first. We did happy faces onstage as a joke sometimes, which was the exact opposite of what New York was doing. We were just thumbing our noses at everything. Everything was a joke; punk was a joke, we were a joke. Nonetheless, we were still serious about rocking.”

Online Resources

Amoeba Music – The Weirdos biography

Break My Face – The Weirdos biography

Discogs – The Weirdos discography

Bags

The Bags were formed by Alicia Armendariz and Patricia Morrison, who had met at an audition for Venus and the Razorblades, Kim Fowley’s next attempt at creating a band after The Runaways had left him. Armandariz and Morrison decided to form their own band and from this the Bags were born. They took the band’s name and their stage names “Alice Bag” and “Pat Bag” from a gimmick that the band used during early performances where they performed with grocery bags over their heads (the practice did not last, in part due to an incident where Darby Crash of the Germs ran up on stage and ripped the bag off Alice’s head). Alice Bag was the vocalist and Pat Bag played bass. The band was rounded out by guitar players Craig Lee and Rob Ritter, and Terry Graham on drums.

The Bags played their first concert at The Masque on September 10, 1977. Their concerts were riotous affairs including altercations with celebrities, such as one between singer Tom Waits and drummer Nicky Beat at The Troubadour.

By 1978, they had released their only record during the band’s lifetime, a single called “Survive”, backed with “Babylonian Gorgon”, released by independent record label Dangerhouse Records. “We Don’t Need The English” was included on the Yes L.A. punk compilation album released by the same label.

After this, Pat Bag left the band. In 1980 the group, minus Pat Bag, was filmed by Penelope Spheeris for the seminal documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization, which also featured the Germs, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, X and other prominent L.A. punk bands. However, at the release of the film in 1981 the producers billed the group as “Alice Bag Band” to avoid any conflict with ex-member Pat. By then, however, the band had broken up.

Craig Lee also played with Catholic Discipline, and he and co-member Phranc performed together occasionally when she embarked on her subsequent solo career. However, Lee is best known as a writer and critic for publications such as Flipside fanzine, among many others, and as co-author of the book Hardcore California: A History Of Punk and New Wave. He died, as a result of AIDS in 1991.

Terry Graham went on to play drums for The Gun Club. Pat, now known as Patricia Morrison, also joined The Gun Club soon after. Once she left The Gun Club she joined The Sisters of Mercy and then The Damned, one of the original British punk bands (and the one that was often credited with sparking the L.A. scene), for which she plays bass. She married Dave Vanian, the Damned’s lead singer.

Rob Ritter also joined The Gun Club, and appeared on their first LP Fire Of Love, but left, changing his name to Rob Graves and forming the seminal death rock band 45 Grave, with Dinah Cancer, Don Bolles, previously of the Germs and Nervous Gender, Paul Roessler of The Screamers and Nervous Gender and Paul Cutler. 45 Grave was influential in the creation of goth rock. Graves died in 1990 of a heroin overdose.

Alice Bag joined the deathrock band Castration Squad, which included Phranc and Dinah Cancer among its many members. In the 1990s, she formed Cholita! with punk rock drag queen Vaginal Davis and the band released several videos. After this, she performed with Las Tres and then formed Stay at Home Bomb, her most recent musical project. According to her official website, since the deaths of Lee and Ritter and her estrangement from Morrison, she considers the Bags to be permanently disbanded, and has refused to perform Bags songs in public.

A collection of recordings from the group has been released on Artifix Records as well as a reissue of the original Dangerhouse single.

Official Releases

1. Survive
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: BAG 199
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: Dec 1978

additional notes…

2.Disco’s Dead
Label: Artifix Records
Catalog Number: SPR018
Format: Vinyl, 7″
Released: 2003