Somehow or another, I stumbled over at the official Mummies‘ webpage tonight. The Mummies haven’t been a band since 1994, and I do miss them. I used to see them all the time at Marsugi’s in San Jose back in the late 1980’s- early 1990’s, which was truly one of the coolest divebars of all time! Located downtown on First Street, this tiny little club which could hold something like 100 people at the most, had some of the greatest music this town had ever seen, providng a wide assortment of punk, rockabilly, country, funk, ska, power pop, jazz, and blues. With a little stage located right in the front window of this club, there was some unintentional comedy when some of the more outrageous performers, such as Buck Naked & the Bare Bottomed Boys did some of their schtick for the casual passers-by that happened to walking by.
Damn, I do miss Marsugi’s. I had a lot of great memories seeing folks like Spot 1019, Dot 3, A Western Front, the Spit Muffins, Girl Trouble, Dee Lannon, Sweetbaby, the Kingpins, and even the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, who I actually shot footage of, for an as-yet unreleased documentary. There were soooo many great bands at this place. I think even Nirvana raved about playing this fine little dump when someone wrote about them in SPIN magazine. I’m still kicking myself for missing the Gwar show…
Anyways, seeing TheMummies.com webpage brought back a lot of memories, as this page listed all of their various Marsugi’s shows, and even reproduced one of the Marsugi’s drink tickets. I knew the Mummies used to go apeshit over the Wailers music, playing a lot of their songs, and even doing a nice photo spoof (see above) that was used for the cover of a single. Reading the webpage and an email that woke up to their webpage, I discovered a couple of other things about the Mummies I didn’t know:
1) They did an extensive tour of the Northwest with Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats.
2) They broke up in 1992, but reunited in 1993 to open up for a Supercharger tour of Europe, returning to headline shows in Europe in 1994 before breaking up for good.
3) Their final performance was for John Peel‘s radio show in England.
4) They actually released a song called “Don Gallucci‘s Balls.” Don Gallucci was, of course, the original keyboard player for the Kingsmen that went on to lead Don & the Goodtimes, and produce (Iggy and) the Stooges “Fun House” album. I wonder if Don knows about this odd tribute?
I love their webpage! Can you believe there’s absolutely contact info? Those silly Mummies!
Here’s hoping for an eventual reunion…..