Sometime around late 2000, I had been playing guitar along with a friend named Sean (who played bass) and we were bashing out a bunch of cover songs just for fun. I recall doing a couple of Generation X songs (“Ready Steady Go” and “Your Generation”), “Another Girl, Another Planet” by the Only Ones, and also remember us doing a pretty decent version of the Pretenders’ “Precious.” Both of us were able to sing while playing, and while neither of us necessarily sung particularly well, we weren’t terrible and we developed a pretty good Punky-Pop-Punk vibe together. All we needed was a drummer; not easy to come by. Not good ones anyway.

We were looking, not anywhere in particular, and then one day out-of-the-blue, my phone rang. It was Richard, the drummer from the infamous old Chicago Punk band The Mentally Ill. He had done a whois on a domain I owned but wasn’t doing much with, killedbydeath.com, and was calling to talk to the motherfucker that bootlegged his band on Killed by Death Volume 2. This was back when most people didn’t bother to privatize the domain registration details, lucky for me! Fortunately the tone of the call quickly changed once I was able to explain that I had nothing to do with the bootlegs, that the first four were put out by a collector in Sweden (who is now a legit author) and that from there, the series was a real free-for-all. I was just a fan of the music and had snagged the domain. Once we got over that bit of business, we kept talking and discovered that we were both fans of old music, were very into the “new” Internet streaming media, and oh by the way do you still play the drums?

He was still playing and practiced with a group already but was nice enough to let me and Sean come over with our janky guitars and setlist of songs we didn’t write. It was upbeat. All power chords. No solos. We played songs like Unnatural Axe’s “They Saved Hitler’s Brain,” Devo’s “Mongoloid,” and The Nuns’ “Child Molester.” Simple, basic, to-the-point material. It was fun. After two practices, Richard quit his other band because they were “too surfy.”

We probably only had another practice or two before Sean announced that he was going to Tehatchipi (a pretty rural area an hour or two outside of San Diego) to hang out with a friend and couldn’t say exactly when he’d be back. He didn’t have a car at the time and so he wouldn’t be visiting. He was a nice guy, but clearly had other priorities. So Sheana was in on bass and now we had kick-ass female backup vocals. Necessary for The Shirkers’ “Drunk and Disorderly” which became one of our regulars. We practiced weekly and learned a whole bunch of covers along with eight or ten originals. Richard convinced us to cover a song out of left field by the band Sparks and it ended up being one of our best songs. The three of us were rough around the edges, but we were slowly maturing into an actual Punk band. We agreed on the name “The Pop Pills.”

One day I got the bright idea of calling around local San Diego recording studios to see if I could find any bargains. I rang up a place that we could never afford, Signature Sound, and spoke with a guy that was an assistant engineer. It must have been my lucky day, because the idea of a scrappy new local Punk band looking for some cheap time piqued his interest and he mentioned that when one of the recording rooms wasn’t booked, he was allowed to bring people in “for practice.” All we’d have to do would be supply the tape and try to be available. I recall finding out on very short notice that we had a six-hour slot available on a Sunday night, 6:00 PM to Midnight I think it was. I really wish I recorded the name of ever-so-cool engineer-in-training that invited us in that night; not just to thank him here but also to credit him with the recordings, a couple of which I’ve posted below.

By the time we got everything moved in, mic’d up, and leveled in the mix, we probably only had about two hours left. So we ran through about ten songs a couple of times each and recorded everything to tape – sometimes off-key vocals and all. AKA “live in the studio.” It would have been nice to go back and actually do proper vocals and add some extra guitars but we just didn’t have the time. We laid down two covers (Mission of Burma’s “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” and “Moustache” by Sparks) as well as a slew of originals. We practiced weekly for about a year and played out every couple of months at a party or bowling alley. Then one day Richard said that he got a job back in Chicago and was moving. Less than a week later his house was empty and he was gone and the Pop Pills were over.

Here’s a Pop Pills original, “Brand New Brand.” Recorded live at Signature Sound 2001.

Here’s the Mission of Burma cover from that same session:

This is an early live track with Sean playing bass:

Lyrics to “Brand New Brand”



I gotta say,

saw something cool at the store today.

I held it in my hand.

It was a brand new brand!

It was a brand new

brand new

brand new

brand new brand

It was the cereal aisle.

This box was dressed up in the most modern style.

I put it in my cart;

I felt so damned smart!

With my brand new

brand new

brand new

brand new brand

I took it home.

Me and my new brand were all alone.

It got undressed.

I ate breakfast.

Lyrics and music (c) 2001 Scott Bass