Relics of the Flowbee Empire (DX)

15th anniversary reissued deluxe version of "Relics of The Flowbee Empire," the 1998 debut album from seminal Southern Oregon band The VAM Commanders. Includes bonus tracks from now out of print "Yeah, I F@#ked 'Em," and "Livin' La Dirty Sanchez," EPs.

Recorded, Produced and Mastered (sort've) by Josh Gross in Ashland, OR 

Buy from the Tingle Store and get 2 free secret bonus tracks!

©1998/2013 TingleFinger.com Recordings.

TF-011

Album Notes

We wrote and recorded this album when we were total idiots. The songs are stupid, the recordings are garbage by commercial standards and our "release strategy," was to send a cute girl around our shows vending the albums we burned at home out of a backpack.

But we were the best kinds of idiots: those that had yet to learn what we couldn't or shouldn't do, and so pursued every bizarre idea that came into our heads. We didn't just write an absurdly catchy song called Punk Rock Chihuahua with elements of pop-punk, slap funk bass and a '50s doo-wop bridge; we recorded multiple versions of it, changing the verse to different music styles and changing the cultural identity of this fiendishly trendy little pooch. The Punk Rock Chihuahua, became The Disco Chihuahua, The Death Metal Chihuahua, The Gangsta Chihuahua and more. Only the chorus remained the same. We played homages to and stole licks from everyone from Wesley Willis, to Vanilla Ice to Victor Wooten in front of audiences dressed to the nynes in spiked leather and steel-toes. Instead of recording an album in a studio like reasonable people, we recorded in a wood shop. Instead of booking gigs in clubs, we rented generators and staged mud wrestling parties in the woods that we played to. Instead of buying instruments at the store, we made our own. Make a list of bad ideas and wrong paths to head down and I guarantee we did it all.

And for reasons still mysterious, it worked. It worked so well, that there are some still certain the band is going to "make it," more than a decade after it totally failed to do so and largely parted ways. For that, we are eternally grateful, though somewhat bewildered. 

It is to those fans, the ones that shouted our lyrics back at us, that got buck wild with us in the pit and that embraced that music can be fun and angry in the same breath, that this rereleased album is dedicated. Vam 4 lyfe y'all.

- Josh "Mad Sombrero" Gross, Aug 2013