The Hope Bombs

I still haven’t exhumed music from the other punk bands I played in. But fortunately I do have music from the greatest of them all, the one that towers above the rest: The Hope Bombs.

From the now-defunct SPAM records site:

The HOPE BOMBS thrilled, delighted, and mystified many audiences in their day - too many to let them go unheralded in the band afterlife. Featuring Ben Morss (former Big Lie Dept., later of Pilgrims fame) on guitar and keyboards, Eric Hsu (later of Hippeaux fame) on Bass, an ever-revolving cast of drummers, and Robert Eggplant (formerly of Blatz, later of Cope and Harbinger) on guitar, The Hope Bombs were a bit of an enigma in the commercial pop-punk dominated scene of 1994-1996. Their songs were catchy, weird, sometimes funny, sweet, smart, and geeky as all hell. They wrote about love, politics, redemption, math, food, fun, life, and more, always meaning what they said but still with a smile and a wink. Comparing them to other bands is pretty hard because they really did not sound like anyone else - but were part of the inspiration for many, including Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, Astrolloyd, Los Rabbis, and more.

As is often the case with bands who are ahead of their time, the Hope Bombs did indeed have their fans,who loved them dearly, but confused a lot more people opening for bigger bands of the day. Stuffed animals got thrown about at their shows, Robert would be doing his martial arts rolls all over the place, and Ben would be making wry commentary in his distinctive voice. They ended up becoming a pretty big inspiration to the Geekfest crew, who knew all their songs and weren’t afraid to sing along. A bunch of their stuff appears on the first S.P.A.M. compliation, and is probably the best stuff on there. It was posthumously released, however, as The Hope Bombs broke up in 1996. Now they’ve got bands like the Criminals (also broken up) throwing shout-outs to them in public.