Photos by Holly Homan
On the chilly and rainy evening of March 15, I ventured out to Seattle’s foremost punk club El Corazon. This time I was seeing psychobilly legends the Koffin Kats. Hailing from Detroit, the Koffin Kats have been around for more than twenty years.
Although the crowd started small, by the time the Koffin Kats were in full swing, the club was pretty close to full.
Guitarist Tommy Koffin and stand up bass player/singer Vic Victor were non stop energy, often running to opposite sides of the stage to trade places, rile up the crowd, then run back. But this wasn’t all. At one point Vic & Tommy switched instruments in an almost sleight of hand move. Then suddenly they switched back in the same way.
Vic frequently raised his bass above his head, he stood on it, he straddled it, never missing a lick.
Drummer Eric Walls rattled the skins with amazing precision, giving their music a full sound.
At the end of their set, all members of opener Last Gang joined them onstage, one of whom wore skimpy white shorts that looked like a diaper. The stage turned into a wild party.
The Koffin Kats even played my favorite song, The Bottle Called. This was a wild and fun night.
Playing prior to Koffin Kats was the aforementioned The Last Gang. This California five piece was fronted by a very charismatic singer/guitarist with her hair dyed green. She had pipes that rivaled any of the legends. The bass player was all over the stage. He crouched, he strutted and moved about constantly. Their drummer sported a Freddie Mercury mustache and on the drum face was a picture of Ralph Wiggam holding a banana to his ear and the words, I play dums. On the side of his kit was a sticker that said make nazis dead again. These guys played punk that combined hard core with pop punk and were nothing short of amazing.
Opening the night was Distorted Times from Boise. This quartet played what I would describe a combination of punk, hard core and psychobilly. They had a violin player who not only played with complete prowess, she wore a cop’s cap and wore jeans with the knees blown out. The stand up bass player, slammed and beat the strings, her long hair flying everywhere. Their drummer was as much hair as man and slammed so hard I kept expecting to see sparks fly. These guys packed a lot of energy and practically blew the roof off.
All told the entire night was one fun filled wild party and a great time was had by all.
Editors Note: Holly Homan has been covering and photographing The Koffin Kats for 14 years now, click here to see how they’ve changed over the years.
