THE PUDZ "TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER"+1 1981 TEENIE WOMPUM MINT/NM- RARE CLASSIC 7"

$

25

PLEASE MAKE SURE I SHIP TO YOUR COUNTRY BEFORE BIDDING OR BUYING...

THIS 7” RECORD COMES FROM MY PERSONAL COLLECTION, SOME ARE PROMO’S FROM THE NATIONAL RADIO NETWORK I WAS AT FOR 19 YEARS OTHERS FROM RECORD STORES, SWAPS,YARD SALES,CHARITY SHOPS, ETC.….ALL OF MY 45’S COME IN A PROTECTIVE PLASTIC OUTER SLEEVE…I DO COMBINE SHIPPING, .25 EACH FOR THE U.S. FOR EACH ADDITIONAL RECORD. CHECK OUT MY OTHER AUCTIONS. WHEN I CLICK ON EBAY’S “USED” THAT ONLY MEANS THE RECORD IS OPENED, IN MOST CASES IT IS UNPLAYED SO “NEW” IN THAT SENSE. I USE THE GOLDMINE STANDARD GRADING SYSTEM.THE PHOTOS ARE OF THE ACTUAL ITEM FOR SALE, SORRY IF THEY ARE SLGHTLY BLURRY OR IF THERE MAY BE A LITTLE GLARE.THESE ARE VISUALLY & PLAY GRADED. AS FAR AS I KNOW THEY ARE UNPLAYED. I WILL NOTE ANY MARKS OR SCRATCHES ON THE VINYL IF I SEE ANY... NOTE: THERE MIGHT BE A LITTLE DUST IN A COUPLE OF THE PICS CAUSED BY STATIC ELECTRICITY OR A LITTLE SUNSHINE GLARE. ALWAYS FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS.

NOTE: eBay HAS TAKEN IT UPON THEMSELVES TO REMOVE WHAT THEY CALL “OUTSIDE” LINKS, THESE ARE IN THE HTML DESCRIPTION, AND CAN'T EVEN BE SEEN IN MY ITEM DESCRIPTION, SO FROM NOW ON IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE ITEM &/OR ARTIST LOOK 'EM UP, ON WIKI, OR OTHER SOURCES ETC. (SORRY 'BOUT THAT!)

NOTE: RECENTLY CULLED FROM MY PERSONAL COLLECTION-SELLING A FEW RARITIES FROM THE EARLY 1980's FROM SEATTLE PRE-”GRUNGE”. I DO NOT TAKE “BEST OFFERS”, I WANT EVERYONE TO HAVE A FAIR SHOT AT MY ITEMS. THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING.

ARTIST: THE PUDZ

TRACK LISTING: SIDE A “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER” (2:32) b/w SIDE 1 “TAKE A LETTER MARIA” (3:54)

RECORD LABEL: TEENIE WOMPUM RECORDS (SEATTLE INDIE LABEL)

CAT #: TW002

YEAR: 1985

RECORD CONDITION: THE RECORD IS IN NM+/MINT- CONDITION, NO LINES, SCRATCHES, BLEMS, DINGS, FINGERPRINTS ON EITHER SIDE. THIS LOOKS AND PLAYS LIKE IT WAS JUST PRESSED. THE RECORD COMES IN A GENERIC WHITE PAPER SLEEVE INSERTED INTO THE GLOSSY SLEEVE. JUST NOTICED ON DISCOGS THERE ARE TWO LABEL VARIANTS, ONE WITH A WHITE BORDER, AND THIS ONE, JUST ALL BLACK. THIS APPEARS TO BE THE RARER OF THE TWO BASED ON SOLD COPIES. JEEZ TWO COPIES CURRENTLY FOR SALE AT $120 AND THE OTHER $250.... THAT'S CRAZY. NO RESERVE ON THIS COPY....

SLEEVE: IN EX/EX+ CONDITION, NICE CLEAN STRAIGHT EDGES, NO WRITING, RIPS, TEARS, MARKS. NO SEAM SPLITS. HEAVY GLOSSY STOCK PAPER.

COMES IN PROTECTIVE PLASTIC OUTER SLEEVE.

COMES WITH THE ORIGINAL DOUBLE SIDED INSERT, ALL ARTWORK DONE BY ROB MORGAN, STILL GOING STRONG WITH A SOME NEW RECORDINGS BY HIS OTHER MORE POPULAR BAND THE SQUIRRELS COMING OUT SOON.

PERSONAL NOTE: ONE OF MY FAVE BANDS FROM THE EARLY 1980's SEATTLE MUSIC SCENE, MY BUDDY THE LATE DAVE DREWRY WAS THE DRUMMER FOR THEM “DAVE PUDD #2”

ARTIST INFO:

THE PUDZ (SEATTLE POP/PUNK BAND) BIO-INFO:

The Pudz were a Seattle powerpop band in the early 80s. Aside from their 1981 single "Take Me to Your (Leader)" they were known for covering bubblegum and other pop songs in a fast punkish style. Lead singer Rob Morgan went on to be a founding member of longtime Seattle band The Squirrels. Other members included Dave Drewry, Dave Locksley, Mark Halterlein and Jim Fahselt. The Pudz also performed using the name Lake City Rollers.

On September 21 2017 Iggy Pop was hosting his “Iggy Confidential” show that’s become  semi-regular Friday night fare on the UKs BBC 6. About three quarters through his show he dropped the needle on a song almost everyone familiar with the early 80’s Seattle music scene.  It was The Pudz doing “Take Me To Your (Leader)”.  More than a few Seattle listeners ears pricked up immediately and hopefully a few others’ around the world.  After the song finished Iggy related what a horrible year 1981 was-the year The Pudz single was released.  Iggy  mentioned “pooping out” Zombie Birdhouse and how he’d been relegated to opening for A Flock of Seagulls at New York’s Peppermint Lounge; he was so humiliated he built himself a cross to drag onto stage with him.  Then he went on to tell his audience what a great little band out of Seattle The Pudz were, and that they were a high point for him during that awful year.  One person who heard the broadcast (via the quick thinking of a friend who was streaming it.) was Rob Morgan… the genius behind The Pudz, and for the last four decades one of most visible guys on Seattle’s music scene…25 of which were spent leading The Squirrels-or one of the many iterations of the band. First he tells me about Iggy  playing one of his Pudz records;

“That was mind-blowing”says Rob. “Being a bright shining spot for him in a shitty year. I just about had a heart attack, then when he actually starts singing R.B Greaves’ ‘Take A Letter, Maria’ (the flip side of Take Me To Your ( Leader) and cracking himself up I felt like ‘that kind of validates my entire career; of all the people who  gave me shit for being a quote-unquote “cover band”-which we’re not.  If we were a cover band we’d be doing songs people actually wanted to hear, and playing in Holiday Inns for real money.  We wouldn’t be taking Terry Jacks’ Seasons In The Sun and speeding it up faster and faster before it becomes Van McCoys’ Do The Hustle.

What Rob didn’t mention is that he has at least one other important and influential fan; or he did have until he died in 2004: The great British DJ, John Peel.  Peel kept a box of records near his door, which has become known as The John Peel Record Box.  Peel claimed if there was ever a fire in his house the box was next to the door because it was filled with 147 singles of his favorite records of all-time.  The box contained everything from Anne Peeble’s ‘I Can’t Stand The Rain’ and Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’ to much rarer fare like Medicine Head’s ‘Coast To Coast (And Shore To Shore)’ The box is an eclectic mix of jazz, rock, psychedelia and indie-pop.  One of those rare 45’s included is ‘Oz On 45’a record by the band Morgan is more well-known for; The Squirrels.  ‘Oz on 45’ is a piss-take on the once popular output of producers stringing one hit after another, sometimes speeding songs up to segue into the next- and sometimes slowing them down for the same reason.  Most of the time the gimmick was to keep the same pitch and the same beat of top-40 songs.  The best that can be said about the “Stars on 45” records was they keep people dancing (or listening) to some of the most egregious songs of the ‘70s…a pretty egregious decade in it’s own right.

“So you wanna know how we all got to this?” Rob offers in a more and more enthusiastic coffee buzz

Rob grew up in one of Seattle’s bedroom communities, Edmonds, Washington.  He says he ‘There was nothing’ adding I was”a weirdo kid from the get-go” like a lot of the thousands and thousands of other suburban misfits  biding their time before breaking out of the mold to become weirdo artists.  Rob says that during his teens he was listening to people like Jethro Tull and Leon Russell and the Winter’s Brothers.  He points to the Beatles as his earliest love.  He also talks about his sister giving him a copy of The Mothers of Invention’s “Absolutely Free” while he was in the fifth grade. He didn’t know it then but he’d just set out on a journey that what would be Seattle’s next great era in music. He remembers a girl in school noticing Rob had a picture of Ziggy Stardust in his locker.  Rob was being hassled by the jocks who were listening to Elton John “I find that really funny” he says.  Then one day someone gave him a copy of the Seattle fanzine Chatterrbox. The fanzine was put out by Lee Lumsden and Jim Basnight. The cover was a photo of Lou Reed.

“By that time I was doing the back pages of Hit Parader so I was already familiar with the underground thing, but nobody I knew out in Edmonds even knew about that, so I called up Lee Lumsted on the phone because his number was in Chatterbox and we just started  yackin’ back and forth.  Then they invited me to a party so I went down there (to Seattle) and met those kids and the next thing you know I was hanging out with that crowd but I’m still living at my folks.  I’d pack a sack of clothes and a can of soup and hitchhike the 20 miles to the University District and I’d be there two or three days-staying on Jeff Cades’ floor.  Eventually my folks are like “you gotta go” so me and my other buddy from Edmonds fished around and found this place on 55th and University and rented it.  It was $210 a month, all utilities  paid and furnished, so we got me and my other buddy, Gary Womack, and the late Gregor Gayden and whoever. Everybody living in there paying fifty buck a guy.  Eventually the U-Men moved in there…or Tom and Charlie moved in there, and the U-Men were formed in the basement.  Anyway, we were in that house six or seven years. We got up the first time some guy knocked on the door, and went to bed after we threw the last guy out.

Those were the days before the U-District’s main thoroughfare became a dangerous place. In the late 80s University Avenue became a more depressing place full of drugs, runaways and homelessness.  The scene before that it was vibrant, and a great place to hook up with the alternative music scene.  It was also before there was any social media to bond with other musicians, artists and fans.  There were similar stirrings coming out of Seattle’s Capitol Hill, and by some sort of cultural osmosis among a large crowd of kids coming out of Seattle’s Roosevelt High School.  In the end many of them would meet up, resulting in a city-wide movement. Lee Lumsden would go on to be a multi-talented presence in Seattle, Jim Basnight founded the power-pop band The Moberlys, Rich Riggins and Gary Minkler would found Red Dress, and Rich would later go on to co-found Chinas Comidas. The kid who seemed to be everywhere in the early to mid-80s’ Duff McKagen, also went to Roosevelt High School, though a bit later. Two other important alumni are Tom Price, one of the founding members of The U-Men and Bill Reiflin who played drums with The Telepaths, then went on to The Blackouts, Pigface, Ministry and R.E.M. Now Bill plays in the re-constituted King Crimson.

By 1979 Rob was also ready to jump into the fray.  Since he’d been a kid he’d been a huge fan of just about anything great in pop music. He’d collected a large amount of promo and fan memorabilia (a collection that continues to grow even now) and the sly ability to combine pop music genres and show a great deal of wit in executing it.

“I just started playing. Me and Eric Erickson (who’s passed on) who was my buddy from High School..we were hanging out with this other friend of ours from High School named Kevin played at a party The Enemy were having and we called ourselves The Fishsticks. The Enemy and everybody thought that we were super-funny.  We did “Herman’s Hermits “I’m Into Something Good” and “Do You Believe in Magic’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful and a bunch of 60s covers that no one was doing at that time, because they were only about five years old or something.  Later we got asked to do another gig with The Girls, The Radios and Little Magnets at IOGG Hall.  We pretty much stole the whole show and pissed everybody off”.

The band was also asked to play a couple of house parties and they went over well, but it wasn’t ‘til one night during a party at the “Madhouse” (an infamous party house near University Ave.) that The Pudz were actually born and christened.  The entire process was witnessed by about 300 music weirdos, punks, artists and fans.  Everyone went bananas and then ran all over town and told everybody there was this new band called The Pudz so we said “oh well, I guess we’re called The Pudz”. The next day hundred of people were running around talking about The Pudz.   I guess I was a rock singer guy cuz I’d go out there and jump around and have a good time…it just kind of happened.”

“How I wound up in The Pudz, was kind of an accident. Dave Locksley, the guitarist, was trying to start a band with Dave Drewry the drummer (who’s also passed on now) and they would practice in my friend Bill Larsen’s basement.  I was hanging out over there so I’d go down there and we’d start doing some dumb covers just for the hell of it.

After The Pudz were formed they had a successful career as one of Seattle’s favorite bands.

“In 1982 when The Pudz fell apart I did a fanzine called “Pop Lust” for a couple of years”, Rob tells me. “Then I got sick of doing that and I said I want to get back into playing. So I went and saw one of the Young Fresh Fellows first shows and I cornered Scott and said you guys have got the kind of 60s garage-y thing I’m kinda looking for so why not let me be your front man?  And he said “well, I’m gonna be a front man because I’m writing all the songs, but how about if we back you up under a different name doing covers? And I said “GOLDEN!” So the first year The Squirrels was essentially me fronting The Young Fresh Fellows, except Scott would play bass and Jim would play guitar”.

“So they go up to Bellingham and play a show at The 3B’s and they take me with them. Then they put on wigs qnd basically open for themselves and half the time the audience wouldn’t even figure out it was the same band cuz the guy from The Pudz was jumpin’ around. So that’s how we did it first, and it was a bit straighter then, as far as the magic-y kind of thing.  But then they started taking off and they were too busy to keep doing it, but Tad (the drummer) being a wierdo, he wanted to keep doing it.

In 1985 me and Tad brought Eric Erickson back in, got Craig Ferguson on bass (a buddy from Tower Records where I worked), and drafted Joey Kline on a recomendation after checking him out in Boy Toast. He was really funny and talented.  Thats when it really started rolling..  Jimmy Thomas (JT) came into the  band in 1989 and Joey has been my co-pilot 23 out of the 25 years The Squirrels (or one of their pseudonyms) have been together. The name eventually ended up simply as The Squirrels, but any term with the word “squirrel” in it has probably been linked to them.

And the article continues....

I DO COMBINE SHIPPING. I AM NOW OFFERING A CHOICE BETWEEN MEDIA MAIL OR USPS GROUND ADVANTAGE SHIPPING DOMESTICALLY.

ALL 7” SINGLES WILL BE MAILED OUT IN PADDED ENVELOPES WITH EXTRA STURDY CARDBOARD TO PROTECT THE ITEM. I DO COMBINE SHIPPING WITH OTHER LIKE SIZED ITEMS. ADDITIONAL 45’S .25 EA. IN THE U.S. VIA MEDIA MAIL OR OTHER USPS SERVICES. ONE 45 WITH SHIPPING MATERIALS IS 5 OUNCES, TWO 6 OUNCES, THREE 8 OUNCES, FIGURE 2 OUNCES FOR EA. ADDITIONAL 45.

I DO COMBINE SHIPPING……….

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PLEASE PAY FOR ALL ITEMS WITHIN 4 DAYS, OR MESSAGE ME TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU CAN’T,(IF YOU ARE BIDDING OR PLAN TO BID ON OTHER ITEMS) I WILL DO A ONE WEEK WAIT FROM THE DATE OF THE END OF THE FIRST AUCTION WIN, TO COMBINE SHIPPING ON ITEMS, AFTER THAT I NEED PAYMENT IN FULL AND WILL MAIL OUT THE ITEMS , EVEN IF YOU ARE BIDDING ON OTHERS, THUS BEGINS A NEW BILLING/SHIPPING CYCLE. THIS CASH FLOW IS MY SOURCE OF INCOME FOR PAYING RENT/BILLS, ETC. IF YOU HAVE WON AN ITEM AND I DO NOT HEAR FROM YOU ONE WAY OR THE OTHER WITHIN 7 DAYS I WILL OPEN AN “UNPAID ITEM CASE”, IN ORDER TO FREE UP THE ITEM FOR A POSSIBLE RE-LISTING OR A “SECOND CHANCE OFFER”. PLEASE WHEN YOU WIN AN ITEM TRY AND PAY FOR IT IN A TIMELY FASHION OR LET ME KNOW YOU ARE LOOKING AT OTHER ITEMS I HAVE LISTED, I MAIL ITEMS OUT WITHIN ONE WORKING DAYS ONCE PAYMENT IS RECEIVED. NEW NOTE TO ALL POTENTIAL BIDDERS PLEASE! DO NOT BID IF YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF PAYING FOR AN ITEM YOU MIGHT WIN. I DO NOT LIKE OPENING UNPAID ITEM CASES BUT I WILL IF YOU NEGLECT TO PAY.