Happy Meal
From WikiSCUM
Happy Meal were a punk band active between 2004 and 2009. Formed in Watsonville, they advertised themselves as being a bad trip, every time. "The Meal" comes from the convergence of ex-Doldrums and Violent Profanity players, the brothers Anthony and Denney Cardott, or "Harinjneesh Al Chone" (bass, electronics, voice) and "Hashish Eek A Rev Ras Hailu I"/"American Cream" (guitar, synth, voice), and Kevin Bongard, the ex-founding-member of Watsonville reggae group Fubar -or "Hum Ping" (drums). The Meal came out immediately following the demise of The Doldrums, who had played extensively in Monterey County and in the Santa Cruz Big Bang in 2003 at the Santa Cruz teen center. They masked their revolving cast of contributors with nicknames and comic back-stories. Their first EP, recorded with local recording artist A. Ron Emmert (then a member of Sad Monsters), is the offensive "Huckapino" (rumored to have been an invented slur from the brothers' father), which contains songs about killing the poor in Watsonville, being sodomized in a barrel, and a Steely Dan cover. For the first three months of performing, Emmert also played drums as "Lovebrain." When they came to Santa Cruz, the Meal reportedly looked around at the other music in town (see other bands 2004-2009) and said "fuck ALL these bands".
The Meal's primitive rhythmic noise has polarized audiences all over the west coast, at once condemnation and cartoon. The band often wore masks, costumes and streaked war paint and hurled spit, beer cans, instrument butts and shreds of debris at the audience. In 2007 they began performing naked, reportedly out of comfort rather than exhibitionism.
In late 2004 the Meal were written up in Your Music Magazine, which included an interview with Harinjneesh Har Chone, who discussed briefly their plans to found the Pajaro Sound Foundation. They also began playing once a year for Chris "Merlin" Bushman's Idle Hands Show on Santa Cruz public access cable. The three shows recorded between 2004 and 2006 reportedly play often in the middle of the night. They also experimented with a fan club (which worked well) to whom they sent the "fan club only" EP 'The Golden Dome/The Diamond Center. They planned to send out fan club packages regularly (which didn't work).
Extensive local gigging earned the band a following in 2006, and the band rewarded the following with a live CD, "Las Cortas Noches," recorded at the Blue Lagoon (at which they had become somewhat of a house band thanks to Keith Thompson of El Sonido), which they hand out for free at shows. They intend to put out more live CDs for free as worthy recordings come out of the group's fanbase.
In 2006, Bongard left to pursue school and Ian Webb, or "Cinnamon Beard" joined on drums, sharing duties with A Fashionable Disease and his own project, Foldis. They performed two shows in 2006 as Maxi Meal, with A. Ron Emmert drumming and his brother (and Mammatus fellow) Nick playing second guitar. The Meal gradually added live improvisations to their sets and have shown influences from Africa and the Middle East, particularly that of Fela Kuti and Selda, buried in their thrash/krust/blues. They make their own CDs by hand and bribe wary fans into buying albums by including comic sketches from the bass player's collection. They warn audiences to consume drugs and alcohol before stepping into the performance space. In 2005 The Good Times' writer Damon Orion warned countywide readers not to make eye contact with the members if not prepared for what the band calls "ultimate wastation." In 2005 the Meal released their first full length CD, "Matarte," which is a Spanish verb meaning "to kill you," recorded down the street from their band house in Watsonville by Dan Alvidrez (See Alvidrez Brothers). In 2006 they briefly toured the pacific coast with The Broads and released their second CD, the much more developed and thematically bleak "You're All Dead" in 2007. Due to financial difficulties, "You're All Dead" remains out of print, and is distributed for free as the band can make more copies in an effort to further subvert and demoralize the culture of selling music.
The group recorded "You're All Dead" to the Pink Floyd-extent of album production while all living in Santa Cruz. Masterfully engineered by A. Ron Emmert, the album is markedly heavier than "Matarte" due to the group's evolved vocal performances and the addition of Webb's explosive drumming. The songs condemn the American values of consumerism, materialism, absentee parenting, democracy and individualism with a confrontational humor reminiscent of Dead Kennedys and Big Black. Unsatisfied with the sound of a studio room, the Meal resolved to only release live material, a practice that carried over to their other project, Dead Daughter.
Despite the popularity of the Meal's live act, they had a very difficult time getting the hipsters to book them in different clubs across the state, until they met Matt "Dr. Deathrock" from San Francisco, who enthusiastically had both the Meal and Dead Daughter play shows in San Fransisco in 2008.
The band had shared stages with other local acts like New Thrill Parade, The Broads, Mammatus, El Sonido, The Skeleton Poppies and Zdrastvootie, as well as many touring bands with whom the group loves to play, and started their own local venue at the Cabrillo Lanes Bowling Alley's bar in Watsonville on a hand shake in 2005, an alliance that would only last until the band lost its center in Watsonville due to the members all living in separate nearby towns.
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[edit] Gear
Matarte era: Various Fender and Squire Stratocasters "Mortucaster," "Wayne's World," Moridaira Hurricane "Denzel" You're All Dead era: Dean Edge 5-string "Moltar," Fender Jaguar Mid 1980s high-wattage Peavey amplifiers Renown 400 and MkIII. A custom-built 2x15 bass cabinet that was actually a counterfeit Rhodes enclosure. Assorted drums.
