The Rat Bastards

The Rat Bastards were first and foremost a recording project I developed with David Buschermohle, Robby King, Ryan Murphy and his younger brother Matt Murphy in the fall of 1996. Initially brought together to record a character-driven Christmas album, we quickly realized that it was much more fun to just write goofy pop songs about everything imaginable, from cookies to pimps to the supernatural.

Dave and Matt both left the group early on over the course of the next two years the slimmed down line-up recorded two self-released albums, It's Only Three Dollars and Probably an Insect, the latter of which was picked up by now-defunct Pennsylvania label M8BR Records and retitled Beware the Rat Bastards. I'm not sure what our goals as a band were at the time, but I was just happy to be making music and spreading our tapes around.

In the spring of 1998 I met Connor Bell, and we toyed with the idea that he might join the Rat Bastards until we and Connor mutually agreed that we just weren't a good fit musically. Connor was a great friend though, and helped set up our first show at Primizie's that summer. Up until this point I had handled both guitar and drum duties for the band, so we recruited Matt Bott to play drums mere days before the first show was scheduled to take place. We ended up playing a grand total of three shows, the first and last at Primizie and the middle show at the Total Eclipse and none of them particularly good.

After these disasterous three shows Matt was let go and we continued recording new material. The band sort of fell apart after that though, and by mid 1999 we were officially kaput. Robby went on to earn an advertising degree, Dave became a graphic designer and I moved to Boston for a change of scenery and then moved on to my current home in San Francisco. None of us have seen Ryan for about five years, and we miss the guy.

-Joe

Members:

• Robby King - bass, vocals
• Ryan Murphy - bass, vocals
• Joe Powers - guitar, drums, vocals
• David Buschermohle - drums (1996 - 1997)
• Matt Murphy - vocals (1996)
• Matt Bott - drums (1998)

Releases:

• It's Only Three Dollars (1997)
• Probably an Insect (1998)