The Misfits were a classic early 1980s hardcore-punk band. The small but rabid punk scenes in cities like Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles all showed this band some love, while plenty of well-established bands and musicians of that era also expressed personal fandom and eternal support.
Henry Rollins of Black Flag wrote in detail about his love of this band in his tour narrative “Get In The Van,” and you can still find photos on the internet of the late Cliff Burton, the famed bass player from Metallica sporting the band’s skull logo tattooed on his shoulder or in one of their T-shirts.
The Misfits was one of the few bands in the early ’80s that had fans in both punk and thrash-metal scenes. It was a time where true metal fans stuck in the thrash world, and punk rockers stayed in the punk world, but The Misfits blurred the dividing line that existed between the two. Wearing makeup and using horror-movie imagery to go along with their music, they dropped loads of memorable tunes and left a major mark on indie music of that time. A record was even recorded in 2011 outside Durango with famed producer/engineer Ed Stasium of Ramones fame.
And while original members have come, gone and come back again amid rotating lineups, the music still stands, so much that there are cover bands that still bang out the music of The Misfits, including Astro Zombies, who will perform a night of the music of The Misfits on Saturday at the Motel Soco in Pagosa Springs.
For Astro Zombies’ guitar player Eli Carpenter, The Misfits are one of those bands he discovered as a kid while digging around a kick-ass record store, instantly becoming a fan. It’s apparent as he fired off a bunch of titles from the show’s setlist, which includes “Teenagers From Mars,” “20-Eyes,” “Nike A Go-Go,” “Last Caress” and scores more.
“They’re super-fun songs to play. I was 16 when I got my first Misfits tape, I went to this killer record store in Houston ‘The Vinyl Edge,’ and got into it real early and got into other bands like that,” Carpenter said. “They might have had a simple twist, but those are just anthem songs. Anyone that’s listened to them just sings along. It was back in the ’80s that I heard them for the first time, the ‘Walk Among Us’ cassette. From then on, I was interested in hearing more and more. Then sometime in the ’90s that coffin-shaped box set came out, that has every song they’ve ever done.”
The one other time The Astro Zombies did their Misfits tribute show was back at Halloween. That brought the fans of the punk band out of the woodwork, revealing that even though the music is now pushing 40 years old, there’s still a love for the music created by Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only back in the early 1980s.
“These are timeless cuts that have stood a test of time. And that’s revealed by the people you still see out and about, showing their love of The Misfits through T-Shirts or patches, or people displaying the very recognizable skull logo,” Carpenter said. “From different generations from back in the 1980s until now, you still see people wearing these Misfits shirts. Or patches on their jackets or whatever. At that last show, we had older people to people in their teens and early 20s yelling all these songs back at us. Across the gamut of age brackets, they were singing along with us and had the most amazing time. There’s something about this, and it’s killer stuff.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
If you go
What:
Pagosa Springs’ band Astro Zombies plays a tribute to The Misfits.
When:
6 p.m. Saturday.
Where:
Motel Soco, 651 W. U.S. Highway 160, Pagosa Springs.
Tickets:
No cover.
More information:
Call 264-1492.
