Hair Products and Narcotics

Author

By Adam Crawley

Publish Date

Feb. 10, 2010

“The BombPops started in 2008,” says Jen Raz, the singer-guitarist for the female-fronted North County punk-rock band, “but Poli [guitar-vocals] and I met in 2005 at Stripline [studios in Oceanside]. We were in other bands. We just became really good friends, and I asked her if she wanted to start a band with me. Dylan [drums] and I went to Carlsbad High. I met him when his band, Geek Mafia, played [a] battle of the bands his freshman year…my junior year. I liked their music and I thought he was hot, so I asked him to sign my yearbook, and we’ve been great friends ever since. We just got a new bass player, Trevor Robertson. He’s 18 and this is the first band he’s been in. The first show he ever played was our show opening for T.S.O.L. at Coconuts. He did good. I don’t think he really knew much about T.S.O.L. at the time, which was probably a good thing because if he had he would have been a lot more nervous.”

The BombPops recently returned from their first West Coast tour. Raz relates some of their first-time difficulties. “We got to the Doll Hut [in Anaheim] and we were pretty excited because it was the first show of our tour, but then they told us we weren’t gonna be able to play because members of our band weren’t 21. I was the only one that was 21 in the band. So, what they said was, as long as our drummer was 21, he could set up on the stage — drums and amps… He wasn’t 21, so he used Poli’s boyfriend’s I.D. to get in the bar, and me and him set everything up. And then Poli and Austin had to run cables out the door and set up a mike stand outside and play the show from there. It actually turned out to be a really good show because people weren’t sure what was going on ’cause we were inside the bar and they were outside the bar, but we got a good response and sold a lot of merch.”

With a tour under their belt and a batch of songs worked out, the BombPops are taking the next step, releasing their debut album, Hair Products and Narcotics, and planning a more ambitious tour. “We recorded [the record] with Jeff Forrest at Doubletime in El Cajon because he’s recorded a lot of great San Diego bands over the years, including blink-182, Rocket From the Crypt, Buck-O-Nine, and Battalion of Saints, so we knew it would sound good. But we’re gonna release it ourselves…sometime in February, hopefully before our tour with the Sparring.”