The Fingers

Trash from LA recorded in SF

The Fingers were an early-90s garage punk band from East LA, made up by Shane White, Jason White, Raul Balcarcel, and briefly, their first singer Brady Rifkin. And they knew the best Bay Area trash bands, like The Mummies.

In the early-90s, members of The Mummies, The Phantom Surfers, and Supercharger lived in a house together where they also recorded music.

“We recorded a bunch of stuff,” Mummies singer Trent Ruane said in Eric Davidson’s book We Never Learn: The Gunkpunk Undergut: 1988-2001, “and I put out a single by this band called The Fingers, and Supercharger single was recorded there.” The Mummies recorded their “Planet of the Apes” single at home, too. Ruane ran the small Pre-B.S. record label, to release Mummies music and records from friends. The living arrangement didn’t last. “But we were all kind of getting on each other’s nerves,’” he said.

“We played a show at Maxwell’s with Mudhoney and the Lyres for New Year’s Eve 1991” said Ruane. “On the plane ride back I turned to Larry [the Mummies guitarist] and said, ‘That’s it. I can’t do it anymore.’ Then, see, we used to put inserts in some records, to order T-shirts and stuff: ‘The Mummies will play your birthday party or tractor pull…blah blah blah.’ So I got this letter from a guy in Germany saying, ‘I want you to play my tractor pull…’ I thought it was just a joke. But I said, Fine, get us the flight tickets! So he said, ‘Yeah, I am buying the tickets, you are coming to Germany.’ I said okay, but told him to put Supercharger on the bill. At this point, end of 1992, the Mummies were dead, so I didn’t care. …So we went over to Europe with Supercharger, and it was actually a lot of fun. It was a three-week span, but we only played like ten shows. It was awesome….”

That marked the end of the Mummies’ infamous first run. But from that era, a few badass records emerged, including The Fingers’ First Time/ Barracuda single, which Ruane released in 1991.

“Barracuda” is my favorite of The Fingers’ few recorded songs:

On the website Lumpy’s Garage, Lumpy Sowers shared The Fingers’ story. I steal it here without permission, for your reading pleasure:

“Crawling out the pure filth of smoggy LA, the Fingers blundered their way through 2 singles before self-desructing, to the woe of the garage punks who are "with it." Embraced by no other than Mr. Russel Quan of the Mummies, Count Backwurds, Phantom Surfers, etc. etc. etc., the Fingers released a single on his very exclusive Pre BS Records. Members of the Fingers went on to fame and glory in bands like the Rip Offs and the Tight Fits. 2 posthumous singles followed, as well as a few bootleg videos, notably on the cable access show "Counter Culture," where some lady named Betty plays bass, and crazy Raul "sings." If you don't have copies of all 4 of their singles, get off yer ass and find 'em! Loser!”

On the back of their The Rusty Quan E.P. on Rat City Records, The Fingers’ guitarist Shane White wrote a more detailed version of their story, too. The bombastic hyped up style, and the speaker’s misspellings, are too good not to share in their entirety:

Dear Fans,

Over the past two years I have been pestered by every Tom, Dick, and Harry independent record lable (sic) nerd to comb my vast vaults fer unreleased fingers recordings. The hilarious thing about it all is that The Fingers were such utter failures in their own time. We always had a hard time trying to get booked into any clubs, and when we did manage to play out, it was to about fifteen people!! The two singles we did were no better, nobody bought them. So after all this time I'm expected to believe that there are actually Fingers fans out there besides Rusty Quan? I mean fer christsakes, Rusty was our soul supporter!! The four songs selected fer this E.P. are amongst some of Rusty's favorites. All of them were recorded in April of '92 by Mr. Raul Balcarcel in his wall to wall pornography ridden kitchen on a potable (sic) AM/FM tape recorder which used to belong to his older sister during the mid-70s while he was growing up in New York. Actually, the "louder" of the fourincluded here was done fer the never released Pre-B.S. split single with Supercharger. It was recently redone fer The Rip Offs L.P. but that version sucks balls compaired (sic) to this one.

It's funny 'cause nowadays all this garage crap is the big hit with college kids everywhere. It's made a lot of unworthy people into superstars. Now San Fransico is considered a mecca fer real rock n roll bands, when in all actuallity ut's (sic) nothing more than a dog eat dog pit of snakes. Nobody was interested in this shit five years ago, and because of that things were quite innocent.

The great laugh about it all is, The Fingers were just a wannabe cheap reflection of The Raspberries. That was the reason fer the blazers and ties, we were so lame and inadaquate that we couldn't play as good as the Raspberries or afford any decent equipment so we got lumped in with the garage circuit. We wanted to be a pop band from the get-go but were stifled by lack of ability. We wanted to sound good but it was impossible due to all sorts of things, such as poverty. The Fingers were a real fucking underclass band!! And I'd also like to note that The Fingers were not a San Francisco based group like so many people believe, we were spawned from fucking East Los Angeles!!

-Mr. Shane White

Here’s more of their music to listen to. It won’t change your life, but it is catchy fun. “She’s Just Eleven” is a horrible subject and pains me to hear, but the music is pretty good: