Villains (Also Wear White) is the debut (EP) album by the Seattle-based rock band Bam Bam. The album was recorded at Reciprocal Recording and released in 1984. Tina Marie Bell was an American singer and songwriter, the front woman of the Seattle-based rock band Bam Bam. The band with Bell is considered one of the originators of the grunge music scene. Bell is considered an early grunge pioneer and was posthumously dubbed as “the Godmother of Grunge” and “Queen of Grunge”.
When she was looking for a French tutor so that she could sing French lyrics in a Langston Hughes Theater production, Bell met guitarist Tommy Martin. Bell eventually married Martin, and on September 7, 1979, the couple had a son, Thomas McKay Martin Jr, who later became a filmmaker known as T. J. Martin.
Bell and Martin formed a band called Bam Bam in 1983. The band also included bassist Scott Ledgerwood and drummer Matt Camero, the latter went on to join Soundgarden and then Pearl Jam. Cameron was later replaced in Bam Bam by Tom Hendrickson.
Although Bam Bam were courted by punk rock label C/Z Records, they opted instead to independently release their EP Villains (Also Wear White) in September 1984. This was the first grunge record made at Reciprocal Recording studio, the location where later Nirvana made demos for the Bleach and Incesticide albums. Villains predated better known grunge recordings by about a year.
“It wasn’t for more than $100. The first band I recorded that released any kind of vinyl was an outfit called Bam Bam,” Reciprocal Recording‘s owner Chris Hanzsek (the latter producer of albums by Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Melvins, and others in the Seattle music scene) told Billboard magazine. With songs written by Bell, Ledgerwood and Martin, and with Hendrickson on drums, Bam Bam recorded an album’s worth of material at Reciprocal Recordings, including the material on the EP. Eight more of the tracks from the Reciprocal sessions were remastered and released in June 2019 as Free Fall From Space, produced by Martin and Hanzsek. An expanded version of Villains (Also Wear White) was released in late 2021 on Bric-a-Brac Records.
Tracklist:
(INSIDE)
- Stress
- Heinz 57
(OUTSIDE)
- Villains (Also Wear White)
Credits
Bam Bam
Lead Vocals: Tina Bell
Guitar, Vocals: Tommy Martin
Bass, Vocals: Scott Ledgerwood
Drums, Vocals: Tom Hendrickson
Also
Engineer: Chris Hanzsek
Engineer (Assisted by): Tina Casale
Produced by: Bam Bam
Written by: Bell, Martin
Tina Marie Bell (February 5, 1957 – October 10, 2012)
Tommy Martin (1958 – 2019)
https://bambam.bandcamp.com/album/villains-also-wear-white-ep
