Pillbox was a Pasadena band formed in the fall of 1988 by David Hamma, Brett Lyda, and CJ Gatewood. The first incarnation of the band was originally called The Housewives, with David on guitar, Brett on bass, CJ vocals, and Kevin Flanagan on drums. The Housewives played regularly at Footsies in Pasadena and Etc, a short-lived coffee joint in Eagle Rock. After a brief re-think and re-tooling of sound and approach, Sean Mitchell was brought in on drums (literally stolen from the band he was currently playing with) and The Housewives name was dropped for Pillbox. The first live performance of the band was at the E Bar on an open mic night. Pillbox thrived in the laid-back artistic surroundings of the E Bar and drew inspiration from other artists and local misfits of the area who came at night to hear and see. The E Bar became a favorite place for Pillbox to play. They could always get a gig there, and the management put up with them for reasons which to this day are unknown. Like the band intoned: Sign on the road ahead said Jack Kerouac is dead...but the E Bar isn’Äôt.
CJ Gatewood
Portland, OR
Sunday Main Room
Pillbox flyer for November 2, 1990 show.
"Putty" from November 2, 1990 show, outside.
Written by David Hamma/Brett Lyda/CJ Gatewood.
DH: One of our first tunes, dating back to when we were still The Housewives. A weird collaboration. I still remember when CJ came over and we worked on this tune the first time. Drinking lots of coffee and disturbing my stepdad's sleep. Kind of going for the big jangly, open sound. The best thing about it's the title.
BL: As Pillbox, I think this was the first song we ever played live. I always appreciated the middle section of this one for its Pixies-esque loud/quiet/loud thing. Somewhere, there's an old cassette of that debut Ebar performance where, at the end, you can hear Pat Lubow holler "So when's the album coming out?". It was first time we ever met Pat.
Monday Main Room
Hamma at Melford's place, 1991.
"Industrial Love Song" from November 2, 1990, outside.
Written by David Hamma.
DH: Wrote this song while I was still in high school. The "I'm so young" line comes straight from Stipe. Even though I was kind of over the song by this time, it was nice to be able to play it with Sean who could really rock it.
CJ: I always loved this song. When David first played it to me it was all there, the song simply could not be improved on. It is probably the only original that we had that we never had to alter or add upon. Sean drove the song.
BL: We labored over this one with our old band, The Housewives, but our punk-schooled drummer couldn't nail the freaky metered choruses. New drummer Sean Mitchell fared much better and gave us the courage to premiere the song live at the Ebar with confidence. I think Dave used a Queensryche-like chorus pedal for this one. Haha!
Tuesday Main Room
Flyer for March 14, 1991 show.
"Handsome Devil" from March 14, 1991, inside.
Written by The Smiths.
DH: Our finest hour as a covers band. Too bad we didn't write this one.
CJ: It was said somewhere by someone that you should never cover a Smiths song...well, we did and I think they would be proud....David is wildly loud, which sets the scene for this freight train.
BL: I remember feeling pretty special having learned all the basic guitar parts for this tune and then "teaching" big Dave how to do it right. At the time, I was 100% classic rock but this song helped usher in my appreciation for newer bands like The Smiths and The Cure.
Wednesday Main Room
CJ, Pasadena, 1990.
"Recoil" from November 2, 1990 show, outside. Lost Cat Martin played the first set.
Written by CJ Gatewood.
DH: I remember CJ introducing this one on some acoustic guitar he picked up somewhere. His version was pretty different sounding because he always played with different tunings. We did our best to transcribe it to something we could play in standard. Though I'm happy with how it turned out I'd really like to hear his original again. Something special got lost. A fine, fine lyric.
CJ: The first song I wrote that I thought was up there in comparison to what David and Brett were writing. I like the bare bones elements of it, plus it is also the first song that I wrote specifically about gardening.
BL: Our best song ever from the CJ years. And the one with the longest shelf life. Maybe CJ's best lyric ever. I remember getting several kicks out of the "Hey, Cary it's time to close up shop" line. There's a cool unreleased studio version of this song with Geof Brandin on the lap steel buried somewhere in my closet.
Thursday Main Room
Pillbox at the E Bar, March 1991.
"Child of the Year" from May 1991 Espresso Yourself Night, inside.
Written by Brett Lyda/CJ Gatewood.
DH: I'd forgotten all about this one. I really dig it now. Probably the one time Brett and CJ managed to collaborate without nearly breaking up the band in the process. I think it really works well.
CJ: Brett's riff. Stellar bass work, a little tour de force that shows what we could do on a good night. The lyrics touch on Mercy not as a person, but as a tangible prevalent disposition that is pure and of innocence...Mercy is the child of the year. A song of hope.
BL: This could've been a nice studio cut if we'd ever made it that far. I remember making an executive decision to rearrange and edit this tune down from a longer version that wasn't connecting musically. CJ and I were always fighting and I was too self-centered to realize that a shorter arrangement would also require a lyrical edit. Sorry about that, Ceej.
Friday Main Room
Brett, South Pasadena, 1991.
"Promise" from June 1990 Espresso Yourself Night, outside
Written by Violent Femmes.
DH: This starts off as just another cover of the great Violent Femmes tune but CJ managed to steer it into some more interesting territory with the Kerouac break. Always fun to play and could be relied on to perk up an apathetic crowd.
CJ: Another damn cover, a fun one to play. I threw in the Kerouac bit from a poem I wrote called Beautiful Jack. Kerouac loomed large with me back then, so it seemed fitting to have a homage to him somewhere in a song, even if it wasn't our song.
BL: Another successful cover version by another band I'd never heard of. Once more, the loud/quiet/loud formula works nicely. CJ & Daves' conversation in the middle is still pretty great.
Saturday Main Room
Sean would like to say "Hi," 1991.
"Gouge Away" / "Naked Bone Chick" from November 2, 1990 show, outside. Lost Cat Martin played the first set.
"Gouge Away" by The Pixies, "Naked Bone Chick" by Brett Lyda/CJ Gatewood/David Hamma.
DH: Another cover welded onto our "original." I guess we had to ride the early nineties Pasadena funk wave for at least one song. Not surprisingly, a crowd favorite. Definitely fun to play and, as usual, CJ delivered some wonderfully bizarre lyrical content.
CJ: A song about a radical feminist protesting on the courtroom steps. She is angry, she is naked, she is the feminine divider.
BL: Finally a Pixies cover but with no new twist other than its gimmicky segue into a Pillbox song. "Naked" was me doing Aerosmith meets RHCP. But then you hand it over to CJ and of course it mutates into something pretty perverse. A fairly misguided musical offering given the genre we were playing in but the crowd response was always positive so we milked it as best we could. Sixteen years later, the bizarre mismatch of CJ's "Morrison Hotel" vocals over my Aero riffs sounds more interesting to me now than it probably ever did back then. FYI, this was the only Pillbox song to ever trigger a keg party slam dance.