“Actually it was our original bass player,” he explains, when quizzed about the name. “He came up with the name back in the day. When we first started out, the punk scene, it was kinda coming back, but kinda dying at the same time. Live music was dying, because of DJs and all these things, and people started quitting seeing live music. You’d go to a bar, and you’d see these live bands, and they’d just sound like pig squeals.
“So we said, ‘We’re making some real music, let’s call it Rehab For Quitters’. We’re rehabilitating people who are thinking of quitting the live music thing. We’ll bring ‘em back, we’ll rehabilitate them. So we thought, ‘That’s a cool name, people are going to equate us with drugs and alcohol, but what the hell!’”
Australians along the eastern seaboard who are thinking of quitting live music can be rehabilitated in early-to-mid-June, when the band come to do what Lobalsamo believes to be their third trip Down Under. They are taking Australian punk act Strawberry Fist Cake on the road with them, having toured with them on a previous trip, and he has some pretty crazy memories of that tour.
“The second time we went over, we toured with Strawberry Fist Cake too. We had a great time,” he recalls. “As far as stories go, man there’s just too many to tell. There’s this guy named Dickie Hall, he tours with Strawberry Fist Cake, he does their merch and he does security, but he’s the sweetest guy ever. We taught him this thing called, ‘The friendly otter’, where you go up to somebody and you smack their legs together back and forth, like an otter tail.
“We were at a bar and I pointed out this girl wearing a mini-skirt, so he runs over and gives her the friendly otter, so she turns around and kicks him in the face, and then just nails him with a really good right hook to the face. Then someone broke it up, and we apologised and everything. It was really funny times!” he remembers, laughing uproariously.
So you’ll be looking for more good times like that on this trip? “Yeah, we are!” he agrees emphatically. “Just stupidity, stupidity makes everything memorable! Australians are just like Canadians, just a little bit friendlier, and they like to drink a bit more!”
Friendly otters and crazy drunken times aside, Lobalsamo promises a good time for anyone who comes out to see their shows.
“You get a really high energy, just a good time show,” he describes. “The songs run the gamut, they can go from slow and heartfelt to blistering and angry. We just like to keep it fun, we like to keep all the shows fun for the fans. We’re not angry people, we’re happy people. I think we’re happy because we get to vent through the music. We just have a good time, there’s a lot of laughing, a lot of smiles. And I try to be a comedian onstage, it doesn’t always go over well, but what can you do?”
And the bonus is that the band have just released a brand new album, their first in about six years, and Australian audiences will be among the first to experience the new tunes in a live setting.
“Oh yeah, we’ll be playing a lot of the new tracks,” he confirms. “A lot of the old favourites, and most of the new album I think.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
