The Punk Rock Dinosaurs came together in 2001, midwifed by Barry Kooda and Jonathan Lacey . Barry's idea was to do punk hits from the late 70's at a one-off gig. The gig was booked, and rehearsals began.
Jonathan recruited Allan Hayslip to join, and between the two of them they bullied the project towards playing some of the great songs from Kooda's previous incarnation in The Nervebreakers . From there it was a no-brainer to get another former Nervebreaker Mike Haskins involved. Russell Fleming, who'd played in bands that were contemporaries of The Nervebreakers , as well as a number of later permutations of Barry's and Mike's post-Nervebreakers bands, joined on drums, despite the rehearsal schedule conflicting with football season.
The Punk Rock Dinosaurs played their one-off gig at Club DaDa on October 20, 2001. There were high points and low points. Hayslip and Lacey both forgot words to the Pistols and Buzzcocks songs they sang, respectively. Kooda played the first part of I Fought The Law in the wrong key. Haskins insists he couldn't hear his voice in the monitor. Flemming ran low on gas towards the end of the long set. In other words, they laughed, they cried, it was better than Cats! [there's a multi-track recording of this gig that, although it needs to be re-mixed, provides a perfectly decent record of this event]
Things went better than the fellas had expected (intended?) and they ended up getting booked for another show, this time a birthday party on January 11, 2002 at the Red Blood Club , hosted by Frank Campagna . What can we say...they appealed to our mercenary instincts--we even learned a few extra songs to flesh out 2 sets worth of music. [The multi-track recording of this gig failed--there may be some ambient mic tracks that are salvageable].
Having turned a one-off gig into 2 more gigs, one of which paid pretty good, the Punk Rock Dinosaurs nearly went extinct. Rehearsals had always been difficult to organize. Getting any further gigs might actually require work on the part of one or more of us. By silent, absent assent we went into remission.
Sometime in 2003 the call came to do another gig, this time a multi-person, multi-band party on the patio (RIP) at Bar Of Soap . Due to the usual faulty lines of communication, it was mis-construed that Mike Haskins wasn't too interested in doing the gig, so Barry , Jonathan , Allan , and Russell re-christened themselves as a new iteration of The Barry Kooda Combo. This was, after all, less unwieldy than calling ourselves the Punk Rock Dinosaurs Lite. We played the party on July 10, 2003. There's a 2-track recording floating around somewhere (which we later used to remember the changes for Uncommon Man).
[to be continued]
