The Limp Richerds came about because I was going to community college in Des Moines, WA at Highline Community College. I was taking a journalism class, and my favorite thing there was writing record reviews. They'd have me do the standard crap that you have to do in a course like that, interviewing. I interviewed some guy who did nature paintings and shit like that, but that's not really interesting.
I remember some of my classmates were talking about good names for a punk band and one guy said "The Limp Richerds" kind of embarrassedly, because it's a really bad pun.
It struck me because it was such a pathetic name that I kinda liked it. I wrote a bunch of lyrics around that, then the tunes. I had this crappy little acoustic guitar I'd record songs with. I brought those to class and this guy named Ross Guffy said, "You know, I have a friend who's got a reel to reel recorder, and he's got guitars and stuff. You should come over and we should start making music."
So I did that, and that was like in late '81. I went over to his house and we recorded some songs. It was me, Ross Guffy was the guy who became the first drummer, Charles Quain [and later, Scott Schickler who went on to join the Thrown-Ups, the Nerdles, Nothing, *;, Flake, Swallow and others] played guitar and another friend of theirs named Greg Billingham [aka Greg Billings] was on bass. Ross knew Jo Smitty and Mark Arm [members of Mr. Epp and the Calculations at that point]. He'd go to shows, and he met Smitty. I rarely went to punk shows. I don't even think you could call the Gang of Four a punk band; they were ... uh, 'post-punk' I guess is what they were calling them at that point.
I don't know if the Limp Richerds ever really were serious. It started out that we would go over to Charles' house and we'd make tapes, just record stuff, just farting around. Then we had an opportunity to play, I guess it was a talent show, at Highline Community College. I had quit going there, but Ross still was. He'd entered us to play in that, and that was the very first show we did. It was pretty hilarious, the audience was just freaked out ... they were aghast.
-Dave Middleton
