Punk Rock 101

In 1986, in Mobile, Alabama, five friends from Spring Hill College were practicing above a restaurant called Wind Sol's Oyster House, rehearsing for a gig, one of many along a punk scene that had emerged along the Gulf Coast extending from New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida.

Among them was Gerald Betty, one of the founding members of the Vomit Spots. Fast-forward 23 years and Dr. Gerald Betty is now an associate professor of history at Del Mar College.

"The whole concept of the band started in 1985," Betty said. "It was just a bunch of us guys that were friends that worked in the college radio station at Spring Hill and were all into punk rock in the 1980's and we just thought it would be cool to have a band."

He said, "It was just a concept before anything. Something to do just to have fun." According to Betty, there was not much to do in Mobile at that time, so people had to invent ways to have fun.

The original lineup of the Vomit Spots were Keith Hammett on vocals, Robbie Turpin on bass, Anton Garriz on drums, Albert DeLorge on guitar and Gerald Betty on percussion. Guitarist Brett Levine joined a short time later.

As the concept grew, the members were looking for a name for the band.

"The way that we got the name is that I went to this fraternity party and got messed up," Betty said. "It was a Hurricane Party and they had this red Jungle Juice and I got really drunk and got to my room and just threw up everywhere."

Betty said, "We had this white carpet in our room, so there were all these bright red vomit spots all over this carpet. It's gross, it has a gross factor and it's kind of punk, and so that's where the name comes from."

Their influences span a broad spectrum of artists from the Butthole Surfers, Jesus and Mary Chain, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Parliament, The Who and Van Halen. "The music for Booger-Snot was actually influenced by the song ‘Barracuda by Heart,'" Betty said.

"Booger-Snot was just a stupid song that I wrote," Betty said, "but it's one of the most popular songs that we have. They always end the shows with that song."

Other songs written by Betty included "Insane New Orleans Dames" about his and his roommate's girlfriends who were both from New Orleans and who Betty said were both a little "nutty," and another called "Life's like Tennis . . . But You Don't Have to Run as Much.

"The way I came up with the song was that I heard this guy in the cafeteria in school saying ‘Oh yeah. It's like tennis, but you don't have to run as much.'"

Betty said These were just your basic juvenile concerns that we had when we were in college. None of our songs are really deep. We weren't really interested in serious lyrics. We just wanted to have fun."

He said, "All of our songs are about girls or drinking or venereal disease or about stupid stuff like boogers."

After Betty left the band to attend graduate school, the Vomit Spots' popularity started to rise. They opened for bands like Helmet, L7 and No Doubt in the early 90's when the Downtown Mobile scene started to develop.

They also headlined a lot of shows at a place called the Vincent Van Go-Go and began to expand their travels into Texas, hitting cities like San Antonio, Houston and Corpus Christi where they left a mark after their guitarist at the time jumped into a convertible parked outside of the Downtown Whataburger and passed out.

Their second trip to Corpus Christi inspired a song after they witnessed a couple having sex in a lifeguard stand on Padre Island.

Betty also saw his share of incidents as an active member. At a show in Tuscaloosa, Florida, the Vomit Spots opened a show for a band called Will and the Bushmen.

"It was probably our greatest punk rock moment," Betty said. "They were more of a typical college band and we were this hard-edged punk rock band. We were playing and all these frat guys were pissed because we weren't playing what they wanted to hear, so they started throwing stuff at us like coins and beer bottles."

Betty said the singer, Hammett, "shook up a beer and sprayed it on everybody in the front, so there was some tension there."

After their set, the band went to play a set at another bar down the street and when they returned, there were police cars in the parking lot.

"There had been a riot, a big fight had broken out," Betty said. "People had broken bottles over other people's heads. We had kind of instigated that. That was a fun time, even though there was some violence involved, we were gone. We started it, then we left," Betty said

While Betty was in graduate school in Arizona, the Vomit Spots were unwittingly connected to the Skinhead movement after an HBO film crew that was filming a documentary about Skinheads in Birmingham followed the group into a bar where the Vomit Spots were playing.

"During the show, Keith was making fun of them while he's singing," Betty said. "All these Skinheads are doing these salutes and he's making fun of them doing it back and the HBO film crew got all this. The crew had the band sign releases after the show, and they did, thinking any publicity is good publicity," Betty said.

"Well when the show came out, it was edited to make the Vomit Spots look like this Nazi-Skinhead band. It's funny because we're all these Catholic boys who went to Catholic school, so that doesn't fit with the whole Skinhead/White Power thing and Anton, the drummer is Filipino, so we had some ethnic diversity within the band."

Following that incident, The Vomit Spots traveled to the West Coast.

"Nobody was going to their shows and those who did wanted to kick their asses because people thought they were Skinheads," Betty said. "It's funny now, but that was an interesting part of Vomit Spots' history."

During the Thanksgiving break, Betty will be returning to Mobile for a reunion show although he no longer performs. As one of the founding members, he is still very much part of the band.

"I call myself the ‘beer tech,'" Betty said. "I make sure that, first of all, I have enough beer and then make sure that the band gets their beer too. This is basically what I do now."

The reunion shows are put together when Garriz, the drummer, can make it back into the United States from the Philippines.

"Its funny because the crowd now is a bunch of old dudes and women too, rocking out and pretending to be in our 20s again," Betty said. "It's a lot of fun and I still get treated like I'm a band member with free drinks and no cover. I still get some respect I guess."

Today, the Vomit Spots are not an active band. Each member has gone off to different careers, but they still keep in touch and get together for reunion shows. In fact, there is talk of returning to Texas, including shows in Corpus Christi and San Antonio

Hammett is now a pit boss at a casino in New Orleans, Garriz runs the family brick-making business in the Philippines, bass player Turpin works for a charter airline company in Houston catering to celebrities, DeLorge is now a geologist for an off-shore oil company, Levine works as a curator at a museum at the University of Alabama and Pete Rigney is a graphic designer in New Orleans.

"I don't think for any of us there was ever a dream that it would become a career," Betty said. "It was just something we did for fun that made us happy. It was kind of a joke band, but we made our mark I think."