Teaching the Kids About The Night Kings

If your life is based around garage punk blogs, you might think that Rob Vasquez enjoys Saint-like status in his hometown of Seattle, Washington. As many garage rock aficionados know, Rob has been in some of the best garage rock bands since the hey-days of the 60s. Along with Mick Collins' Gories, Tacoma’s Girl Trouble, Seattle’s the Fall-Outs, and a small handful of others, Rob’s the Nights and Days kept the garage rock flame burning brightly throughout the 80s. You would think that would be enough for him to get some decent coverage around town, but nope, the weekly rags would rather report on what some ex-Murder City Devil guy had for lunch on Tuesday or which one of them stunk up the Cha-Cha’s bathroom than write anything about Rob’s latest music endeavor. But the bloggers understand: 90’s underground punk specialists, Static Party, seem to post (and sadly, take down) a different Rob-related single each month, and Detailed Twang has posted the first couple Nights and Days singles here and here. Eventually the In-Crowd will discover Rob and shower him with their parent’s money, but until then, we’ll just raise our glasses to the under-appreciated 3-chord genius.

Rob, whose music background stretches back to the late seventies and who played in some of Seattle earliest punk bands like the Feelings and the Look, formed the Night Kings after the Nights and Days broke up around the turn of the decade. (Supposedly, there is an unreleased Nights and Days LP sitting in somebody’s closet, and until Lamestain turns a profit and starts a record label, it will sadly continue to gather dust.) Featuring Kings of Rock drummer, Dan Ryan and a rotating list of bassists (Javad S, Dylan Maiden, and Jarett O’Bryan), the band released singles on Sub Pop, In the Red, and Dope Records; did split singles with Yummy (ex-Cat Butt) and the Fall-Outs; and appeared on Estrus’ Tales from Estrus Compilation 7” and Regal Select’s Puget Power 3 7”. The Night Kings’ lone full length, Increasing Our High, came out in 1992 on Steve Turner’s incredibly underrated and sorely missed label, Super Electro Records, which amazingly you can still buy here. As well as that record, Super Electro released Lamestain-approved records by the Wellwater Conspiracy, the Fall-Outs, Thee Headcoats, the Kent 3, the Sad and Lonelys, the Wiretaps, and great singles by the Statics, Flop, Mudhoney, Holly Golightly, the Braineaters reissue (which somebody should mail to us), and a few others.

After the Night Kings broke up in the early nineties, Rob has played in Ape Lost, the Chintz Devils, the Gorls (also featuring Dylan Maiden), Man Tee Mans, Pissed Off Zombies, Right On, and currently, Nice Smile. Since we care about your future, we recommend that you track down all of his records now so you can eventually sell them at a huge profit to pay for your retirement home.


Night Kings Theme
Mid-Night
Old Dick









Lickity Split
The Fall-Outs - Your Body but Not Your Soul

Get them all in a .zip file here.

-- MC Tom