music couldnt get any better. half of tsar were in the wonderfuls. half were in mons pubis. and half were in the brothers steve.

the best band of iv changed every night. one night it was a bunch of heroin taking punkers from downtown santa barbara called bad neighbor. one night it was the all girl even punker Pre Marital Sex. one night it was keith browns glitterbug. one night it was the sean white band. one night it was grateful dead-esqe electric blue, but only if you ate acid first.

an isla vista metal band that year was flown to florida to compete in mtvs battle of the bands. their name was indica. they won.

but the next year indica had been forgotten because isla vista’s ugly kid joe had actually broken through and had a top 40 hit on mtv, the spunky i hate everything about you.

people speculated as to who would be next to get signed and be huge.

because the pixies had a minor hit with “here comes your man”, locals immediately pointed to pop punkers rogue cheddar. a working man’s camper van beethoven. a lazy man’s cioppino.

rogue cheddar’s bass player and axe wielder was a fella named tom, who is now better known as tomdog, buzznet’s #2 most active user (second only to buzznet founder, mc brown, who used to play rogue cheddar tunes on kcsb-fm where brown was music director).

at blogtime, with 11,506 buzznet comments posted, tomdog is only 1,100 comments from being topdog.

rogue cheddar was the thirsty thursday house band for quite awhile. thirsty thursday was the weekly keg that my hippie friends hosted nearly every thursday for the four years that i was at ucsb. bring a buck and your own cup was the environmentally conscious motto of the long-running party hosted by jesus rob, toms next door neighbor when they lived on sabado tarde.

at first rogue cheddar was very bad.

they were the sort of band where youd get your beer and walk into the house and pick up on girls with the closing line of, “come with me, i live very very far away.”

and then seemingly overnight rogue cheddar not only had it together but they had original songs, a band groove, a tightness, a style, and a feel.

it was truly bizzare.

they were still playing thirsty thursdays but now they were releasing 7″ singles. i still have one.

they ended up playing on my radio show.

soon they had a tape out.

but then, as was the case of lots of great rock dreams, the singer fell in love and the band sorta fizzled into the overstuffed manila folder in the sky labeled “the woulda-beens”.

today tom turns thirtyblahblah years old.

when he was here in LA last he brought me over some rum, he gave me some good advice about my bicycle, and we even took a nice ride along sunset and downtown in the cuban girl’s honda element.

a few days later he created a buzznet account, and the internet hasnt been the same ever since.

we wont even get into the beauty of the tomdog bug (pictured) + happy birthday tomdog!