Fastbacks

Formed in Seattle by high school companions Kurt Bloch, Kim Warnick, and Lulu Gargiulo, Fastbacks ranked among the scant first-wave punk groups that carried their original sound and direction forward to the close of the century. Bloch and Warnick picked up guitar during their school years, whereas Gargiulo had studied classical guitar from age seven yet avoided rock & roll until she entered the band; nevertheless, photographs she had taken at area rock performances had already drawn Bloch’s attention and initiated their friendship. The three held deep admiration for both Queen and the Ramones, while Gargiulo favored ’60s pop, Warnick gravitated toward ’70s hard rock, and Bloch’s preferences encompassed both styles. In typical punk fashion, Fastbacks took shape after Gargiulo witnessed an especially inept unnamed act at a neighborhood punk venue and concluded that she herself could perform better. With Gargiulo learning rock guitar on her own, Bloch handling drums, Warnick on bass, and Shannon Wood supplying vocals, the group began rehearsals in fall 1979 and debuted onstage the next February. Later that year Wood departed, Warnick moved to lead vocals, and Bloch relinquished the drum kit to become lead guitarist, establishing a stable core that endured for the following two decades. They then engaged the first in an extended succession of drummers, fifteen-year-old Duff McKagen, who remained roughly a year before relocating to Los Angeles and later joining a well-known hard rock outfit; estimates of total drummers who passed through the band range from twelve to twenty. In April 1981 they issued their debut single, “It’s Your Birthday”/“You Can’t Be Happy,” whose loose, scrappy punk rock already displayed the band’s hallmark strong pop hooks, Bloch’s Rick Nielsen-meets-Johnny Ramone guitar solos, the singalong harmonies of Warnick and Gargiulo, and Bloch’s songs that balanced self-effacing humor with introspective self-analysis without pretension.

Throughout the subsequent decade Fastbacks remained largely a regional act, performing regularly around Seattle and occasionally supporting larger bills that included the Ramones, Public Image Limited, and John Cale, yet their appeal stayed confined to the Pacific Northwest like most Seattle bands of the period. Although the group never formally disbanded, activity diminished in the mid-’80s, and their first full-length album, …And His Orchestra, did not appear until 1987. In 1989 Bloch joined the Young Fresh Fellows on guitar and began producing other artists, Warnick took a position at Sub Pop Records, and Gargiulo advanced her work as a cinematographer. A modest but devoted following persisted, and after Nirvana’s commercial breakthrough turned Seattle into the center of rock attention in 1992, Fastbacks at last attracted wider notice. Sub Pop issued The Question Is No that year, a compilation of singles and tracks from various collections that became their first album to receive broad distribution; although sales stayed modest, critical response proved highly favorable. Three further Sub Pop albums followed, among them 1994’s Answer the Phone Dummy, which afforded the band the rare chance to record an entire album in a single studio across two weeks. Several of their Seattle supporters had meanwhile become rock stars, enabling Fastbacks to open for Mudhoney and the Presidents of the United States of America. The most prominent opportunity arrived when Eddie Vedder asked them to support Pearl Jam on three West Coast arena dates in 1995 and then on twenty-eight shows across America and Europe in 1996. These high-visibility appearances did not catapult the band into rock stardom—an outcome they had not anticipated—and Fastbacks continued to arrange their schedule around the other professional obligations of Bloch, Warnick, and Gargiulo until 2002, when Warnick, to her bandmates’ surprise, announced her departure, telling a reporter, “As much as those songs mean to me, I’ve just grown tired of having to be a singer in a rock band.” A 2004 collection of stray singles and unreleased recordings, Truth, Corrosion and Sour Bisquits, presented the band in characteristically tuneful and energetic form and demonstrated that Fastbacks concluded their run with the same freshness, enthusiasm, and power that had marked their beginnings.