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the Nylon-Coated Cats were a rock and roll band that existed roughly between the years 1994 and 2002 in San Diego, CA. It began with roommates and musical partners Ero Thomson and Carlo DelFrate, both guitarists with a taste for psychedelic and raw music. They initially played in-house sessions and parties in the early 1990s with roommates David Tarica (violin, fretless bass) and Gabrio Verratti (bass), or as a duo. They later recruited a drummer named Cyd, who played a $60 garage sale drum set and mandolin; when Cyd quit, they inherited the drum set. They recruited Suzanne Walters to play flute and help sing and began playing shows regularly as a trio with no drums or bass. Around 1995 they added Thatcher, a drummer and multi-instrumentalist, but soon parted ways, replacing him with permanent drummer Devin Newstead. There was a brief period with mandolinist and didgeridoo player Greg, and another, even briefer, with bassist Sacha Chernoff; but soon Suzanne taught herself to play bass and the band began to settle into a more respectable rock format. There were never any tours, but they gigged quite a bit in San Diego, mostly to empty houses. There was one album, self-recorded in practice spaces, and the beginnings of another, in a studio. The band broke up in 2002 when Suzanne and Ero moved to New York. In retrospect, the band suffered from a notable lack of competence, but in our prime we were ferociously inventive, wrote hundreds of songs, played outrageous combinations of instruments, switched instruments constantly and made decisions more or less democratically. We prided ourselves on control of tone and texture, and played with the kind of energy that broke hundreds of guitar strings. We may not have made history, but we did make a lot of interesting noises. Recordings online:
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