Mumps

A band whose talent and potential far outstripped their commercial success, the Mumps were a smart and witty pop band who, while they had a large and loyal following in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, never landed the record deal that would have taken them to mainstream success. Featuring Lance Loud, one of TV's first reality stars and a gay culture icon, on lead vocals, the Mumps found an audience in the punk and new wave community, but their music was conspicuously artier and more refined than most of their peers. It was the group's cleverness and melodic smarts (as well as Loud's abundant charisma) that made them cult heroes, though their intelligence probably also worked against them with less-sophisticated listeners. The Mumps only released a pair of singles during their 1974 to 1979 lifespan, but 2021's Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That: Best Case Scenario, You've Got Mumps is a thorough and definitive overview of their career. The story of the Mumps began in 1973, the year that PBS aired a controversial mini-series, An American Family, that was edited from 300 hours of cinéma vérité footage shot by a camera crew documenting the daily lives of a family from Santa Barbara, California, Bill and Patricia Loud and their five children. An American Family became a ratings success and a cultural touchstone, especially as it presented the collapse of Bill and Patricia's marriage and captured the moment their son Lance came out to his family as gay. As it happened, a number of the Loud children had a strong interest in music, and Lance and his friend Kristian Hoffman, a talented keyboard player and songwriter, were trying to put together a band. When Bill and Patricia Loud were invited to appear on The Dick Cavett Show while interest in An American Family was at its height in 1973, Patricia insisted that her children be allowed to perform some songs on the show. Lance and Kristian's band, which also featured three other Loud siblings and was provisional titled Loud, made their network television debut. Loud received a chilly reception on the show, but Lance and Kristian were not easily discouraged, and they relocated to New York City with their drummer, Jay Dee Daugherty. The rest of their bandmates opted to return to California, so they recruited guitarist Rob DuPrey and bassist Aaron Kiely and relaunched themselves in 1975 as the Mumps. The band soon landed gigs at a new club that had opened on the Bowery, CBGB, and began winning an audience for their lively performances. However, Jay Dee Daugherty soon left the Mumps to join the Patti Smith Group, and Aaron Kiely dropped out shortly after. In 1976, the group debuted a lineup featuring Kevin Kiely on bass and Paul Rutner on drums, and they began playing regularly at CBGB and Max's Kansas City, where the musically adventurous audiences embraced their quirky but engaging sound. The group set out on tour and found audiences were ready for them on the West Coast. In 1977, the L.A.-based independent label Bomp! Records issued the band's first single, "Crocodile Tears" b/w "I Like to Be Clean," which earned positive press and airplay on the few radio outlets willing to spin new wave vinyl at the time. A three-song release on Perfect Records followed in 1978 featuring "Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That," "That Fatal Charm," and "Muscleboys." Later in 1978, Kevin Kiely left the Mumps, and Joe Katz took over on bass. By this time, while the band was doing well on the East Coast and West Coast, they were having little luck establishing themselves elsewhere, and larger record labels were reluctant to work with the band, in some cases openly admitting they weren't sure if they could market a band led by two out-of-the-closet gay men. By the end of 1979, the group's frustrations came to a head, and the Mumps broke up. Lance Loud went on to a successful career as a journalist and critic; he died in 2001. Kristian Hoffman grew a long and varied résumé, working with Klaus Nomi, Lydia Lunch, Dave Davies, Ann Magnuson, Rufus Wainwright, and many more. Hoffman was also a member of the band the Swinging Madisons, with his Mumps bandmate Paul Rutner on drums, while Rob DuPrey would play in Iggy Pop's road band. In 1994, Eggbert Records brought out the collection Fatal Charm, which included the five songs from the Mumps' two official releases along with an abundance of rare demos and rehearsal recordings. Eggbert went out of business in the early 2000s, and the feisty West Coast indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry issued another Mumps collection, 2005's How I Saved the World, which combined the same music with a DVD of rare video footage of the band. Years after the Sympathy release went out of print, Omnivore Recordings made the Mumps' music available again in the anthology Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That: Best Case Scenario, You've Got Mumps, which also included a pair of unreleased tracks from their original incarnation as Loud.
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