Everything about the Stitches is true

The Stitches were almost called the Nubiles—names logged on a list singer Mike Lohrman kept at his now-shuttered Underdog Records in Laguna, in case he ever led a band—and that’s probably the most benign ‘almost’ the band ever experienced. The rest are rougher: almost made it big (Was Epitaph or Nitro desperate to sign them?) and almost broke up (disaster tour in Europe where guitarist Johnny Witmer accidentally killed a kitten the very first night) and almost died (80 mph on the 5 when the equipment trailer went crazy and spun the band into traffic) and other kinds of fateful ‘almosts’ that even one at a time tend to persuade the participants toward safer limited lives. (“Everything you hear about them,” said Jail Weddings’ Gabriel Hart once, “is true.”)

But the Stitches persisted instinct with a string of bull’s-eye vinyl-only singles that became rare contemporary collectibles (pricing from $5 to triple-digits within months) and now (as they creep into 15 years in selfless service) it should be safe to bull’s-eye them as one of the best Southern California punk bands ever, even though Witmer was only six when the Sex Pistols came out. Not that the title pays bills—but it’s good to know. There couldn’t be a better band to play this benefit for the late Avalon Bar owner Mike Conley’s children.

“They’re able to distill some extremely potent parts of punk rock down to basic cores without burning it all away,” Todd Taylor, editor of LA’s Razorcake magazine, once told me. “They make it as simple as humanly possible without making it completely fucking dumb and rudimentary.” Very first single “Sixteen” never gets too far away from its first few chords, but still splits from the fake-out slow-mo intro into a miniature monster of a song, an easy equal to any revered Killed By Death cuts and a mind-boggler for coming out in 1994.

They could probably tell they had something then, though bassist Pete Archer once said he’d given away all his test presses because it didn’t matter: Those Stitches singles were totally detached from what goofball OC supposedly really was (Tragic Kingdom?) and totally rooted in something secret, strange and real. Laguna was in ashes and the first six Stitches shows all finished with sirens outside. “Excitement!” Lohrman remembers thinking then.

That was just about 15 years ago, and they’d go on to have kids, make their first full-length (after 10 years as a band) and switch in a shortlist of local drummers (currently Stitches stalwart Skibs). And the singles comp never came out—that string of (almost) all self-released vinyl is (almost) impossible to find now, the kind of records that only make the walls of fame at places like Vinyl Solution when someone is real desperate to make rent. History, said Taylor, will look upon them favorably.

THE STITCHES WITH SUPERNOVA, BAD CREDIT, MIDLIFE CRYSTLER AND EMPTY RUM BOTTLES ALEX’S BAR | 2913 E ANAHEIM ST | LONG BEACH 90814 | 562.434.8292 | ALEXSBAR.COM | SAT 9PM | $8 | 21+

Tags: alex's bar, avalon bar, Long Beach, mike conley, Music, punk, the stitches