Clap Meets The (Future) Imperial Dogs!

New York City-based Sing Sing Records just reissued Clap's semi-legendary 1973 album Have You Reached Yet?, featuring authoritative "I was there" liner notes from Back Door Man magazine founder "Phast Phreddie" Patterson, who recounts witnessing the infamous December 18, 1972 gig at the Shamrock Roller Arena in downtown Torrance where Sugar Boy (four-fifths of whom would become the Imperial Dogs) opened for Clap. You can see the flyer promoting the show here.

Clap are often mistakenly thought of as being from Manhattan Beach 'cause that's where the Nova Sol studio in which they recorded the LP and the similarly named label that originally issued the disc were based.

In truth, Clap singer Steve Morrison and his younger brother/bassist Jim, lead guitarist Dave Aurit, and rhythm guitarist Keith Till were all classmates of Sugar Boy/Imperial Dogs members Don Waller, Paul Therrio, and Tim Hilger at North Torrance high school.

The way we remember it, Clap started in 1965 as one of the 5,283 bands that called themselves the Chosen Few, which they shortened to the Few prior to adopting the nom de rock Clap. These early lineups included fellow North Torrance alumni guitarist Donnie Blair and first Ric Crist, then Lester Hurst on drums. While Hurst appears on some of the album's tracks, it's his replacement, Scott Murcier, who's pictured on the LP cover.

By the time that Don, Paul, and Tim, augmented by North Torrance classmate/rhythm guitarist Ron Vaselenko and drummer Bill Willett (who came from nearby Carson) formed Sugar Boy in 1972, Clap were the most popular local rock band around. Don and Paul vividly remember going to see Clap play a hall party somewhere in Gardena where they opened with a driving cover of the Kinks' "Victoria" (which was almost a revolutionary act for the time), but the rest of Clap's set was mostly Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper covers.

Not long after this, Clap invited Sugar Boy to open that show at the Shamrock Roller Arena. The gig was memorable for several reasons:

Once we got inside the building, we discovered there wasn't a stage, just a bunch of wooden pallets stacked on top of each other about three or four feet high, then covered with large sheets of plywood. When we took the "stage" -- all decked out in various shades of crushed velvet suits, scarves, brightly colored floral shirts, etc. -- and started jumping around, it was like playing in a rowboat!

And … the guitar and mike cords kept getting caught between the sheets of plywood, which were slipping around like tectonic plates and we were constantly distracted with trying -- not always successfully -- to keep everything plugged in. You can read a brief history of the Shamrock Roller Arena here.

Nevertheless, there were about 200 people there and considering that Sugar Boy's set was half original material, including "Contradictions" and "Needle And Spoon" -- which would later appear on the Imperial Dogs' Live! In Long Beach (October 30, 1974) DVD and their Unchained Maladies: Live! 1974-75 album, respectively -- and half covers that almost no one in the audience knew (everything from the Move's "Hello Suzie," the Blue Oyster Cult's "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll," and Black Pearl by way of the Sandpebbles' "Forget It" to the Climax Blues Band's "Reap What I've Sowed," Crazy Horse by way of Randy Newman's "Gone Dead Train," the Faces' "Had Me A Real Good Time," and Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody") we went down well.

Didn't get paid a penny out of the $1.25 that Clap charged everyone to get in, but then they'd booked the gig, they were the bigger draw, and we really just wanted the opportunity to play for their audience. (We'd only been playing shows for six months and this was our twelfth gig. It was also our last under the Sugar Boy name and lineup.)

Within weeks, we'd jettisoned Vaselenko as well as all the blues-based material -- we'd also been playing everything from Z.Z. Top's "Bedroom Thang," Free's I'll Be Creepin'," Fleetwood Mac's "Black Magic Woman," and Savoy Brown's "Tell Mama" to Willie Dixon's "Don't Go No Further," Earl King's "Come On," and Chuck Berry's "Down The Road Apiece," Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," the Small Faces' "Afterglow," the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," and the Who's "Baba O'Riley -- and changed our name to White Light.

A couple months later, Phast Phreddie -- who Don first encountered when he found Phast pulling on his trouser leg at the Shamrock gig, asking, "Are you gonna play that Eddie Cochran song?" (Phast had seen Sugar Boy play El Camino Junior College about a month earlier) -- dropped by the house in Hermosa Beach that Don and Paul were now renting with Paul's older sister and our high school pal, Mike Utley, with the Clap album under his arm.

We were surprised. Nobody -- let alone a local band that we all knew -- released records on indie labels back then. We were also surprised that the album was all original material. Well, sort of. (Most of the songs shared far too much DNA with their obvious inspirations: then-current Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper hits, for openers.)

Clap themselves were reportedly extremely unhappy with the album's couldn't-be-less-sympathetic production and broke up shortly after its release. So did White Light, but the four of us soon reunited as the Imperial Dogs. And we remember that former Clap guitarist Dave Aurit came to see us play that Cal State Long Beach gig 'cause he handed Tim Hilger one of the "barf bags" that we passed out at the door, upon which he'd scribbled "bloody good show!" (A reference to Don's using a combination of stage blood and foaming capsules to simulate a puking O.D. in the middle of "This Ain't The Summer Of Love.")

Not long after this, Phast Phreddie wrote a letter to the now-late Greg Shaw's Bomp! magazine, talking about Clap's Have You Reached Yet? LP as well as the Imperial Dogs, which turned the album into a serious collector's item. Once copies of the original Clap LP began selling for north of $500, various bootleggers got into the act and that's what's been available until the fine folks at Sing Sing produced the legal reissue that can be found here.

Having now heard the album for the first time in 38 years, we can see why "garage-rock" and "proto-punk" aficionados have got their knickers in a twist. Yeah, the production is "low-fi," but the overall effect is closer to a great lost Shadows Of Knight album than just about anything else in recent memory. But don't take our word for it, check out this pair of links to YouTube clips for Clap's "Have You Reached Yet?" and "Out Of The Shadows" here and here.

And, of course, it's good to see our North Torrance homeboys get their however-belated due.