The Aquabats

The Aquabats are an American rock band formed in Huntington Beach, California, in 1994. Throughout many fluctuations in the group's line-up, singer the MC Bat Commander and bassist Crash McLarson have remained the band's two constant fixtures. Since 2006, the Aquabats' members also include keyboardist Jimmy the Robot, drummer Ricky Fitness and guitarist Eaglebones Falconhawk.

Easily identified by their masks and matching costumes, the Aquabats are perhaps most recognized for their comedic persona in which they claim to be crime-fighting superheroes. This theme serves as subject for much of the band's music and as part of their theatrical stage shows, which typically feature various stunts and fight scenes with costumed villains and monsters. Musically, the Aquabats have continuously evolved over the course of their career, starting as an eight-member ska band before reinventing themselves in the early 2000s as a new wave–influenced rock quintet. The band's current musical style mixes rock and punk with elements of new wave, ska and synth-pop.

The Aquabats have released six studio albums, two extended plays, one compilation and one soundtrack album, among other recordings. To date, three of the Aquabats' albums have charted on the ''Billboard'' 200: 1997's ''The Fury of The Aquabats!'', 2011's '' Hi-Five Soup!'' and 2019's '' The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One''. The Aquabats' sixth studio album, '' Kooky Spooky...In Stereo'', was released on August 21, 2020.

From 2012 to 2014, the Aquabats also created and starred in '' The Aquabats! Super Show!'', a live-action musical action-comedy television series which aired on American cable channel The Hub. The series ran for three seasons, earning a total of eight Daytime Emmy Award nominations and ultimately winning one. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the series was independently revived as a biweekly YouTube series in late 2019.

History

Formation

In the early 1990s, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and Boyd Terry met and befriended each other while living in Brea, California. Having all been active in various local punk and alternative rock bands, the three eventually conceived the idea of forming a joke band satirizing the Orange County punk scene, which Jacobs described at the time as being overwhelmed with "testosterone, beer and people fighting". The concept was to start an unabashedly silly punk band as a complete antithesis to the genre's more aggressive and humorless bands, with the intention of performing at punk shows to poke fun at the scene. While later attending a ska show in Orange County, Jacobs was exposed to the area's burgeoning ska scene and was impressed by its ethos: as he recalled, "No one was fighting or pushing each other but having a good time". It was then decided that they would start a ska band instead, "to be part of the fun".

With Jacobs assuming vocal duties, Larson on bass guitar and Terry on trumpet, the trio recruited several more musician friends from other local bands to piece together a full ensemble. Each member of the original line-up had musical backgrounds in various genres, including ska, punk, surf and new wave, all elements which were incorporated into the band's music and aesthetic: for example, the name "The Aquabats" was created to sound like a classic surf band, while a shared admiration of Devo inspired the idea of matching costumes. Jacobs simply recalled in a 2013 interview, "We wanted to combine Devo with surf music and ska". Rehearsing only once in a house Jacobs and Larson shared at the time, The Aquabats played their first show a mere week after forming at a house party in August 1994. Larson remembered this show as merely "a joke...we weren't trying to be a band. We were trying to have fun". Nevertheless, encouraged by a positive audience reception, The Aquabats started performing more local shows, soon becoming familiar faces within the Orange County underground.

1994–1996: Early years

With professionalism far from foremost concern, The Aquabats' earliest band line-ups changed with almost every concert, occasionally featuring as many as twelve to fourteen musicians at a time onstage, with the majority typically playing brass instruments. As they gradually developed a steady following and began playing shows with more regularity, the band settled into a tighter and more manageable unit consisting of around eight to nine musicians, filled out by a horn section, two guitarists and a keyboardist. It was with this type of line-up that The Aquabats began recording, independently producing the demo tapes ''The Revenge of the Midget Punchers'' in 1994 and ''Bat Boy'' in 1995.

Initially, The Aquabats intended to make each of their performances unique by wearing a different set of matching costumes for every concert, ranging from chef's uniforms to grass skirts and fezzes, all with an individual persona — during one show wearing chef outfits, for instance, the band hosted an actual onstage barbecue. When the group's props and get-ups soon became more cumbersome to transport than their musical equipment, it was ultimately decided a singular costume was required. Terry, a future apparel designer who was employed by the wetsuit manufacturing company Aleeda at the time, acquired a large amount of spare rubber and neoprene and fashioned together a set of helmets and rashguards for the band members. The addition of customized vinyl belts, donated to the band by then-unknown artist Paul Frank, effectively completed the style The Aquabats would maintain for the rest of their career.

To accompany their distinct new uniforms, The Aquabats constructed a backstory which alleged they were actually superheroes hailing from the distant island of "Aquabania", though Larson admits the entire mythology was simply made up piece by piece as they went along from one interviewer to the next. As their mythology grew, the members soon adopted superhero stage names and identities, and began tailoring their live shows around a comic book aesthetic by incorporating onstage stunts and mock battles with costumed villains, antics which were originally ploys to get the band's friends into shows for free. Jacobs' brothers Parker and Tyler, a cartoonist and graphic artist, respectively, were brought in to help develop the band's cartoon-influenced visual style, designing their logos and promotional material as well as playing characters in The Aquabats' stage shows and mythology.

In 1995, The Aquabats independently produced and recorded their debut album, ''The Return of The Aquabats'', pressing the CDs themselves. Having already amassed a sizable cult following for their increasingly eccentric live shows, the band managed to sell a respectable 20,000 copies of their album without any marketing or distribution. With the growing mainstream popularity of ska music, The Aquabats quickly rose to prominence within Orange County's booming ska scene, regularly touring alongside the likes of such commercially successful bands as No Doubt, Sublime and Reel Big Fish and bringing them to the brink of achieving mainstream recognition.

1997–1998: ''The Fury of The Aquabats!'' and mainstream breakthrough

By late 1996, propelled by the multi-platinum success of No Doubt and Sublime, ska had broken through into the American mainstream to become one of the most popular forms of alternative music. With record labels now turning their attention towards ska bands, The Aquabats were promptly signed to Goldenvoice Records and released their second album, ''The Fury of The Aquabats!'', in October 1997 through Time Bomb Recordings. While still predominantly a ska album, ''The Fury'' showcased a more ambitious musical streak than ''The Return'', incorporating stronger elements of punk and surf, as well as featuring instrumentals, parodies of ragtime and tango music, and a variety of unconventional instruments including sousaphones and banjos. Released at the commercial height of the American ska revival, ''The Fury'' earned The Aquabats minor mainstream success, peaking at number 172 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and number 12 on its Top Heatseekers, while lead single " Super Rad!" found regular airplay on MTV and Los Angeles' influential KROQ-FM. On July 25, 1998, they fought the alien rock band Gwar during The Ska Parade.

The Aquabats spent 1997 and 1998 touring extensively behind ''The Fury'', carrying out both supporting and headlining tours of the United States and traveling internationally as part of the 1998 Warped Tour. By this time, the band had settled into a stable touring line-up of Jacobs (The Bat Commander), Larson (Crash McLarson), Terry (Catboy), drummer Travis Barker (The Baron Von Tito), guitarists Charles Gray (Ultra Kyu) and Courtney Pollock (Chainsaw, the Prince of Karate), trumpeter Adam Deibert (Prince Adam) and keyboardist/saxophonist James Briggs (Jaime the Robot, later Jimmy the Robot). This line-up would last The Aquabats up until 1998, when, in the middle of a tour with pop punk trio Blink-182, Blink unexpectedly fired their drummer Scott Raynor and recruited Barker as a last-minute replacement to sit in for the rest of the tour. By the tour's close, the band was so impressed with Barker's performance that they invited him to join Blink-182 as a full-time member, an offer which Barker accepted, amicably parting ways with The Aquabats. Barker was succeeded by Gabe Palmer (Doctor Rock), solidifying a line-up which would last the remainder of the decade.

With the band now finding enough success to generate both an adequate income and media visibility, Jacobs — a former child actor with ties in the entertainment industry — began to conceive the idea of adapting The Aquabats' superhero mythology into a television series. After pitching the concept to several networks, Buena Vista Television

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