The rock band The Mumps was formed before the series An American Family was broadcast in 1973. Initially called Loud, Lance and his high school friend Kristian Hoffman started the group in their hometown of Santa Barbara. After a disastrous appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, all of the other band members quit, but Lance and Kristian moved to New York City to pursue music careers. There they recruited three other band members: guitarist Toby DuPrey, bass player Kevin Keily and drummer Paul Rutner. Kristian played rhythm guitar and keyboards and wrote the songs. Lance was the lead singer.
The Mumps flourished for five years in the New York club scene in the late '70s. Their music drew comparisons to The Move, The Kinks and Sparks, and stylistic comparisons to the New York Dolls. They recorded a single in Brian Wilson's studio in Santa Monica, but they never quite hit their stride as recording artists. Although they recorded singles, they never recorded a full length LP, and narrowly missed the chance to have a record produced by John Cale of Velvet Underground fame. The band broke up in 1980.
Lance Loud wrote of the band, "Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.... Our high vaunting musical ambitions were matched with low ranking musical expertise, we had a lead singer who could sweat better than he could stay in key, and besides the fact that three of us were gay in a hetero-heavy field which only acknowledged homosexuality as being a passing marketing ploy in David Bowie's career, the only thing shared between us all was our weird combination of superiority and insecurity."
In 1994, "Fatal Charm," a compilation CD of all the Mumps' recorded songs, was released on eggBERT Records. Visit www.eggbert.com for more information.
