The Spiffs’ bassist/frontman, Glenn De Jongh, recalls his trio’s “best-ever” show. When local FM-rock radio powerhouse KUPD released an album of rising Phoenix-area bands, Damn Straight, the station hosted a release show at a major boat-racing lake outside Phoenix. “New wave” was still unaccepted in 1980 Phoenix, and a hard line existed between the hard rock/metal crowds and those they considered the “punks.” It was musical bigotry, you could get beat up for wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt. The punks were always outnumbered, at least 100 to 1. This heavily promoted show drew thousands.
“You gotta imagine the crowd,” laughs De Jongh in 2026. “We pull up and there were like 400 Harleys parked there. All this anti-punk, or whatever, attitude. Thousands, with maybe a hundred or so in polka dot shirts there for us. We go out wearing our plastic trash bags, and my bleach-blonde hair.”
In minutes ice cubes pelted the trio. De Jongh egged them on. Full drinks, tomatoes and even whole sandwiches rained down on the Spiffs. Soon a fight “breaks out between the punks and metalers”—a mini-riot, a kind of Yankee trailer-park version of Brighton, England’s 1964 mods-versus-rockers street brawls.
“We were young punks,” De Jongh says. The singer knew hard rock and its audience. His first kid bands found him playing ZZ Top and Skynyrd. He switched from guitar to bass when a bass player got grounded.
The Spiffs—including guitarist Don Doiron (RIP), drummer Walt Boone (later replaced by Steve Golladay)—had a brief, spectacular run, ’79-’81. They might be the only band on earth who made a living playing Monkees, Devo, Dead Boys, Ramones and Pistols covers in bars. All that sprinkled in with De Jongh-penned power-pop-punk songs, the occasional on-stage chainsaw and demolished amps.
They had a band house in Phoenix, complete with a working craps table. One member had a habit of destroying things onstage and off, including the house itself. They worked hard. Imagine a trio of scruffs flyering Arizona State University in white plastic garbage bags fashioned into shirt-and-diaper combos, accompanied by bikini-clad women carrying signs that read “Zep Sucks” and “The Spiffs,” while hundreds of angry college kids shouted “Punk sucks!”
The Spiffs earned a great bar gig, which turned into a residency at Phoenix bar Clyde’s Mason Jar, after their followers endlessly phoned the venue requesting the Spiffs. It paid off for both sides. Before long, the club owner laid out cash for the band’s only release—the Don’t Waste Your Money on This Garbage EP. One day De Jongh strolled into a radio station with that EP in hand and got airplay on the spot. De Jongh was never embarrassed by much, if anything. That fearlessness that paid dividends—to a point. Besides, the Spiffs were filling clubs.
The EP upheld De Jongh’s convictions because it was damn good. It nails the Spiffs chutzpa, while showing De Jongh getting as near as anyone in his search for the perfect three-minute punk-pop song. He knew the secret—direct aim and max energy from a limited palette. Spiffs songs are simultaneously singable and fist-jackingly nutty, offering hints of the (Paul Collins’) Beat, the Nerves, Teenage Head, Joe Jackson and nods to the Kinks, Beatles, Brit Invasion and ’60s garage rock. Hints even of Phoenix band Billy Clone and the Same. The six-song EP is all era bangers crammed with niggling harmonies, ear-bending choruses, and chug-chug guitars. Each ditty became an Arizona rock-dive classic, no flat moments, no boring turns.
– Liner notes by Brian Jabas Smith
