In 1986, a Red Devils trio flirted with hard rock

Somewhere between wild-eyed rockabilly and low-down blues, there was a short-lived version of “The Red Devils” that went all in on punk and hard rock.

Around 1986 the band reinvented itself for a short while as a power-chord trio, with Dave Lee Bartel on guitar, Emy Lee on vocals and electric bass and newcomer Troy Mack (from Jimmy and the Mustangs, among others) on drums.

It’s not a whole chapter of the Devils’ story, but it’s at least a page.

And, thankfully, a live recording from Aug. 8, 1986, at Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach, California, exists.

Devils in the middle

The story of this Red Devils configuration takes place in a brief period of time in California in the mid-1980s. A great Los Angeles Times story by Randy Lewis, “Red Devils’ future is looking up” (July 4, 1986), sums up this mini-era, coming a few years after the rockabilly Red Devils lit up the Orange County scene.

But it wasn’t long before the group got its first taste of record business machinations when some label scouts encouraged two band members to abandon the others.

“I was told, ‘We like you and the bass player. Get rid of the other guys and you can go far,’ ” Emy said. “But I have to look at myself in the mirror every day. I couldn’t do that and live with myself.”

In early 1984, however, a personnel split came anyway, the result of a schism over the group’s direction. Emy and Dave wanted to pursue a more contemporary sound, while drummer Scotty Campbell (brother of James Harman Band bassist Willie J. Campbell) and bassist Jonny Ray (Dave’s younger brother) opposed the move away from rock’s roots.

The new-look Red Devils planned to take a tape of their “brash, up-tempo punk-metal hybrid” to get signed or get released, one or the other. Neither happened.

Red hot connection

The 1986 recording from Safari Sam’s remains as a snapshot — well, maybe more a Polaroid, or photo booth strip — of a slice of time that went by in a blink.

“Wow! This is a little gem of a set! Lol,” Emy (Lee) Bruzzo wrote to NoFightin.com when this show was sent to her. “Our punk-blues pre-grunge period. We definitely had some intense feelings back then. I had fun playing bass and singing. Soon after this we wrote other songs and slowed things down.”

The 17 original files on archive.org did not have song titles listed; Emy provided them to us — along with some “liner notes”! (All songs were originals, unless otherwise noted.)

• No Luck
• Ghost of Your Love
• Witch Doctor
• Wore Down and Out
• The Voice of the Blues (Irene Scruggs)
• Girls You Can’t Get
• ?
• Sloppy Joe
• Red Hots Rock. “A little-known fact that his band members may not know … but in 1982 I met and worked at an arts program with Hillel Slovak who was starting a band with his high school friends. I used to share my rockabilly tunes and I wrote this song. The lyrics went ‘Red hot devils love red hot peppers’ … and he used to ask me to sing it all the time. Then at some point he said ‘your song inspired my band name, The Red Hot Chili Peppers!‘ When I wrote it and sang it back then it was slower and lyrics were audible.”

• Lowdown Love
• It’s In My Blood
• I Can’t Sleep (Montana Taylor). “’I Can’t Sleep’”’ by Montana Taylor. He sang and played it on piano just solo. I think it’s from the 1940s but I can’t find my recording of it.”
• I’m Blue
• A Mighty Night of Love
• Sister Anne (MC5). “Super fun to play.”
• Guns and Knives
• ?

On Safari

The Red Devils were joined on that Friday, Aug. 8, 1986, bill by The Gravediggers and a group called The Sattelites.

Just few months later, on Nov. 23, 1986, Safari Sam’s hosted a funeral for the death of the club, an end to its two-year run in Huntington Beach.

Thankfully, former Safari Sam’s co-owner Gil Fuhrer kept a good accounting of the music that went down in the club; Fuhrer is responsible for these Red Devils recordings, for a robust history on concertarchives.org, and dozens of vintage fliers in the Safari Sams Huntington Beach group on Facebook.

Fuhrer shared a few memories of The Red Devils and Safari Sam’s with NoFightin.com.

“We LOVED all the bands that played there and treated them as awe struck fans would,” Fuhrer wrote. “Even the kids playing in their bands. Safari Sam’s literally was like a clubhouse for everyone. I do remember talking to Troy as he was in another local band favorite, Jimmy and the Mustangs.

“We were a small club; only held 102 people (legally, that is ) and that night, there was a small crowd in. You can sense that from the recording. Also, you can hear Dave talk about the lack of a bar that night; our liquor license had been suspended as the (Huntington Beach Police Department) got us serving to a minor in a sting operation (they sent in an underage cadet with a fake ID and we missed it).”

“Oh … yeah … this was interesting too, this show in terms of timing. August 8th … our little club would be shut down by the city in just over a month from this show,” Fuhrer wrote.

Safari Sam’s, it seems, lasted a little longer than this version of The Red Devils.

Top photo: Dave Lee, Emy Lee and Troy Mack (Image via newspapers.com)