R.I.P. F-Loder (2001-2006)

F-Loder was born a quarter-century ago on Crenshaw Boulevard in a semi-abandoned rehearsal studio called Grooveworks. The initial lineup was Jon, Bill, Colin and George, but over the following four years we ran through a bunch of other dudes—a whole slew of guitar players* were hired, fired, replaced, ghosted, and occasionally rehired. 

The band’s forefathers, Bill and Jon, were middle class Torrance drug trash with a knack for writing bold irreverent lyrics. One night, while milling around in a parking lot on a smoke break, they insisted on a band name. No voting. No discussion. 
It was settled. We were F-Loder. 

How they came up with it, no one really knows. Regrettably though, by taking our namesake from Kurt Loder we made him the symbol of everything we hated about mainstream music even though the man did nothing wrong. In fact, he’s actually a quite diligent journalist and a pretty swell guy in real life. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever make it up to him. 

F-Loder’s music was better than it sounded. Bill had the humor, brains, and determination; Jon, the swagger and sexual charisma. Both wrote the vast majority of songs and served up the comedy on stage. 

During the first two years of jamming together, we witnessed Bill’s bass work become more steady and precise. He knew without being told that the low end should serve the song as a whole without distracting from it; he never tried to be a top gun with showy, unnecessary licks that were out of his wheelhouse. I also noticed the range and texture of Jon’s voice improve over time. He began with a nasal SoCal dialect that deepened and developed into a natural and compelling rasp. 

In the early era, Colin was the most competent and dependable musician among us. His strumming was all muscle and volume and his backup vocals were strong from day one. George, the low-testosterone timekeeper, drummed for the first two years and did his job well enough, I suppose. 

It would be way too kind to say F-Loder was a ‘South Bay’ punk band. That category is for an earlier generation of top tier punkers like Black Flag, Descendants, Pennywise, F.Y.P., etc. F-Loder, though spawned in the South Bay, was about ten years late to the scene, so they’re downgraded to a sub-genre I like to call “Torrance Punk.” Even still, the band came up with a handful of raw unapologetic punk songs in the spirit of Minor Threat, Angry Samoans and Circle Jerks. 

It’s always a bit of a mystery to me why bands stop playing together. (I mean, it’s pretty clear why Nirvana broke up.) But the truth is, bands dissolve for lots of reasons, and in the case of F-Loder it was a productivity problem. Due to our low song count, the entire discography could be played in less than 15 minutes—it was only for the antics and covers that our set stretched to half-an-hour. 

The thing is, musicians have to write songs and albums in order to survive. It’s kind of their main job. Well, F-Loder didn’t do much of that; we came up with approximately ten workable songs over a span of five years. There should’ve been at least four full albums in that time. 

Fucking unacceptable.

But I guess we did what we wanted after all, and in mid 2006 our day had come. As noisy as we played, the band unraveled rather quietly. Guttermouth officially poached Ryan Farrell, and F-Loder went on stage at Latitudes for their last ever show. 

The music posted here is a smattering of two rounds of studio recordings and a few scraps from live shows. Our first session was done in Adam Rosinsky’s humble garage in south Torrance, and everyone was really stoked on the results. Then, a coupla years later, F-Loder crossed paths with Guttermouth, who offered to re-record most of those tracks, plus a few newish ones, at their private studio in Orange County. 


*additional guitar players we used and discarded: Jay, Andy, Peter, Davis and Big Dave.

Everywhere Wolves is following