THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With a classic rock ’n’ roll sound as powerful as their band name, Slamdinistas are ready to take a step onto the world stage. The band’s five members have spent their lives writing and performing, and those musical chops are blazingly apparent in their contemporary take on New York glitter trash, Detroit street punk and British Invasion rave-ups.
The group’s authenticity can be traced back to 1964, when Loren Molinare and Brian Irving were just kids transformed by the musical and cultural tsunami. “Once I heard The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Who, I knew I had to play guitar,” said Molinare. “But it wasn’t unIl later in the decade when I heard The MC5 that I realized rock ’n’ roll had the power to move people, and I wanted to be a part of that sonic revoluIon.”
Molinare was well situated to take in the power of the Motor City Five — he grew up in Lansing, Michigan, just 90 miles northwest of his heroes in Detroit. In 1968, the teenage guitarist would form his own proto-punk band The Dogs, and by 1970 they were sharing bills with The MC5. Having played a show as recently as October 2024, The Dogs have forged their own legendary career.
As for Irving, he remembers banging on pots and pans for months before his parents eventually gifted him a set of Japanese drums for Christmas 1964. “I’ve been on the road to ruin ever since,” he said. “I saved up enough money to buy the mono version of the Dave Clark Five album Glad All Over. Those rompin’, stomplin’ DC5 drums, played by Bobby Graham, were my original template.”
Molinare and The Dogs moved to Los Angeles in 1975. They released their debut single John Rock in 1976, followed two years later by the classic early punk 7” EP Slash Your Face. During this period, The Dogs opened for hard rock acts like AC/DC and Van Halen, as well as punk and new wave groups such as The Ramones and The Motels. The band relocated to the U.K. and toured throughout 1978 and ’79. Molinare spent much of the next decade playing with The Dogs. From 1989-1992, he was rhythm guitarist for Little Caesar, an L.A. hard rock act that released one album on Metal Blade Records and two on David Geffen’s DGC Records.
Immediately after Little Caesar’s first breakup in 1992, Molinare co-founded the melodic rock band Gilt Lily with frontwoman Carrie Hamilton. Gilt Lily were active on the Los Angeles club scene and during this period Molinare would meet two fellow future members of Slamdinistas, Paul Ill and Gabriel Johns. Ill played bass guitar for a time with the group, while Johns was the music booker at several clubs which featured the band, including the legendary Club Lingerie in Hollywood.
But Slamdinistas were still two decades in the future. In addition to continuing his adventures as a rock ’n’ roll guitarist, Molinare spent much of the 1990s and ’00s behind the desk in a different musical role, working as a product manager at such companies as Korg USA, Blackstar Amplification, Line 6 Amps and ESP Guitars.
The actual formaIon of Slamdinistas would finally begin to take shape in 2015. That year, Johns asked Ill to produce recording sessions for a short-lived progressive/alternative band he was fronting called FiDo. Ill bowed out, claiming that producIon wasn’t really his forte, but he did recommend Molinare. Molinare agreed to come on board, but FiDo never really gelled, and the sessions were abandoned. However, Johns and Molinare enjoyed working together and a plan was struck to instead produce Johns’ first solo album. The resulting mini-album Love Lives Here was released in 2018. It featured Johns on vocals and rhythm guitar, Molinare on lead and rhythm guitar, Ill on bass and keyboards, and Tony MaMeucci (The Dogs) on drums.
Sensing that a good thing was happening, sessions for a second solo album got underway later that year. Johns, Molinare, and Ill were looking for a harder-edged approach this time around. The trio began searching for two more players. The first pick was Brian Irving, the powerhouse drummer who had recorded and toured with Molinare in Glitter Trash (2017-2018). And the new group was rounded out by guitarist Mike Gavigan, whom Johns had been admiring for years for his work in local blues-rock band The Blessings.
“Under Loren’s direcIon, the combined playing brought out an organic, high-energy Brit rock sound,” recalled Johns. “Loren surprised me when he said we should be an actual gigging band, but it was immediately apparent he was right. Thus, we became one.” “The name Slamdinistas was suggested by Brian,” revealed Molinare. “Besides the great play on words related to the Clash, it Ips its hat to anarchy in a political sense, and it’s a powerful name that projects what we envision as our sound.”
The debut album from Slamdinistas, Shoot For The Stars, was released in September 2022. The band played local dates in support and ventured outside California to perform in New York and New Jersey. The album was quick to win accolades. Slamdinistas reconvened in 2024 to record a second album, Wild & Restless, with producer Paul Roessler (Screamers, 45 Grave) at Kitten Robot Studios in Los Angeles. Ill’s departure before the sessions necessitated the recruitment of a new bass player. Local actor-musician Peter Downing was brought on board, and he contributed two songs to the sessions, with his Santa’s in a Punk Band Now released as a holiday single.
Molinare gets the last word: “Los Angeles is a melting pot for musicians, and it certainly was crucial for us finding each other. But we don’t consider ourselves to be a distinctly L.A. band because none of us were born here. Gabriel comes the closest to being a native because his family moved here when he was two years old. The rest of us grew up in the Midwest and on the East Coast. Honestly, I see the Slams as a dirty (N.Y.C.) Lower East Side rock ’n’ roll band that would have hung out down at the pub with Dave Edmunds and The Rolling Stones.”
