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Biography: This guy has a dream that he meets this 50 year-old Nam-vet cab driver high on morphine and asks him if he wants to start a band. The cabbie says yes, but only if his wife, a trans-continental truck driver, can be the drummer. The guy says yes. The three piece plays a spontaneous show on the landing deck of an aircraft carrier to much excitement and mayhem. The name of the band is Ribcage, and it makes a lot of sense. So this guy who had the dream, who in real life has just left a band that sold more than ten thousand records all on its own, started a record label, had songs in more than five movies and appeared in at least three television sitcoms; he moves to Hollywood and starts a new band, with a new fire. The first guy, let's call him Keram - Keram Malicki-Sanchez for short, finds this hot-shot Los Angeleno bass player who used to play in the smokingest live gig in town - The Imposters - who even signed a deal with a major label before he bailed to study 20th century composition at UCLA. These two hook up, mainly due to a mutual interest in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and the music of Kurt Weill, The Replacements, Violent Femmes, The Birthday Party - and they start making really strange, but really cool music. Only problem is, the second guy, the bass player - we'll call him Pavlo - he insists on having a drummer around to up the ante - but not just any drummer as Keram quickly finds out. Someone whose kit looks like it was salvaged from the Titanic. Someone who can play the right feel in the opening of 'Lust for Life'. Keram and Pavlo search with KGB thoroughness for the most intriguing, solid drums Hollywood has to offer. Despite several legitimately thought-provoking combinations, Pavlo's ludicrous standards leave them, still, without a drummer. Keram realizes he is going to have to make a special phone call to the land of Rock and Roll infamy... Back in the day, 1990-92 when the Pixies were wrecking coffee houses, and Mudhoney was enamouring rabid geeks everywhere, there was this band in Cleveland called Coltrane Wreck, which is pretty much what they sounded like, with the addition of a violin player and a guy with a vocoder. They reliably annihilated anyone they played with. Their drummer, let's call him Eric Herrmann, was a shorn-headed, wire-rim spectacle- wearing madman who insisted on playing with double-kick and launching his drumsticks at the audience whenever the excitement proved overwhelming - which it always did. Anyway to make a long story shorter, Keram's own freak show act - Blue Dog Pict - was invited to play a showcase back-to-back with this Coltrane Wreck mob. So much for THAT club. The only thing left standing was a relationship between the members of the two high concepts. Meanwhile back in Hollywood '97/98, Malicki-Sanchez, (driven to the brink of insanity by Pavlo's ludicrous criteria for the ideal drummer) calls his drummer friend Eric, formerly of Coltrane Wreck and insists he pack up his things, leave his job and loved ones and drive straight to LA to join another high concept live gig with him and this Chilean bass-player (Keram happens to be Ecuadorian so the promise of 'Rock en Español' looms all the while) and record a full length album. Eric, knowing full well that a collaboration between him and Keram can only mean BIG, GIGANTIC, REALLY COOL, LUCRATIVE AND MIND-EXPANDING ENTERTAINMENT especially against the backdrop of SUNNY HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - makes the move right away. Formed in 1997, rising out of West Hollywood, Ribcage is the blue-lit crooner in a sepia-toned night club with a devil inside. This pseudo 30's era, brittle-boned nightmare three-piece is comprised of Keram Malicki-Sanchez (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Pavlo (bass, vocals), and Eric Michael Herrmann (drums). Air for flight. Blood for rage. Project Ribcage officially terminated in December 1998.
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