How O.C.’s the Earwigs’ ‘lost’ rock album became a $500 collector’s item

If someone told Michael Ubaldini that dusty copies of his old band’s records from four decades ago would sell for hundreds of dollars each, he probably wouldn’t have believed it. Not that anyone was really rushing to tell him. Especially not the internet-savvy young fans of his obscure, ‘80s power pop band the Earwigs who followed him to his present-day gigs as a singer-songwriter begging for copies of “She’s So Naive” pressed on 45s for a mere $20 each. To Ubaldini, 61, he (naively) thought he was getting the better end of the bargain.

“Some kids came up to me at a gig one time and asked if I had any of Earwigs’ original 45s, which had become a collector’s item, but at the time I didn’t know it,” said the Orange County-based musician who still gigs regularly in O.C. and Nashville. “I told em, ‘yeah I got couple of those.’ They said, ‘Can we buy ‘em?’ So I sold them to the kids for $20 each thinking I’d gotten a really good score, but they must’ve felt guilty about what they paid for them because they were offering to give me some other records on top of what they paid me.”

Not long after the dubious parking lot sale, Ubaldini went online to find that the 45s packaged in flimsy, handmade cardboard sleeves with the photo of the band pasted on the front (known as the “alt sleeve” to the original band logo cover) were being sold for more than $300 on sites like Discogs.

After his initial shock subsided, Ubaldini tried selling the records himself. “I had a few more and I put one online “bidding starts at $100, buy it now for $350,” he said. “I went to breakfast and came back and somebody bought it.”

The Earwigs perform at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa.

(Michael Ubaldini)

The highest amount paid for a rare bootleg copy of the 45 record containing the catchy single “She’s So Naive” and “Here Come the Earwigs” was sold on Discogs for about $500.

This revelation, along with his desire to finally give his old band a proper album release, sparked a recent revival for the Earwigs’ largely forgotten legacy. On Saturday, the Earwigs, fronted by Ubaldini alongside the band’s original drummer Dave Reed, guitarist Oscar Munoz and bassist Jerry Adamowicz, will play a long-delayed album release party at the Mamba Sports Bar & Grill in Huntington Beach for “The Earwigs – Orange County 1981: The Lost Debut Album” limited edition vinyl pressing. The first two pressings sold out in just five days via pre-order. Each of the pressings of 100 copies is made in a different color, which are being stocked in record stores from their native O.C. to London and Japan.

The once-popular band started in 1978 and played at legendary Costa Mesa venue the Cuckoo’s Nest alongside celebrated bands from the early O.C. punk scene like the Adolescents, T.S.O.L., Agent Orange and Social Distortion. ”We were part of that scene but we weren’t a punk band — we had a bit of a mod influence mixed with the energy of the Buzzcocks and the Ramones,” Ubaldini said.

Though they never quite fit in with the bands credited for bringing Orange County punk to the world, the pompadour grit that combined Hamburg-era Beatles with sped-up bubblegum pop songs about teenage love and suburban angst carved a brief moment in the music history of the region.

So how did the Earwigs gain this unlikely cult following unbeknown to its founding member?

Ubaldini thinks it started when radio DJs like KROQ’s Rodney Bingenheimer and KNAC’s Sue Mink started playing the band’s music on their radio shows frequently in the early ‘80s. Fans recorded the tunes off the airwaves onto cassettes that got passed around before they even had an official record to sell. Their songs became sought after among fans of power pop/garage rock and sped-up rockabilly. The underground success was driven by the catchy, saccharine-yet-explosive single “She’s So Naive.”

Though they were getting airplay, the band’s album, which they recorded in 1981, didn’t see daylight because the ill-fated Rock-A-Mod Records, which they recorded the album for, folded before it could be released.

The band’s original lineup (including guitarist Ashton Rands and bassist Dave Hughes) broke up by 1982 as members grew up and went their separate ways, only to re-form with a slightly different lineup for a couple more years before permanently calling it quits in 1984, never releasing any more music. Ubaldini continued to play roots rock and honky-tonk music in O.C. and formed a new band called Mystery Train that got signed but lasted for only one record. For years, late Times entertainment reporter Mike Boehm championed Ubaldini as a dynamite frontman and songwriter.

“A tall, lean, dark-and-handsome, denim-and-leather type, Ubaldini fits the old-fashioned mold of the classic rock ‘n’ roll rebel as well as anybody on the O.C. scene,” Boehm wrote. “Mystery Train is built on sturdy old models, full of cranking, Stones-Creedence guitar riffs and rockabilly licks. It also is largely concerned with that oldest of rock ‘n’ roll subjects: unbridled, gleeful, exuberant sexual lust.” Ubaldini’s local success spent many years gaining steam though never quite taking off.

“Meanwhile all this time I’d be playing in other bands or my own projects, there would be someone in the crowd that would yell ‘Earwigs!’ at me,” Ubaldini remembers. “‘Play some Earwigs!’ It always struck me as funny. And I would never play those songs because I’d written so many others since then.”

Over the years, Ubaldini says he’s gotten offers from a number of small indie labels wanting to put out some of the Earwigs’ old singles. These were mostly bad deals that promised very little profit for the songs Ubaldini wrote as a teen.

“I wasn’t gonna get anything out of it [from any of these small labels], he said. “I thought I might put it out one day but I’m not gonna put it out and just get ripped off. I’ve been through too much in music to get ripped off again.”

The original lineup of the Earwigs: Michael Ubaldini, Dave Reed, Ashton Rands and Tom Hughes.

(Michael Ubaldini)

Earlier this year, Ubaldini, inspired by the revived interest in his music, finally took the leap and started to remaster the old album of 17 tracks that he never put out, opting to press it independently. A new batch has arrived in time for the band’s last one-off show to commemorate its unlikely cult status. The frontman is excited to sell copies to die-hard local fans who helped keep his music alive.

“I just want to release this Earwigs thing, it deserves its place, it’s part of that time and all these kids wanna hear it,” Ubaldini said. As to why the music itself seems to have caught on even after the revivalists bands like Jet, the Strokes and the Strypes have come and gone, he attributes it to the timeless, straight-ahead nature of the music. “It seems like the songs never got dated really because we stayed away from the synthesizers and we just played rock ‘n’ roll.”

Ubaldini wonders if the mystery of the band that never made it big is what kept people curious about his old music. “People had recorded our stuff and made bootlegs of our music for all these years and it kinda took on a weird life of its own. It’s kinda mind blowing when I think about it,” he said. “There was not one ounce of promotion or anything. It was truly all because of the underground scene.”