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Salmonella Dub
Biography
Salmonella Dub got their name from the "bad-taste" dub versions of popular songs they used to break the ice in their early sets. In '90s New Zealand, dub/roots/reggae freak-outs weren't entirely in vogue -- grunge and dance music held sway -- so Salmonella Dub would use lighthearted covers of Nancy Sinatra and Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show tunes or Fred Dagg's novelty song "Larry Loves Barry" to win over skeptical audiences.

In the early '90s, New Zealand's liquor licensing laws changed, allowing pubs and clubs to stay open late and revitalizing the country's live music scene. The members of the band then called Golf Course Alligators seized this opportunity and, in late 1992, Andrew Penman (guitar), Mark Tyler (bass), and Dave Deakin (drums) became Salmonella Dub. In the early days they lacked money for proper equipment and used inventive solutions such as creating a sampler by hooking up a cassette player to a switch pedal from Penman's guitar so they could create live samples. Usually these samples would come from whatever was on the TV at the time, whether it was the news or a Cheech & Chong movie. Lacking the funds for cassettes, they raided the bins of a record store and found discarded copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles albums that served as their early tape stock.
Selected Discography
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