FANTASTIC BLACK Is the long-awaited musical effort from drummer ERIC SKODIS (Imperial Drag, Missing Persons, Redd Kross, Roger Joseph Manning, Jr., Jason Falkner, Sextus/Eric Dover) and his partner, guitarist/singer-songwriter AARON TAP (Matt Nathanson, Paula Kelley Orchestra, Frank Shirts). Cultivated over the past fifteen years, it is finally seeing the light in early 2023. A musical project that combines many classic elements of rock - hard,-rock, punk, heavy metal, new wave, power-pop, glam and others - Fantastic Black is an amalgam of styles that evokes all of your favorite moments, from all of your favorite songs, by all of your favorite artists - all reimagined through the mind and musical experiences of Eric Skodis. Produced by Eric and Aaron, this eponymous, first effort was spawned from a natural reaction to the frustration both felt in the dearth of any real good rock music being created in this modern age. This reaction was meant to fill the world with the same type of gleeful, energetic, exultant, triumphant and unbridled joy rock bands from the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s gave them, as they grew up with and loved through the ages. The result is a diverse pastiche of styles, attitudes & moods. Powerful, passionate, melodic, harmonious, atmospheric, and most of all, rocking, this album unapologetically, unironically promises to deliver the long-lost feelings of the by-gone days of riff-heavy rock, laden with massive, majestic harmonies, bitchin’, double-lead guitar solos, chunky guitars & booming drums.

The band essentially started some time around 2005, when an informal jam with some of Eric’s friends to flesh out some songs he’d written sparked in him the desire - after years of lackluster, musical efforts and go-nowhere false-starts of projects he’d been trying to get off the ground - to once again give it the old college try. Armed with a batch of new songs (“Fortified”, “Lucky”, “Flatline”, “Patron Saint Of Mediocrity”, among some of contenders) , Eric put on the full-court press and started looking for a band to realize the new idea he had for a band: a group he decided would be called “Fantastic Black” (a random name that came to him while watching TV one evening). Knowing his usual corral of musician friends were either in big, money-making supergroups or knee-deep in musical efforts of their own, he reluctantly put out ads in local music classifieds, surrendering himself to the inevitability of lackluster candidates. Surprisingly, he found his future partner (and best friend), AARON TAP. Aaron possessed all of the qualities he was looking for in a band member: an impressive musicality, a great repertoire of influences and a great image. But what Eric didn’t count on was not only Aaron’s obvious musical prowess & copious similarities, stylistically, but, also a love for rock on the heavier side of things (punk, post-punk, 80’s metal , 70s glam & hard rock and others). Eric’s scattered sensibilities & schizophrenic influences didn’t scare Aaron away. In fact they created a stronger musical bond than anyone he’d previously been in any band with. But all was not to be wine & roses. After a year of gigging around L.A., Aaron was headhunted by an old friend from the Boston area he hailed from: Singer/songwriter, Matt Nathanson. Matt had a bourgeoning recording career and asked Aaron to go on the road with him. As happy as Eric was for his friend’s good fortune, he was crushed that his plans to start recording an album would be put on hold, indefinitely.

But the thing that kept the spark from completely dying out (Eric, for the years that plodded on since, many times thought of throwing in the towel, due to their inactivity), was Aaron’s undying enthusiasm & never-ending desire to bring the long-protracted album project to its fruition. This inspired Eric to once again pick up the beleaguered mantle of an album that seemed as though it would never be finished. As the years ticked by, in almost elapsed time, the album inched ever closer to completion. In those years, Aaron beefed up his recording equipment, buying & adding more and more sophisticated pieces of equipment & software to improve the already stellar performances. The experience became a learning one for both Eric & Aaron, with Eric wanting to improve on his much-celebrated demos that had made the rounds and been lauded by musician & engineer, alike., and Aaron, wanting to improve his engineering capabilities, all while endeavoring to make this album, which he had so much stake in in his life & love for, not just make it to the finish line, but also be a killer effort.

As of 2022, this seems to be becoming a reality.

Despite the world succumbing to a global plague, Eric & Aaron instead used this time to push in to high gear, opting instead to not be thwarted by the separation, but instead using their imposed downtime to make up some much-needed lost time. By the middle of 2022, the basic tracking, vocal sessions & overdubs were finished. Soon, mixing & mastering was underway.

ERIC SKODIS - Born in New York (but, for all intents & purposes, a Los Angeles native since birth), Eric grew up in the sun-baked, laid-back, lotus-petal-eating, languid palm-tree-lined wonderland of the San Fernando Valley in the wild & wooly 1970s. Fed on a steady diet of rock, pop & showtunes (from Mom) and jazz, classical & film scores (from Dad), and a near-constant feed of early-70s AM radio (93KHJ), young Eric quickly realized he had to be a part of music somehow when watching the wacky, day-glo, psychedelic antics of Saturday morning animal rock band, the Banana Splits. From then, Mom & Dad bought him a drum set (to save their furniture) and weekend morning cartoons soon became replaced with lessons. His musical education continued well into adolescence, with music classes in school (concert band, orchestra, marching band, jazz band), until, in his last year in high school, when facing the crossroads of whether to be an artist or a musician led to the obvious conclusion. He dropped out before finishing school and started diligently hanging out in the early-80s Hollywood rock scene. He cut his teeth, slogging away in the myriad L.A. clubs on the Sunset Strip, Hollywood & “Scream”-club scene of the mid-80s. After a bleak, fruitless decade, fraught with endless disappointments, record label passes and bands that, just when they were starting to gain traction, self-imploded, he’d all but given up and decided to trade in his drumsticks for sculpting tools & airbrushes, opting for a career in the new and exciting makeup effects industry. It was precisely at that moment, when then-defunct power-pop wunderkinds, JELLYFISH splintered into a new project - that would eventually become WORK recording artists IMPERIAL DRAG - that Eric got a phone call that would change his life. The band made an incredible, single eponymous effort in 1996, toured the world (and elsewhere) and, sadly, broke up in ‘97. In the meantime after that, he’d go on to perform with the likes of Jane Weidlin, The Tories, Dale Bozzio (& Missing Persons), Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. & Jason Falkner (ex, of Jellyfish), Angela McCluskey (of Wild Colonials), perennial L.A. cult-punk/psyche 80s band, Redd Kross and rock legends Cheap Trick, Meatloaf and even lent vocals to Glen Campbell’s swansong album, “Ghost On The Canvas”.

AARON TAP - Aaron Tap has been handed a memory. He is sitting in the child seat on his mother’s Schwinn bicycle, three years old, as they ride into town in a suburb of Boston, MA. He is singing at the top of his lungs all the way there. That’s where it began. Aaron was all about the singing — around the house, while mowing the lawn, in choirs — until he semi-accidentally discovered Back In Black. Then it became an obsession to find a walnut-brown Gibson SG, which he eventually did. All sorts of stuff followed these revelations: band after band, tons of musical experimentation, brushes with some measure of success. But it wasn’t until he joined Boston’s power-pop royalty Boy Wonder (fronted by ex-Drop-19 Paula Kelley) that he was able to put the voice back into use as part of a complex harmonic blend. It felt good to be back there. 

A move with Paula to Los Angeles in the 2000s brought on new challenges, as the post-Napster music industry continued to adapt and change, seemingly week by week. Aaron eventually found himself touring the country and making records with singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson and that led to a busy and rewarding run of producing and recording albums for a wide variety of bands and artists, and which continues to this day. Somewhere along the line, he spied a Craigslist ad for “ex-Imperial Drag drummer looking for a guitarist who can sing.” A huge fan of Imperial Drag’s lone LP, he made the call. Upon meeting and playing with Eric, a fast and fruitful friendship was born. At last, after a lifetime of other pursuits, he could marry his love of harmony singing with his love of HEAVY music.