A couple of early newspaper articles from around the time debut album 'Get Outta School' was released. Full album here :
LOS ANGELES TIMES article - June 18th 1989
ELECTRIC YOUTH: The teen-pop phenomenon is a...
By PAUL GREIN
ELECTRIC YOUTH: The teen-pop phenomenon is a certifiable pop trend, but 9-year-old J.P. Toulon of Madison, Wis., doesn’t want to wait until he’s a teen-ager to make his mark on the music scene.
So Toulon formed a rock group, Old Skull, which has released an album and is set to play two local dates this week.
But don’t look for Old Skull at Tomorrowland Terrace in Disneyland. The group, which also includes Toulon’s younger brother, Jamie, 7, and his friend Jesse Colins-Davies, 9, doesn’t play poppy kid-stuff like New Kids on the Block or teen-dream ballads like Debbie Gibson. Old Skull bills itself as the world’s youngest punk band. Its rallying cry: “Tiffany can kiss our (rear)!”
The group, scheduled to play Monday at the Club With No Name and Tuesday at Bogart’s, just released its debut album, “Get Outta School.”
All of which has made Toulon the B.M.O.C. of his fourth-grade class.
“They think it’s pretty cool now that we have a record out,” he said by phone from Madison. Toulon added that his parents have been pretty cool too. “They just say, ‘Don’t throw your equipment into the audience,’ ” he reports.
Toulon’s father Vern, 34, is also in a local band, the Meek. But his band doesn’t have a record deal.
“I’ve only been playing twice as long as he’s been alive,” said Dad. “But hey, it’s cool. And if the L.A. dates lead to a full-scale tour, we could open for them.”
PEOPLE article - September 18th 1989
Those Precocious Young Bloods in Old Skull Are the Only Punk Rockers with a 9 O'Clock Bedtime
by PEOPLE staff
They are every baby-sitter’s nightmare: three leather-lunged boys who curse with abandon, never sit still and just can’t get their hands on enough stuff to break. But Jesse Collins-Davies, 10, J.P. Toulon, 10, and his brother Jamie, 8, haven’t been sent to their rooms for their antics—they’ve gotten a record contract instead. Together they are Old Skull, the world’s youngest punk band.
Old Skull got its start three years ago in Madison, Wis., when the boys began jamming with the blessings of their dads, Robin Davies, a rock bass player, and Verne Toulon, who plays in a local rock band. By the time executives at Restless Records in L.A. heard one of their tapes, the trio had perfected what company talent recruiter Ron Goudie calls their “insightful and unpolluted” sound. Their debut album, Get Outta School, was released in June and has sold some 10,000 copies.
Old Skull’s members admit to a certain lack of polish. J.P, for instance, can’t play all the chords on his guitar. “It sounds better that way,” he says. And Jamie, Jesse claims, “doesn’t do nothin’ but smash on metal.” (“I do too,” Jamie counters.) The boys do write their own material—songs ranging from the gritty “Kick Ass” (“We’re gonna kick ass ’cause my dad said so”) to the more civic-minded “AIDS” and “Homeless.” This summer they strutted their stuff at the Ritz nightclub in New York and on MTV. Says J.P.: “We got to smash our equipment and blow away people’s speakers.”
Back home, life is generally calmer. The band practices once a month in the Toulons’ basement in preparation for weekend gigs around Wisconsin. They spend their free time skateboarding and are in bed by 9ish. And should their new fame start to go to their heads, there is always school to keep them in line. “The principal won’t let us play our music anymore because we say ‘hell’ and ‘ass,’ ” says J.P “I sort of see what he means.”
