Started on a dare, Arms of Tripoli is Southern California’s best kept sonic secret. In 1987 all four member of Arms of Tripoli were working at the same frozen yogurt stand in Hawthorne, CA. Manager Allen Porter (guitar, sitar) told his 3 night shift workers Michael Bouvet (bass, hookah), George Tseng (drums, statistics) and K.C. Maloney (guitar, mood, sexuality) that if they didn’t sell 17 pints of Very Berry Iced Routine frozen yogurt by 12 midnight they’d have to start a band with him called Arms of Lisa Loeb. Of course, such a task is impossible (even in Hawthorne, CA LOL!). After spending the next 30 years learning their instruments they finally started working on “One Way Plastic”.

Originally a collection of dad rock, garage band covers of Alice Cooper, Boston and Lynyrd Skynyrd, over the next 3 years through creative mixing and digital editing “One Way Plastic” became the great post-rock work it is today. Nary a remnant of those original covers remain. When they were set to release the EP they realized that there was already someone named Lisa Loeb who had a hit in the 90’s with the coffeehouse rock song “Stay (I Missed You)”. Visibly distraught, they resigned to calling the band Arms of Tripoli. That’s when they were met with more bad news. Apparently there was already a post rock band in Los Angeles called Arms of Tripoli that had been releasing high quality music since the early 2010’s and they were notoriously litigious. All seemed lost and they considered changing their name to Fake, Fanciful, Beautiful: The Hunger Remainz. But as fate would have it, George Tseng ended up winning $43,000 on a slot machine in Laughlin, NV. Using these funds they came to an agreement to buy the name Arms of Tripoli from the existing band (which included ownership of their 3 previous releases “All The Fallen Embers”, “Dreaming In Tongues” and “Daughters”). They even had a little bit of money left over which they used to fund a group trip to Raging Waters water park in San Dimas, CA!!

Nowadays you can catch Arms of Tripoli playing live every weekend to throngs of innocent bystanders at Universal City Walk in Universal City, CA. It has ample parking and is within walking distance to a metro stop.