The Ziggens

The Ziggens are an American Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly band from Orange County, California. Their band members all use the stage surname "Ziggen" as an apparent homage to The Ramones (although their lead singer is better known by his real name, Bert Susanka). Though they have been active since 1990, The Ziggens are unfortunately fairly unknown in the music industry. They have, however, been namechecked, covered, and sampled by the much more famous Southern California band Sublime in the songs "Greatest Hits," "Big Salty Tears," (and "Tim the Dinosaur"), and "Smoke Two Joints," respectively. The Ziggens later returned the favor by covering Sublime's token Surf Rock song, "Paddle Out."

Discography:

• Three Wise Men & Dickie (1987)
• Wake Up & Smell (1991)
• Rusty Never Sleeps (1992)
• Chicken Out (1994)
• Ignore Amos (1996)
• Pomona Lisa (1998)
• Live in San Luis Obispo (1999)
• Live: Tickets Still Available (2000)
• Sleazy Rider (2000)
• The Ziggens (2002)
• Greatest Zits: 1990-2003 (2003): also includes a bonus CD of Surf Rock Instrumentals.

The Ziggens provides examples of the following tropes:

• Cover Version: The aforementioned "Paddle Out," as well as The Vaselines' "Molly's Lips" (best known as a Nirvana song) and Judas Priest's "Breakin' the Law"
• Instrumentals
• My Friends and Zoidberg: The Christmas album Three Wise Men & Dickie (Dickie Ziggen is one of their members.)
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly
• Shout-Out: "On the Way" namechecks Don McLean's "American Pie" and Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler."
  • Also, "Surfin' Buena Park" contains the riffs from "Low Rider" and "April 29, 1992 (Miami)".
• Silly Love Songs: "Something About a Waitress"
• Surf Rock: Most prevalent on the Instrumentals and the songs "Outside," "San Clemente," and "Surf's Up."