01. 00:12 Rudolph Is a Cat (Eddie & The Wolfgang cover) 02. 02:06 Rhonda 03. 03:58 Cruising (Eddie & The Wolfgang cover) 04. 07:16 Ring Sting 05. 09:34 Man Overboard 06. 13:13 Meat Between Teeth 07. 14:29 William Short 08. 17:09 Walking Down the Street (Nig-Heist cover) Smelly Mustafa - Vocals Karen Nuelken - Bass Gary Davi - Drums Tom Flynn - Guitar
Well I reached out to Smelly Mustafa for a comment on this show and got a very kind (and even more informative) reply from him: "Rudolph was put together for an outlet or path for Karen to get her riffage out there. She had been in a relationship with Smelly since 1984 and was an accomplished musician herself, yet she sat back and smoked cigarettes and watched the punk shows. She played in a few all female bands in SF (WETT) that didn't stay together long. Smelly was tired of the violence that Plainfield attracted. So Karen asked Tom Flynn to jam and that was the birth of Rudolph 1995." Smelly wrote the lyrics and Karen composed most of the tunes, with a few compositions by Tom Flynn. Gary Davi was their main drummer, but Wade Driver also drummed for them at some point. Rudolph actually went into the studio a few times along with Plainfield, but Karen and Smelly (and by extension the band) broke up before any of the material was released. Some notes on the specific songs: Rhonda is about Smelly Mustafa's sister Cruising has some lyrical changes to make it about the band members of Rudolph Ring Sting was a bit of an inside joke between Rudolph and Melt-Banana, who played a lot of shows together William Short is about John VanHoose, who played guitar in the band Medication Time
I think this has got to be Rudolph at Gilman on 12/6/1996. I checked the Gilman books for every show that Melt-Banana played, and Rudolph played with them on that date. I did cross-reference the other bands and none of them matched exactly, so by process of elimination and amongst other pieces of evidence, it must be Rudolph. They never seemed to have released anything but through some very tedious research I found out that they were a band comprised of ex-Fang and Plainfield members (namely Tom Flynn and Smelly Mustafa, plus two others who I only know as Karen and somebody that are mentioned in the third song at around 4:00). This is all the information I could find about them, but I hope it helps!
