SLINKY formed at the very end of 1992 in Clearwater, Florida when Shane got the keys to a warehouse practice space for Christmas. Brothers Shane (guitar/vocals) and Jimmy Hoffman (guitar), who had already written a couple songs together, wanted to start a band so they brought in childhood friend Todd Kirby to see if he wanted to be the drummer. He would do it, but not without his bassist Dave Myers. Todd brought Dave to the next session, everything clicked and Slinky was born.
Throughout the 1990's, Slinky shared the stage with several notable bands like AFI, Against All Authority, Avail, Doc Hopper, Face to Face, Fifteen, Horace Pinker, Hot Water Music, Lagwagon, Plow, Radon, Slap of Reality, Submission Hold, Swinging Utters, Tilt, Weston, and too many others to list. In addition to a few 7” record releases, Slinky’s music has been featured in a variety of surf movies including "What's Really Going On?" and "What's Really Going Wrong?" both by Lost Enterprises and "Voluptuous" by Snapping Turtle Productions.
Slinky toured the United States in the summer of 1995, putting 10,000 miles on “Sparky” the van, playing 25 shows over two and a half months. After the tour, Slinky played a few local shows and then took a break for many years until 2010 and 2011 when they decided to play a set of shows with Brian Lake behind the drum kit.
Fast forward to November 20, 2021 where Slinky fired things up again to play the “We Can't Help it if We’re From Florida… Even Now: A Celebration of Florida Punk Rock Flyer Art” show at the VFW #39 in St. Petersburg, Florida, this time with drummer Chad Mairn. The legendary Chris Barrows Band (Pink Lincolns) and Slap of Reality played with Spanish Needles that evening and it was a blast and luckily recorded! The unedited audio was extracted from video shot by Mike Plante and is viewable here.