Frank Navetta and Dave Nolte met as sixth graders at American Martyrs Catholic School in Manhattan Beach, California. "I was friends with him straight away", Nolte later recalled, "We both had interest in music, we both started playing guitar at the same time." They decided to start a band, and Navetta came up with the name Descendents, an intentional misspelling of "descendants". In mid-1977 they befriended Bill Stevenson, who impressed them by overdubbing his own backing vocals onto a demo tape Navetta had recorded. Stevenson joined the band as drummer, and he and Navetta became good friends; as Stevenson later recalled:\n', 'While rehearsing in Navetta\'s brother\'s garage in Long Beach, California in 1979, the trio heard Tony Lombardo practicing bass guitar nearby and recruited him into the band. Nolte soon bowed out to join his brothers in The Last, and the power trio lineup of Navetta, Lombardo, and Stevenson released the Descendent\'s debut single, "Ride the Wild" / "It\'s a Hectic World" (1979). Navetta wrote and sang on the A-side track. Stevenson\'s classmate Milo Aukerman joined the band in 1980 as lead singer, solidifying the early Descendents lineup. The Fat EP (1981) included two Navetta compositions, "My Dad Sucks" (co-written with Lombardo) and the fishing-themed "Mr. Bass". The Descendents\' debut album Milo Goes to College (1982), so named because Aukerman was leaving the band to study biology, included five more of Navetta\'s songs: "I Wanna Be a Bear" (co-written with Lombardo), "I\'m Not a Loser", "Parents", "Statue of Liberty", and "Marriage" (co-written with Stevenson).\n', 'With Aukerman away at college, the Descendents added Ray Cooper as both singer and second guitarist. They performed with this lineup, and occasionally as a quintet when Aukerman would make return visits to Los Angeles. Stevenson pushed for the band to tour, which Navetta and Lombardo were against: "Bill kind of sat down with me and Frank and said something to the effect of we were at a point where we needed to grow by going on the road", Lombardo later said. "Frank said no, and I had to say no also, so he said he had to leave the band and we were both kind of bummed out. I don’t think Frank even believed him at first. That was a bad scenario." Navetta, Lombardo, and Cooper tried to start a new band, the Ascendants. "We played one show", said Lombardo. "Frank played in his underwear, and I don’t mean boxers. It was all a disaster, it was sad, for me anyway." Navetta ultimately quit the band by setting all of his musical equipment on fire and moving to Oregon, where he became a full-time fisherman.\n', '

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