Saunders was born and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973 with a degree in statistics; eventually he received another bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Saunders kept his day job as an accountant throughout his years as lead singer and guitarist for the Angry Samoans.
Saunders' political incorrectness and personal attacks in his lyrics earned him (and the Angry Samoans) significant notoriety in the early 1980s, especially due to their song "Get Off the Air", an ad hominem attack upon well-known KROQ-FM DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.
Saunders played drums in these bands:
VOM – Los Angeles, 1977–78 (with Richard Meltzer and future Angry Samoan Gregg Turner)
Fried Abortions – San Francisco, 1980–82 (changed two members and their name to Lennonburger)
Lennonburger – San Francisco, 1983–84 (with Maximumrocknroll's Jeff Bale on lead vocals)
Electric Koels – San Francisco, 1985–88 (1960s retro-garage band with five original songs and 55 cover tunes)
Saunders also drummed on all the "Metal Mike" CDs usually missing from Angry Samoans discographies.
Although he maintains that "drums are my best instrument", Saunders has written over 1,000 rock songs in his lifetime, all methodically recorded to mono on old-fashioned Sony portable kitchen-table cassette recorders.[4]
