Los Reactors - Be A Zombie

A. Be A Zombie


B. Laboratory Baby


LOS REACTORS (Tulsa, OK)
Be A Zombie b/w Laboratory Baby
Cynykyl (CY-5-02), 1981

Roger Scott was born and raised in Tulsa. His earliest musical inspirations were rockabilly and surf music but it was after seeing the Beatles on TV that he knew he wanted to play guitar. Following the British Invasion era, Roger opened his mind to psychedelic music and then found influence in the glam sounds of T.Rex, Bowie and the Dolls.

His first group was White Dwarf. They formed in early 1978 and mostly played covers of the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Kiss. After about six months Roger left to form Fast Noise with Dale Lawton and Brian Plummer. Brian eventually left that group to join the Jacks so Darrell Smith took his place on drums and Fast Noise was renamed the Passions.

They played originals as well as covers by groups like the Stooges, Johnny Thunders and the Buzzcocks. In late 1979 or early 1980 they added Tommy Gunn and changed the name to the Reactors. Then Dale left to form the Vindicators and later joined the Bridge Climbers who were previously called the News. The Reactors remained a three piece briefly until Roger asked Joe Christ (AKA Joe Danger) to join the band since he had just parted ways with the New Mysterians.

With Joe in the mix, the Reactors went from having a guitar oriented sound to being more keyboard driven. They worked on original material while still incorporating fun covers into their set. The only place in town to play original music in 1980 was the Bleu Grotto. Prior to that they had to play shows out of town or do gigs in warehouses and garages. When the Grotto opened their doors to original bands, more and more unique Tulsa groups came out of the woodwork.

The Reactors became Los Reactors after discovering other bands were using the name. They built a loyal following locally and played road shows in Kansas City, Fayetteville, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Norman, Dallas, Ft. Worth, etc. They opened for several touring groups and plenty of great regional bands like The Jacks, The Fensics, The Ralphs, and many others.

Chris Stearman and Michael McGee of Cynykyl Records took an interest in the band and offered to record them. They spent a week working on recordings in the late night hours at the Producers Workshop in Oklahoma City. Joe and Roger went back a couple weeks later to mix. Unfortunately Cynykyl didn’t have the finances to press the records, so the band eventually scraped up enough money to do it themselves.

“Dead In The Suburbs” was released in a small run. Having a 45 out helped the band secure more gigs and even earned them some college radio play. They sold copies at independent record stores in the towns they played and some copies were sold by mail order or at shows but most were sent out or given away as promotional copies to clubs, radio stations and fanzines.

They released their second single, “Be A Zombie,” a year later in 1981. The songs were recorded during the same sessions as “Suburbs” and released in an edition of 1,000 copies on Cynykyl. The band had no distribution lined up, no management, no tour offers, and a record deal never came their way. With the music scene moving in different directions and seemingly no way to take things to a higher level, the band finally dissolved.

After Los Reactors, Joe went on to front several bands including G Spot, The Healing Faith, and Bigger Than God. He then became a producer of underground films. Tommy Gunn played with various rockabilly and blues bands. Roger formed a prototype speed metal band called Revenger for about a year and then a black metal/thrash band called Cenotaph, which lasted nine years through several personnel changes and recorded two albums. Darrell Smith joined for the final incarnation of that band.

In 2000, Rave Up Records out of Italy released an LP that included the songs from the singles as well as unreleased studio and live material. A CD version followed in 2004. Los Reactors reunited in 2005, playing a few shows including the Dot Dash Festival in New York. They were scheduled to play a tribute show for Michael Automatic in 2007 but Joe was unable to participate as he was living in Atlanta. The rest of the guys played under the name The Adaptors to avoid any misconceptions. The Adapters continue to play locally with Jim Eason in place of Tommy and with the addition of Ian Scott on keyboards. Joe Christ passed away in June 2009 of a heart attack.

NEMB - The Middle Room

A. The Middle Room


B. Torture


NEMB (Baltimore, MD)
The Middle Room b/w Torture
Green Records, 1981

Lee Warren grew up in Daytona Beach, FL. His musical taste was highly influenced by the discovery of Alice Cooper and New York Dolls records in the early 70s. From there he got into glitter bands like David Bowie, Roxy Music, and other stuff from England he had read about in the pages of Melody Maker and Rock Scene.

In 1977, Lee started attending the University of South Florida in Tampa. At the time, southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Charlie Daniels Band dominated the airwaves and the live club circuit, which he wanted nothing to do with. Fundamentally, he liked the sound of distorted guitar and when he moved to Tampa and found others who shared a common interest, he immediately set out to form a band.

Lee introduced himself to a student in a dorm hallway who was wearing a Kinks t-shirt. His name was Bill Carey and he had transplanted from Naples, FL to attend school at USF. Bill collected vintage guitars and was a fan of bands like the Velvet Underground, Stooges, NY Dolls, Mott The Hoople, and the early CBGB groups.

Realizing they were into a lot of the same music, the two started frequenting Mi Backyard, a kind of a redneck bar with a picnic and BBQ area that began having punk nights in the spring of 1978. The first time they went they saw a power pop band called Just Boys playing. It was decided that they needed to form their own band.

They started writing songs together with Lee singing and Bill on guitar. Then they brought in Bill’s girlfriend Joyce who also played guitar. They posted ads on bulletin boards around campus to find other members and met a bass player named David Bowman. They completed the line-up with a 15 year old drummer named Val who was an advanced placement student in college. She had a Mo Tucker sensibility about the way she played minimalist drums without utilizing cymbals.

They named the band the Art Holes and played their first gig at a rehearsal space rented out by members of a local band called the Jackers. Lee never sang in front of people before and had a bit of stage fright, but they made it through the show and people liked them. The band started getting other gigs around town and neighboring Sarasota. Eventually Allen Esser took Val’s place on drums and gave the band a more powerful sound.

Lee graduated in 1979 and moved up to Baltimore. Bill and Dave continued playing together in a band called the Jetsons, who later became Stick Figures. Meanwhile, Lee began working on songs with a drummer named Rick Sugden, who had coincidentally had a short stint in the Jetsons. In late summer/early fall of 1980, Lee met George Poscover through an ad he'd posted in a record store. Rick sort of drifted away once George came into the picture and since they couldn’t find another drummer, Lee bought a Roland CR-78 rhythm machine.

Lee called the band Non-Erotic Male Bonding, or NEMB for short, since some club owners objected to the full version of the name. On Saturday April 4, 1981 a Gender-Fuck Party was held where attendees went into a closet where a Bolex film camera was setup with a cable release that advanced the film one frame at a time. On that night a version of NEMB that included Lee, George, and a guitar player named Charles Freeman performed.

Lee’s old band mates Bill and Dave took a hiatus from Stick Figures and came up to Baltimore in the summer of 1981. They joined Lee and George, who were working on some NEMB demos. The temporary line-up recorded two songs that would be released as NEMB’s sole output in a run of 500 copies. Their version of “The Middle Room” became the soundtrack to the Gender Fuck Party film that had previously been shown without an audio track. Lee and George can be seen in the film between :07 and :14.

Bill, Dave, and the rest of Stick Figures ended up moving to New York and tried to get something going there. Unfortunately things didn’t pan out and the band soon drifted apart. Lee wanted to move to New York as well which brought an end to NEMB. In February 1982, Lee and Bill along with Rachel Bowman from Stick Figures formed a new band called King Of Culture. They played frequently in New York for a couple years with numerous line-up changes and released a single on Green Records. Not making enough money to sustain themselves, the band eventually split apart. 

 

Stick Figures - Crayola Bowling

A1. N-Light


A2. Ellis Otivator Dub


B1. Crayola Bowling


B2. September


STICK FIGURES (Tampa, FL)
The Stick Figures EP
Green (2581), 1981

Sid Dansby moved from Jacksonville to Tampa in 1978 to double major in engineering and music at the University of South Florida. He grew up playing a wide range of percussion instruments including tympani, vibes, and xylophone as well as guitar, violin, and piano. His brother Robert, who was an art major at the same college, picked up violin at an early age and played drums. Their school introduced them to multi-track recording and synths as their musical influences gravitated towards the glam sounds of the New York Dolls, Bowie and the unique compositions of Soft Machine, King Crimson, Zappa and Beefheart.

During their first year at USF, the Dansby brothers met Dave Bowman, Bill Carey, and Lee Warren who were in a band called the Art Holes. That band ended the following year when Lee graduated and moved up to Baltimore. Sid and Dave then discussed starting a new project to make music unlike anything else they were hearing. They brought in Bill Carey as well as Dave’s sister Rachel. After trying out a few different drummers, Sid's brother Robert became the permanent choice.

The new band was coined the Jetsons and they played around the Tampa area frequently. There was a very vibrant music scene happening there with a myriad of venue options. The band developed a strong following working clubs like the Buffalo Roadhouse, Ms. Lucky’s, and Mi Backyard 2-3 times per month. They even played sets before films like Eraserhead that were being shown on campus.

Everyone in the band was proficient at multiple instruments so they often switched things around. They all came up with general ideas for songs and typically they’d work them into complete compositions together. The band primarily played original material but they’d throw in maybe one Iggy, Roxy Music, or Jonathan Richman song per performance. After a while they decided to change their name to Stick Figures.

The band earned enough money from gigging to go in a studio on Davis Island in the middle of the night and quickly lay down the tracks for a four song EP. Community radio station WMNF was a big supporter of the local music scene and one of the station’s DJs named Pam Wiener became the Stick Figures manager. She also helped them release their 7".

Each member designed their own unique sleeve and then ran off copies on a Xerox machine before getting together to stuff the records into the sleeves. They received airplay on not only local stations, but even John Peel played Stick Figures on the BBC in England. In fact, the band was picked up by UK indie label Glass Records and were supposed to put out a record with them.

In 1981 the band set out for New York in hopes of finding a broader audience. They continued to be prolific, churning out two or three new songs every week and amassing a repertoire upwards of a couple hundred original songs, but they didn't play out much. After recording most of an album, the struggle to survive in the big city proved too much and things fell apart.

Stick Figures played their finals gigs in Atlanta, back to back nights supporting the Fall and Lounge Lizards.

Futurisk - Army Now

A. Army Now


B. What We Have To Have


FUTURISK (Lighthouse Point, FL)
Army Now b/w What We Have To Have
Clark Humphrey (008072), 1980

Growing up in England in the 60s, some of the earliest music that stood out to Jeremy Kolosine was the later era Beatles, the Tornadoes "Telstar" single, the Dr. Who theme, and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack. Around 11 years old he started buying cassettes and getting into prog and electronic music, but it was David Bowie and Roxy Music that had the most profound impact on him. In fact, Jeremy got to see the first show of Bowie's Aladdin Sane tour shortly before his parents moved the family to South Florida.

Jeremy was 13 when he came to the United States and he was already pretty much only interested in music, but his new locale had little to offer him besides Southern Rock. At 14 Jeremy got his first cheapy acoustic guitar and taught himself by playing along to Cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen and Bowie. When he discovered punk and new wave around ‘77, it was bands like Devo, Pere Ubu, Contortions, PiL, Ultravox, Wire & XTC that he gravitated to. He soon got his 1st kit-built synth and started learning keyboards and patching.

Late in 1978, after picking up a copy of local punk zine, Mouth Of The Rat, Jeremy discovered that there actually was a punk scene happening in South Florida. He went to see the Eat, Cichlids and other new bands that were playing in the area. Jeremy and high school friend Frank Lardino started their own band called Art Decadence that played covers of the stuff they liked such as Devo, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Hawkwind & the Rolling Stones, but doing them all in a way that sounded like the Stooges.

Then in ‘79 Jeremy started playing solo experimental performances with guitar, synth and drum-machine using the name Clark Humphrey & Futurisk. Clark Humphrey was the human, and Futurisk the machine. Later that year Jeremy won recording time at Audio Image Studio in Pompano from a competition in an artzine out of Wilton Manors called Florida Arts Gazette. With six hours to record and mix, Jeremy did the vocals, guitar, synth and electric mandolin. He also brought in Frank Lardino to play synth and a drummer named Jack Howard that they found from a bulletin board at the local music store.

They decided on simply "Futurisk" for the band name and with the prize money Jeremy received from the Arts Gazette competition, he was able to release the two songs “Army Now” and “What We Have To Have” as a limited run 7” in 1980 on his own Clark Humphrey imprint. The record came with an oversized picture sleeve and double-sided lyric insert. The new three-piece band continued rehearsing together after the recording session and even brought in a bass player named Jeff Marcus. They worked up a great live show and started playing out which enabled them to sell out of the single within a few short months.

A couple more line-up changes ensued until 1981 when Jeremy finally decided to go all synth with real drums. For the first couple of years Jeremy had written all the songs on guitar, but after he got a Sequencial Circuits Pro-One with a sequencer, most of the songs would be based on synth parts first. He kept Jack on drums and recruited synth prodigy Richard Hess to replace Frank, who then went on to play in Radio Berlin.

Besides their original music, Futurisk also interspersed covers from bands like Depeche Mode, early Ultravox, OMD, Our Daughters Wedding and DAF into their set. They deliberately tried to set themselves apart from the local punk scene that still bristled at the sound of a synth or drum-machine.Their following mostly consisted of a disjointed art crowd and because there were always different clubs opening and then closing a month later, they had to set up their own shows, sometimes playing on roof tops.

In 1982 the band did a batch of recordings on Richard's Porta-Studio-1 4-track cassette recorder, also known as the "Futurisk Mobile Unit." They wanted their next record to sound like Moroder's production on Spark's "Number One In Heaven," but weren't entirely sure how to make it happen. Richard figured out how they could use sync-pulse on tape along with a trigger click-track so they could sync up sequencers and drum machines on tape. They placed Jack's oversized Tama drums in the bathroom to try and get a natural distortion and gated echo like they heard on Bowie's "Low."

From the money they received from the sales of the "Army Now" single, Futurisk was able to release their next record, the Player Piano EP in a larger run than the prior release. This one was a five song 7" that played at 33 1/3 RPM. It sold out in about 18 months after having received acclaim in the Sun-Sentinel and other local media. They got interviews and play on most of the college and some mainstream rock stations and even got a couple of videos out of appearances on local TV shows.

The band did one more recording session at Ocean Sound in 1982 but never released the material. In late '83 Jack ended up moving. Jeremy and Richard did a couple of shows with drum-machine but since the rest of the local scene appeared to be dissolving and they’d already accomplished what they set out to do, they simply stopped.

Drummer Jack Howard went on to become a well-known Elvis impersonator and is featured in the book "I Elvis" and in the movie "The Burger and the King". Richard works on refurbishment of synths as well as musical projects. Jeremy kept doing music in various projects, most recently Receptors and 8-Bit Operators, which he also produces.

In 2010, Minimal Wave Records released the Player Piano LP which was a collection of all the songs form the band’s two 7” releases as well as songs from the unheard Ocean Sound sessions.