THE SCREAMERS
(Late seventies L.A. Synth-punk!)
On facebook the other day Little Red Ryan Hood posed the question, “What is your hobby/creative outlet?” I replied, “I write crazy things about crazy people,” which I like much better than the term “writer.” So, here I go again.
The Screamers were a very early L.A. Punk band that existed from about 77-80. I’ve heard them described as “synth-punk” and that is accurate. Though I fully believe they’re worthy of the term punk what’s interesting is that they had no guitars in the band. They were a quartet consisting of Tomato Du Plenty on vocals, Tommy Gear and Paul Roessler on synthesizer and electric piano and K.K. Barrett on drums.
Though we’re used to 80’s synth bands being lively and aggressive as wallpaper, these keyboardists kicked ass. It shouldn’t be too surprising because if you look at early rock’n’roll, there were piano players like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino who didn’t sound like they were playing Mozart concertos. Somehow, in rock that got lost along the way and aggressive, gutsy playing was mostly left to the guitars. Not so here- you can see on the videos the guys smashing into their instruments, hard.
And this was before the term “hardcore” was used or bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks had showed their spikey heads. Tomato Du Plenty’s, lyrics, vocal style and stage presence is very much like the singers that would follow him, like Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedy’s who claims him as an influence. He was different in that he was flamboyantly gay but Boston, too, had a great early performer like him, namely Lou Miami. His band was great and was called Lou Miami and the Kozmetics and was probably the punkiest band Boston had at the time.
I’ve mentioned before how hard it was at the time, on the East Coast, to hear what West Coast bands sounded like as not everyone had “vinyl” or toured here. The Screamers are a perfect example. They had no releases during their short time and never made it out here, at least to my knowledge. But I used to read about them in Slash, L.A.’s top punk mag, or in other places. Reading about them made them seem like a band I would like. Sadly, I never heard them until five years ago when a young punkette told me how much she liked them. She informed me that she saw them on youtube. I felt surprised that she got to hear them before me!
So I don’t want to hear, “This isn’t a punk band,” or “Oh, yuck, there’s synthesizers!” This is pure early L.A.punk. And I would love to see some bands today bang around some synthesizers and make some techno-punk. That would be awesome.
Here’s a little bit of Sonny & Cher for you.
Now this video/documentary is officially over. Usually, I tag some of my pretty poesy on it. So you can skip this part. If you do choose to stay just remember the video quality is very poor, the song sounds like a mix of the Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk, and the band leaves in the middle, ( to check out their hairstyles, no doubt) to let the machines jam a bit. They do return, though, and this is one of my favorite songs by them.
(Slimedog)
