One Thing Leads to Another

I’ll skip a bunch of milestones in my early life that while important to me, aren’t that different from anyone else’s who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Suffice to say that records, and music, informed my life choices every step of the way.

I had part time jobs in radio during college at Indiana State in Terre Haute, resulting from majoring in radio-tv-film and made possible by a glut of radio stations in Terre Haute. I did Top 40, AOR, and news on various stations. I was not good at it.

What drew me to radio was music; I found out that radio was indeed not about music, but about advertising. Successful DJ’s created appealing personalities, attracting listeners for the ad product. The music rotation was aimed at getting the most listeners, not exposing people to new or important music. My journey had already led me into deep rabbit holes of prog, Krautrock, psych and obscure rock: The Stooges, Dust, and Lou Reed. Nobody would play that stuff back then, except on the local public radio station, WISU, which allowed a few students to experiment after 9 pm. What a joy that was.

I don’t recall ever playing, or being asked to play a local release, at any of the stations I worked at. In fact, I paid little attention to the few that showed up in the record shops, because I was brainwashed into thinking that if it didn’t come out on a big label, it wasn’t good, and my $ went elsewhere.

One exception was Goliath’s Hot Rock and Thunder album, released on a Louisville label (Bridges) around the time I was departing Terre Haute. Not long ago I did a deep dive into the history of Goliath, which originally appeared in Vulcher Magazine. Their story is similar to, but weirder, than most local bands who didn’t get a real major label contract, yet somehow got a record out. The other exception was The Screaming Gypsy Bandits “In The Eye”. The Bandits were the hottest band in Bloomington during the mid 70’s and I fell in love with that record. It is still one of my favorites. Uncategorizably good.

Indianapolis was my first stop after Terre Haute; I discovered Second Time Around, the first used record shop in town and made friends with manager Dave Fulton. One day in 1978 Dave invited me to go see Devo in Cincinnati. Already fascinated by punk and new wave, my mind was completely blown by this experience. I never quite got settled in Indy, though, and soon headed north to Chicago.

I moved there in a flight of fancy to experience this new music first hand because Indy was 99% mainstream, initially rejecting the new direction in music. The magic of the early 70’s rock musical adventure on WNAP had given way to disco, The Eagles and Styx, heavy on the overly familiar. Punk was dismissed as a wrong turn by all radio in Indy, but I yearned for it. Turns out my adventurous tastes prepared me to enjoy the rebels and misfits that reinvented primordial rock as punk, and the artsy new wavers who went down entirely new roads. I was hooked and wanted as much as I could get, and Indianapolis in 1978 was not the place.

In Chicago, I got to see The Clash, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Pere Ubu, Penetration, John Cale, Gang of Four, Magazine, Public Image, Wayne County, The Buzzcocks, Nico, Jonathan Richman, Devo, Talking Heads, and more at the local clubs. I spent everything I had on singles and LP’s and hung out at O’Banion’s, a dingy dance club that spun everything that was new.

While Chicago was a never ending party I failed at getting a good job to fund my minimal lifestyle and extravagant record habit. I moved to Bloomington to get a master’s degree in telecommunications, which would later lead to an advertising gig in Chicago, and a career in the marketing biz, yet my attention was still focused on music.

I arrived at IU just as The Gizmos had moved to Hoboken, MX-80 Sound had gone to San Francisco, and The Screaming Gypsy Bandits had disbanded. There was a small but vital scene in their wake, featuring The Dancing Cigarettes, the Panics, the Qax Pistols, Microdots, Paul Sturm, Sally’s Dream and several others.

Gulcher Records had blazed a trail with their EP’s since 1976, an indie label before indie labels were really a thing. But the early Gizmos caught fire, getting reviews across the country and decent sales before unfortunately falling apart in Hoboken. Unbeknownst to most, Gulcher also released an EP by one Johnny Cougar, who was trying to restart his career after losing his original record deal.

Indianapolis launched with Your Parents, Video Kids, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Future and the Latex Novelties, followed by The Zero Boys, the Repellents, and many more. The Joint Chiefs reformed as The Last Four Digits, while the Novelties fell apart with some members forming The Jetsons.

In West Lafayette, Dow Jones and the Industrials emerged. Gulcher released “Hoosier Hysteria” in 1980, featuring one side of The Gizmos and the other of Dow Jones and the Industrials. Central Indiana had its first long player from the genre. Zounds Studio in West Lafayette, owned by Dow’s Brad Garton and Purdue legend Rick Thomas, became the go-to recording studio in our tiny universe.

Bob Richert, godfather of Gulcher, then released Red Snerts, an Indiana punk and new wave compilation in early 1981, featuring many of the aforementioned bands, plus a band that I was in, Amoebas in Chaos, and others.

Though I’d never played an instrument, and with a singing voice that had gotten me tossed out of grade school choir, I went for it, starting with a Korg MS-10 analog synth. If I couldn’t sing or read music, if I didn’t know even the notes, I could still make noise. I also could not keep my mouth shut. I wrote copious lyrics which became songs thanks to my talented bandmates in Amoebas in Chaos, and sang them in a half spoken, half shouted style. That could very well be my old choir director in the Red Snerts window photo above, coming after me for defying his pronouncement that I should not sing.

Indiana music still didn’t mean anything to me as a concept, except that I loved these new bands, got to see many of them live, and made life long friendships with band members.

It’s a technicality, really, but I had become an Indiana musician. Huh.