Screamers
Screamers Demo Hollywood 77
SUPERIOR VIADUCT
An EP of the LA punk pioneers’ recently unearthed earliest demos, with explanatory notes by Jon Savage. Screamers were among the very first Angelenos to answer the Ramones/Sex Pistols call-to-arms, playing their first show in May ’77 at a party launching Slash fanzine. The Germs, X, Dils and Dead Kennedys all played early gigs supporting them, but this performance art-leaning quartet pursued a rare nonconformism, encapsulated in their line-up of two synth-players, drummer, and none-more-wild vocalist Tomata Du Plenty. After founder David Brown quit to start up scene label Dangerhouse, they also chose never to immortalise themselves on vinyl, preferring the bi-sensory assault of video. Despite their keyboard bedrock, these initial five demos from September ’77 are a million miles from Suicide’s pulse, rather weaponising the synth as an agent of deviance and otherness. Anti-media tirade Magazine Love imagines Can’s Malcolm Mooney fronting Devo, while Punish Or Be Damned tilts Eno/Krautrock’s arty electronic experimentalism towards gay S&M DIY. Pervy, inventive and stirringly nihilistic stuff.