The first good thing that happened with Amoebas in Chaos was that the Dancing Cigarettes invited us to share their practice space, located in a storage room at a moving company. No heat or A/C, but it was secure and private. We became great friends with the Cigs, who encouraged us constantly.
While Premature Babies was an all rookie affair, Amoebas was different. Rich had both serious chops and innate pop sensibilities. Bruce was a 19 year old wunderkind, a freshman at the IU School of Music studying percussion. He could play anything. Gulcher’s Bob Richert called him “our lead drummer”. Lynn had started to get decent at the bass but I was still not very conversant with anything musical, such as notes, etc. So Rich and Bruce tended to figure out musical structure and Lynn and I would try to understand it enough to make it work. The results were sometimes bizarre.
Songs were written faster than we could process them. By songs, I mean mostly lyrics. Each of us brought songs to the table and as a result, Amoebas was a multi directional beast depending on who had spearheaded the song. All of us sang vocals, too. Rich’s songs included “Twisted” and “Lost in the Jungle” while Lynn sang the crowd favorite “Designer Genes”, “Blank Emotion” and others. Bruce wrote “Fantasy” and a few others that had great hooks. At this time lyrics were pouring out of me and probably overwhelmed the band at times. “Ronald Reggae” swiped enough actual reggae to became one of our signature pieces, while “Persistence of Vision”, “Nuclear Tofu” and “Incognito” mined a paranoid introspection that seemed to be my forte at the time. The shy me became a manic weirdo on stage.
Gigs happened quickly, long of course before we were really ready, but the no wave spirit had us captive and we didn’t care. We didn’t sound like anyone else, local or otherwise. We mustered a cover of Lydia Lunch’s “Atomic Bongos” which was still obscure enough at the time that many thought it was our song. Otherwise, we were all original, bringing forward “Have You Slugged Your Kid Today” and “Computer Card Violence” from Premature Babies, and filling the set with new stuff constantly. We played at a WQAX street dance on Kirkwood, at Dunn Meadow, and several times at Bullwinkle’s/Second Story. Our first out of town adventure was at Indianapolis’ Third Base, one of the early punk clubs in the city. Due to over consumption we were not particularly good that night.
Things were growing exponentially in the Indiana new wave/punk scene and Gulcher Records was doing its best to document it. The compilation project “Red Snerts” was announced and we submitted a song recorded at Dave Fulton and Steve Grigdesby’s Defoliant Sound studio, located in the back room of the Second Time Around record shop. “Designer Genes” was a catchy thing and was selected for this now legendary record. We were scheduled to perform at Indianapolis club Crazy Al’s for the release party, but something happened to keep us from doing that. The club offered us a make=good opportunity, so in August of 1981 we were lucky enough to open for The Cramps. We probably played our best set ever that night, and were blown away by the sheer power of The Cramps.
On the heels of Red Snerts, Bob Richert of Gulcher floated out the idea that he’d put out an Amoebas in Chaos full length album, but that never materialized. This did, however, lead us to recording such a thing at Zounds Studio in West Lafayette, which was co-owned by Dow Jones wunderkind Brad Garton. We weren’t really ready for that either, but Rich and Lynn were about to graduate college and they had announced their intention to move to Boston in the summer. So we decided to get an album recorded just because time was short. We didn’t really think too much about the logic of doing that and then breaking up. Along the way I got intrigued with the idea of going to Boston, too and trying to keep the band going. Doing so made little sense as I was halfway into my master’s program and only a couple of months into a love relationship with my future wife Diane. Lucky for me she decided to go on the Boston adventure and I bid adieu to graduate school. Amoebas was moving to Boston.
This did not go well, however. Bruce declined the opportunity to join us in Boston, so we were drummerless. As we were trying to find a drummer, Lynn developed tendonitis and had to stop playing bass. That left Rich and I to find a rhythm section, while Lynn would do more vocals and light percussion. We teamed up with two guys from the local band People In Stores but the chemistry just didn’t materialize, and the band collapsed. We’d played a handful of shows in Boston to muted response–at the time, Boston was overrun with bands and there just weren’t enough fans to go around; our makeshift lineups didn’t help. On one memorable afternoon, we were to play at a groovy all ages place called Media Workshop. Also on the bill was one G.G. Allin. Unbeknownst to us, the club had been closed down the night before and we waited for hours in sub freezing temperatures before we were finally informed. Though G.G. was affable, I heard swear words that were new to me. Later, as he became an infamous crust punk icon, I enjoyed telling that story to anyone who would listen.
With the band broken up, we had to release the LP without a band, on the label Hardly Music, a collaboration by Garton, Fulton, Grigdesby and myself. We had limited contacts with distributors following the release of 4 EP’s in 1981. Selling US indie records was pretty tough back then, unless you blew up like R.E.M. or the B-52’s. I took a trip to NYC to meet with a few distributors but we had little sell through. At least one of the distributors went belly up while we were hoping to get paid from them. We did get a fair amount of college radio airplay but without the record being available in most shops, not much happened.
Having completed the life cycle of Amoebas in Chaos, and finding no other compelling reasons to stay in Boston, Diane and I packed up a U Haul truck and headed back to Bloomington almost exactly a year after arriving in Boston.
(Side note: Rich and Lynn are both still there, still playing in bands. Lynn is in Hummingbird Syndicate and Rich is with Kingdom of Love.)