The Screamers

The Screamers are the Great Lost Band of the first wave of L.A. punk rock. They were among the first bands to emerge on the West Coast scene and were wildly popular in Los Angeles for several years, able to sell out two- or three-day stands at some of the city's most prestigious rock clubs. The Screamers also cleared new paths for the sound and image of rock music, abandoning electric guitars for a keyboard-based sound that was as muscular and abrasive as any other band on the scene, and embracing video and theatrics in a manner that put them far ahead of their time. However, the band never released a record and outside of several bootlegs of demos and live performances, there has never been an official aural document of their trailblazing music. The Screamers were fronted by Tomata du Plenty, who was born David Harrigan near Coney Island, NY, in 1948. In the '60s, du Plenty moved to San Francisco, where in 1968 he became a member of the Cockettes, a gender-bending performance art troupe that combined high-camp hippie theatrics with boundary-straining gay and straight sexual humor. After the Cockettes broke up, du Plenty relocated to Seattle, WA, which in the '70s had a thriving underground theater scene. Du Plenty soon became a member of Ze Whiz Kidz, a performance group specializing in bizarre lip-sync routines. After the group broke up, du Plenty spent some time doing comedy performance in New York City, where in 1975 he and his partners scored a few gigs at a bar called CBGB. There, du Plenty saw a handful of new bands such as the Ramones and Blondie; upon retuning to Seattle, du Plenty hooked up with drag performer Melba Toast and formed a New Wave-ish rock band called the Tupperwares. (Legend has it the drummer for the Tupperwares was one Eldon Hoake, who would...