The

Controllers

band history

The Controllers were born in a fit of chemical exuberance on July 4, 1977, following a fireworks show at the Santa Monica pier. We celebrated and made it official by spray painting 'Controlers" [drunkenly misspelled with only one 'l'] on the side walk in front of our apartment.

The band at that moment consisted of my girlfriend, her smart-ass teenage little brother [soon to be known to the world as 'Kid Spike'] and myself. We had no original songs, Spike had barely learned to play guitar, and my girlfriend thought punk meant wearing skimpy clothes and shakin' her cute ass.

We met our first bass player standing in line at the Whiskey. Field Marshall D.O.A. Dan, the pride of Walnut Creek, was an acne scarred lunatic with more than a few screws loose, but he was impressed enough with our primordial twin rhythm guitars to go home, quit his job, and move in with us lock, stock, and bass amp.

Our neighbors quickly made it clear that practicing in our living room was a bad idea. We needed to play loud...so we found a dumpy rehearsal 'studio' in the heart of Hollywood [actually under the Pussycat Theater on Hollywood blvd.], where could practice as loud as we wanted for as little $2.00 an hour, provided we didn't mind practicing in the middle of the night. We didn't. The place was run by a rambling and permanently disheveled Scotsman named Bendan Mullen. He was eventually impressed enough with our tenacity and cash flow to rent us a tiny room on a monthly basis.

By the fall of '77, Brendan was hosting regular shows on a monthly basis and we were trying our best to be the 'house band' by weaseling our way into as many shows as we could. The Masque was exploding in drunken, unlicensed glory. There were new bands popping up every week end and we were very happy to smack in the middle of it.

This is the band on Chris Ashford's What? Records single. As I recall,we recorded some time late in '77 at Chris' buddy Phil's 4-track studio, optimistically call 'Sunbird Studio'. Chris was nice enough to put 'Neutron Bomb' on the What Records Sampler EP. along with tracks by The eyes and The Skulls. We suddenly had some credibility outside of the close circle of friends at the Masque.

It we during those months in late '77 and early '78 that we met most of the friends that would help and influence us, not only during the short history of The Controllers, but to this day.