The Gamma Men

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The Gamma Men
This article was originally written as a promotional piece for the Gamma Men CD 440 in the winter of 1996. The Gamma Men split up in May of 1996.

Tom Gallego............................................Darrin Berlin

Coming from San Diego, The Gamma Men started in the spring of 1991. The band was more or less founded by Steve Gardner, who is probably best known as the editor of the fanzine Noise For Heroes, a magazine that ran from the early 80s until 1992 and covered punk, garage and power pop bands from around the world. Steve had previously played drums in the band Feeding Frenzy, which included a couple friends he worked with and his ex-wife on bass. Feeding Frenzy played a lot of punk rock standards as well as a whole batch of covers of late 80s Australian and European bands, and a fair number of their own songs. The band split up when Steve and his wife got divorced. After that, he tried out for a few bands but quickly decided that if he was going to be in a band that he was really going to like, he had better try to organize it himself rather than join something already going.

So he ran an ad in a local paper, and soon got a response from Tom Gallego. Tom had been singing and playing bass in a new wave pop group called Emotional Front. Says Steve: "We had played on bills with them when I was in Feeding Frenzy, and frankly, I hated them. I only consented to try a practice with Tom because he convinced me that he also hated what Emotional Front were doing and wanted to play something harder and faster. I played him a CD with the Exploding White Mice's "Let's Do The Crunch" and told him that's what I wanted to sound like. He was totally into it, so we started trying to fill out the band."

The goal of the Gamma Men from the start has been to make punk rock music that blends the approaches of the late 1970's generation of British and American groups like the Buzzcocks, Ramones, Damned, Clash or Pistols and the mid to late 1980's Australian underground bands like the Celibate Rifles, Happy Hate Me Nots, or Exploding White Mice. Says Steve: "The things I always look for in a song are melody, energy, hooks, and good lyrics that say something and say it in a way that makes good use of language. I'm not into raw screaming hardcore, but I haven't got anything against screaming in a song when it's appropriate for the lyrics. That's one thing I liked about Tom's singing from the start...he has a good knack for that. I guess we tend to mix different lyric styles more than other bands, which may not be good...I think about bands like the Clash and how I really didn't like it when they started doing songs like "Rock The Casbah"...I always wanted them to do political songs. But here we are, and we do some songs that are very overtly political, some that are about relationships, and some that are just plain stupid fun songs. It feels unnatural to me to try to write songs that are all in the same vein...I don't spend the whole day thinking about just one thing, and the songs I write (I can't speak for the others) are a reflection of whatever happens to be significant to me at a given time. It probably makes it harder for people to get into us, since there are some people who hate political songs and don't want any of them, and then the people who like political songs tend to want nothing else."

After a few more months Tom and Steve found Jim Grind to play guitar and Don Simmons to play bass and began playing gigs and writing material. They called the band The Gamma Men after a song called "Invasion of the Gamma Men" by the Scottish new wave band Shake (they included three former members of the great Rezillos). Within 6 months the band had quite a pile of originals and went to a small and cheap studio to record a demo tape to use to get gigs. The tape was called Warp Speed (although it's the slowest thing they've ever done), and a single of "Dark Surf" and "Vegetables Is Murder" was released from it on Screaming Skull records, which was a label run by the guy who used to do Skyclad Records. "Vegetables" was a song Steve originally wrote for Feeding Frenzy which nobody in that band liked, and "Dark Surf" was a new one. A third song from Warp Speed written by Tom and called "Blinding Love" was released on the Brain Blo compilation by Casting Couch Records.

After this the group went into a long period of personnel difficulties. Don Simmons quit, and they got a new bass player named Alan who was really good, but Jim hated him and the two nearly came to blows at times. Eventually Jim was asked to leave and the band found another guy named Bob Lamar to play guitar, but then Alan moved to LA. At this point, Bob wasn't working out so well either and Tom and Steve nearly gave up altogether. They then went nearly nine months looking for another bassist and guitar player, and finally found Darrin Berlin and Dave Elizondo.

Dave Elizondo.............................................Steve Gardner

At this point, they had been working on material for over two years and had quite a backlog of songs. As soon as they got sharp playing the set they began to record it all for the CD that became Driving Music. "In retrospect", says Steve, "we'd have done better choosing fewer songs for the CD and spending a little more time on them...as it is, we had to rush to get in under budget (it cost less than $3,000 to record the whole thing as it was, and there's 21 songs!), and to us in the band some of the songs aren't as sharp as they could have been. Yet the response we got for it has been great, and it's the best selling NKVD CD to date, something that always amazes me because I am personally in awe of other bands on the label such as Hitmen 3, Jalla Jalla or the Exploding White Mice."

Originally, Driving Music was intended to be called Kill Your Television, but between the recording and the release, the British band Ned's Atomic Dustbin released a record of that name, so the CD was retitled. A hundred promo cassettes of the CD with the original name were made to send to reviewers and to labels, however. The cassette includes a slightly different version of "Hypocrisy" that has different backing vocals, but it's otherwise the same music.

Driving Music includes re-recorded (and much better) versions of all the songs on Warp Speed that were written by either Tom or Steve, and also includes covers of "Let's Do The Crunch", the Buzzcock's "Harmony In My Head", and the Stooges "Search and Destroy". The re-recorded version of "Blinding Love" was released as a single with two other tracks by Japan's 1+2 Records. There's also 18 originals. "Some of the reviews we got called us a surf-punk band", says Steve, "and I guess is an easy thing to say because there are some songs with that kind of feel, like "Dark Surf" or "The Theme From The Exxon Valdez". But we don't think of ourselves as really having anything to do with surf music at all...no more than you'd call Radio Birdman a surf band because they did "Aloha Steve And Danno" or "Descent Into The Maelstrom". I listened to the Beach Boys and Ventures when I was a kid, but the only surf music I really like is when punk bands do covers of it, like when either Johnny Thunders or the Exploding White Mice did "Pipeline"...it should be obvious that "Exxon" is a total ripoff of the idea of "Pipeline" right down to the title of the song. And "Dark Surf" is definitely inspired by "Descent Into The Maelstrom". I don't really have much interest in these Estrus-type bands that are trying to recreate that 60s garagey surf feel...I'd rather listen to songs that mix elements of surf music with punk rock. And it's the punk feel that's most important...we can do without the surf if needed, but take away punk and there's not much left to our band. But there's 21 songs on the CD and only those two are overtly surf sounding. Then again the new CD will have two that will bring that out again."

After the release of Driving Music, the Gamma Men continued to play around San Diego, but the response they have gotten has never been good. "People seem to like us when they see us", says Steve, "but they don't come back to see us again and we never have been much of a draw. None of us in the band are much interested in the marketing and business aspects of a band...we just like writing songs, recording them, and playing them live. We were told by one indie record label head that he liked us but wouldn't sign us because he was afraid that we were just a "hobby band", and I guess that would sum it up for us...none of us really view this as a potential career or anything, and we don't have any ambition to "make it". So if we can get a deal to put out each CD we record that comes close to paying the recording costs and gives us a hundred CDs that we can sell and give away as promos or to friends, that's great for us. If people out there hear about us and track the stuff down, that's even better, but we don't regard it as a measure of the band's success. We figure we succeed if we like what we record, and so far, we do."

At the same time that Driving Music came out, the Japanese label 1+2 Records released 3 songs from it as a single; "Blinding Music", "Four Year Itch" and "World Gone Mad". After Driving Music, the band wrote a new batch of songs over the course of the next year which they recorded the next summer for their second CD, Less Is More. This one came out on Japan's 1+2 Records and clocks in at about 33 minutes with only 12 songs. Because the CD was so much shorter it was much easier for the band to focus on making each song as sharp and punchy as possible, and the attack on Less Is More is much more consistent than on Driving Music. 1+2 has an arrangement with Get Hip in the US by which Get Hip actually handles pressing the CDs and distributed them everywhere in the world except Japan, where 1+2 handles things. "In some ways it worked out really good for us, but we could have done some things better", says Steve. "On Driving Music we spent $3500 on recording and artwork and another $3000 to get 1000 CDs made, and there's no way we will ever make the money back unless the thing suddenly becomes wildly popular and we do a second pressing. For Less Is More we spent about $2200 on recording and artwork, and Kunio of 1+2 paid us up front $2000, so we're only down $200 on the deal. But I am convinced that none of us in the band know anything about artwork...we put a lot of effort into the sleeve for Less Is More...even had a real graphic designer do it, and everyone tells us it's terrible. Kunio says that Less Is More is selling poorly and he thinks the artwork is at least partly to blame. On Driving Music I just pulled a photo I took when I was in Australia and did the rest on my PC and we got a lot less shit for that. So this time I think we'll let the label do it, although I'm a little worried about how it'll come out still since I don't care much for the artwork that goes with a lot of indie bands these days."

After Less Is More Darrin decided to quit to join a band called the Evil Eyes, which included Jay, Mike and John from the Hoods, an excellent San Diego band with whom the Gamma Men had played frequently (check out their Gangsters and Morticians lp on Midnight). The Evil Eyes were intent on touring and really trying to make a major splash for themselves, which is quite different from what Tom and Steve had in mind. "Darrin wanted to take a go at a more serious band", says Steve, "so he went for it and I can't blame him. He certainly has the ability to do it. It really hurt us losing him, but at the time the move made a lot of sense. Now the Evil Eyes have split up and Darrin's not really doing that much, so maybe he would've been better staying, but you have to take chances if you want to get anywhere in music, and when you take chances, sometimes things don't work out. But he's a talented guy and he'll end up doing something good, I'm sure."

The last gig in which Darrin played the band rehearsed all the material they had ever done and played a marathon two hour set which was recorded on a four track recorder with the idea of making a limited edition CD of it. Unfortunately, the PA was terrible and so were the band since Dave had just split up with his girlfriend that afternoon and Darrin was a little drunk in anticipation of his debut with the Evil Eyes, who were headlining that night. As a result, there was only about an hour's worth of material that the band could stand to listen to. Rather than making a CD for public consumption out of it, they went to a place that makes single demo CDs, and got 6 of them made. "It's called Invasion of the Gamma Men, and each member of the band got one, and the other two were given to good friends. It's really pretty good in retrospect", says Steve, "but we were pretty unhappy that it didn't come out better at the time. Maybe someday we'll release some of it on single B sides or something."

After Darrin left it took 6 months to find another guitar player. The guy they settled on is named Gary Meyer, and he's really been a great addition. Gary's style of playing has a little more of a Chuck Berry meets Steve Jones and plays Cheap Trick kind of feel. With him they wrote a whole new set of songs and this fall recorded their third CD, called 440, released once again on NKVD Records. The new CD has 15 tracks, the only cover being the Nomad's "Surfin' In The Bars" (unless you want to count a song Steve wrote for Feeding Frenzy called "Vinyl Fever" as a cover...you can hear the original of that on the NKVD cassette "The Fish Rots From The Head".) The artwork was designed by Steve; no expensive treatment but just a publicity shot of a car chase scene from a Steve McQueen movie.

the "440" lineup..........................................Gary Meyer

A few weeks back the Gamma Men played in a local club with Dead Girlfriend, a "for fun" band that features Darrin Berlin and Dave Elizondo with a friend of theirs named Brian singing and a drummer who also plays in San Diego's Diablo 44. Dead Girlfriend play all the Gamma Men songs that Darrin wrote, as well as a batch of covers like the Lime Spiders' "Slave Girl" and Sonics "He's Waiting". Their drummer didn't show up, so Steve sat in and played in his place. "That turned out to be a really fun night for everybody...one of the best shows we've done in some time", says Steve. "But it's a lot less nerve racking to play songs I've played before. I knew all the covers they did from listening to records, but it's a different thing having listened to a song and having played it. And then they did a couple of originals that I'd only heard them do once before in another show."

So that brings us to today...the Gamma Men are taking a break right now until after Christmas, and then they expect to get back into gigging and practicing. They've been using the time off to write more new material...their approach tends to be to write a batch of songs, play them for a year, record them, and then stop doing them while they work on more new stuff. "None of this playing "My Generation" when we're 50 for us", says Steve. "The only bad thing about the way we go at things is that usually by the time we get a CD out we've forgotten how to play all the songs on it, and we'll play a gig and hold up the CDs and go: You can buy these from us after the show...we didn't play any of this stuff tonight, but trust us, it's good!"