Los Angeles proto post-punk band the Screamers existed from 1977 to 1981. Tomata Du Plenty, singer, had been a member of the Cockettes in the early ‘70's, as well as Seattle's Ze Whiz Kidz and NY's Slaves of Rhythm. Tommy Gear, the band's mastermind and music composer, played an ARP Odyssey Synthesiser. On drums was KK Barrett, who also founded and co-ran the seminal LA punk label Dangerhouse. It's been said that The Screamers suggest the missing link between the Stooges, Neu!, and Ennio Morricone, without sounding like any of them. There's the Stoogers' knife-edge/performance angle, the monotonous churn of Neu!, and the overall sense of all-encompassing layers of sound that Morricone has achieved with his best soundtracks. On the level of image, they were an exceedingly calculating band to whom mystique seemed as important as music. They performed rarely, perhaps ten shows during the course of their short life, and never released a single record. As a result, their legacy consists of a series of demos, bootleg live recordings, and a few videos. It would hard to say that they directly influenced the multitude of later bands who sound so much like them, but they certainly predicted the hardcore electro of artists like Fad Gadget, Atari Teenage Riot, Prodigy, and many others, and it's hard to believe the musical genre Electro Clash didn't in some way spring from their original invention.