THE PANICS - EP and Comp Track - 1980-1981

   This may as well be the follow-up entry to THE JETSONS post from a couple of weeks ago. THE PANICS were also on the "Red Snerts" LP compilation that my friend Amy copied for me so many years ago. While their song "Drugs Are For Thugs" didn't hit me in the same visceral way that THE JETSONS did, it still stood out above a lot of the other songs on the comp.

Photos taken from THE PANICS website

  THE PANICS formed sometime in 1980 in Bloomington, IN when the members were all teenagers. One of them had gotten the SEX PISTOLS LP and it blew him away, so they started their own band. Between doing massive amounts of whippets, spitting up fake blood and destroying private property, they managed to play a few shows opening up for the ZERO BOYS and THE GIZMOS. They also drove up to West Lafayette to record their single with Dr Science from THE GIZMOS. They cranked out two originals, "I Wanna Kill My Mom" and "Best Band", as well as a GIZMOS cover, "Tie Me Up, Baby." "Best Band" is my favorite. They proclaim "We're the best band in Bloomington and we buy our drugs on the courthouse lawn!!" Every song of theirs is constantly on the verge of falling apart, but oozes the very essence of desperate, teenage, small-town punk rock. They also do some of the worst pick slides ever committed to vinyl.

   Ten or eleven years ago, someone (possibly Gulcher Records) released a PANICS LP retrospective that included these songs and many others. I got pretty excited about it, but after hearing it, my interest waned dramatically. It mostly featured live recordings of the band hammering out crappy SEX PISTOLS and 60's-rock covers, which bored me to tears. It might have been exciting as a teenager in the Midwest in 1980 to cover "Louie Louie" at a house party, but let's just leave it there to languish in its former glory, shall we?

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