The Beakers – Red Towel

The Beakers – Red Towel // Football Season is in Full Swing (Mr. Brown Records & Tapes) 1980. Wow, all that hardcore put me in a skronky mood and you just can’t get much more skronkorific than this excellent band from the Pacific Northwest. Seattle’s Beakers, made up of George Romansic (drums), Mark H. Smith (guitar, vocals), Jim Anderson (sax, vocals) and Frankie Sundsten (bass), existed between January 1980 and January 1981, a very short time in the grand scheme of things. The Red Towel 7inch (and one track on a local comp) represents the only formally released material by them which makes sense considering how short a time they were actually together. Red Towel sounds like a Gang of Four outtake from Entertainment, except for that dang sax which really adds a whole level of downtown brilliance to the piece. The B-Side entitled Football Season is in Full Swing ain’t no slouch either, what with its rollicking sing-a-long chorus, loping bass riff and wailing sax. Again, Gang of Four comes to mind but then so do some of the downtown NYC bands like The Bush Tetras. And that was it for the Beakers, a band destined for the outer limits of LDoMoE obscurity until 2004 that is, when K Records in all of their infinite wisdom decided to release the 7inch along with fifteen other tracks on the Four Steps Toward a Cultural Revolution CD, which you can currently get for a steal at Amazon.