Bunnydrums – Win / Little Room

Bunnydrums – Win // Little Room (No Label) 1981. I’ve talked a lot in the past about the Philly Hardcore scene and it was quite impressive, however that wasn’t the only time that a large group of amazing bands from Philly didn’t get recognized. Flashback 3-4 years before hardcore and Philly had a great new wave scene made up of very diverse and unique bands like The Suburban Wives Club, The Stickmen, Resa and the Rooters, Bunnydrums, Crash Course in Science and the Executive Slacks. All of these bands with the possible exception of the Executive Slacks, who sounded more like Killing Joke, were mining the same vein as NYC at the same time and that may have been why the scene was overlooked. NYC’s complete dominance of the music scene in that region, at that time, may have made these bands appear to be “from the sticks” or some such thing. I can empathise with this phenomenon having grown up under the shadow of Chicago, in Saint Louis. Unsurprisingly, when you do a little digging and looking into the Philadelphia music scene, you find that some of these bands (like the Stickmen, for instance) could rival anything going on in the five boroughs to the north. Bunnydrums, formed in 1980 as a collaboration between three members of the Boneheads and one member of the Autistics, both part of Philadelphia’s punk rock scene in the late 1970s, were another such band. This is their first 7inch from 1981 and it’s some pretty cool new wave. The A-Side, Win is my favourite with its ominous synth line and choppy guitar playing but the B-Side ain’t no slouch either. Shoot, now I am going to have to go dig up some Stickmen….