I’ve just finished watching a DVD-R of legendary Indianapolis hardcore band, the Zero Boys, playing their 1984 reunion show at Comos’ Pizza. Man. What a kick-ass band, what a good show, and what a trip down memory lane for me. Many thanks to olde pal Karen O. for sending it to me.

The DVD is released by Rifleman Records (which I do believe is Bill Levin’s latest thing — Bill having been their original manager, among other endeavors), and distributed exclusively through Choke Inc. in Chicago. They can be reached at 1-773-539-5411. I think they have a site at choked.com but what’s there now is only a “coming soon” page, so I can’t be positive. Unfortunately, from what I can tell thus far, there is currently no way to buy the disk online, and not even a postal address on the thing. (How punk rock is that?) But if you live in or are (god help you) passing through Indianapolis, you can apparently buy a copy at Vibes Music.

The December 30, 1984 show was recorded on VHS (hey, it was 1984) with a single hand-held camera and an outboard room mic, which means the audio is actually pretty decent all things considered. (No, it’s not a board recording, which in this case would have totally sucked; that’s engineer-speak for “a mic that’s not built in to the camera”.)

The quality of the digitial transfer is so-so. Sure, this is basically a home-made deal, but still it’s a little disappointing. We’re already dealing with a sub-optimum master: 22-year-old VHS. Due to whatever reason or circumstance, the capture was encoded at a lower quality level than I would have liked. As a result, digital artifacts and “jaggies” are apparent in the blacks, and when the camera (or people) movement is particularly frantic they also become bothersome. It’s certainly still quite watchable, but considering this is the only surviving footage of the band, one would have hoped for a little better.

But the real mega-bummer of the DVD is that the audio cuts out for the first five songs of the several encores, dying in smack the middle of their rendition of The Stooges’ “No Fun.” Evidently the outboard mic came unplugged. Damn drunk punks. If you crank your volume, you can hear the faintest of ghost audio and eventually the full audio kicks back in. Fortunately for me, I still have my analog cassette bootleg of the show, including the tracks inaudible on the DVD, so I can, well, punk rock it by playing the cassette along with the DVD.

(For anyone out there who might be wondering, the missing songs are: “No Fun”, “Livin’ in the ’80s”, “Slam and Worm”, “Down the Drain”, and “New Generation”.)

The paper insert that comes with the DVD gets almost every fact wrong, which is both hilarious and sad. It’s 1984 and “The Zero Boys have just returned from touring [to support the] VICIOUS CIRCLE album.” Wrong: that tour had happened a full two years prior. “They just finish[ed] writing [the] HISTORY OF… [cassette].” Wrong: History of… was a posthumous compilation of previously recorded songs, though a couple-few had not been released before. Nothing new was written or recorded for that release. “This was their HOMECOMING SHOW.” Wow, totally wrong: they broke up in 1982; this was their first reunion as a band, two years later. It was a kind of homecoming, I suppose, but it had nothing to do with any tour. I just hope the errors were a honest result of the fogging effect of time, and not some lame marketing ploy to avoid the term “reunion show” or something.

All of that said, I give this release a Shecky rating of 4 Bottles of Ricky’s Wild Irish Rose. (That means it’s good.) The band are in top form, totally tight, and furthermore this is the only surviving footage of the original line up.

It’s also an even rarer artifact in that it documents the scene that lasted less than a year at a place called Cosmo’s Pizza, on the northwest side of Indianapolis. The owner was some NY transplant jag-off named Jeff (I forget his last name). I do believe Cosmo’s may have introduced Buffalo chicken wings to the Circle Shitty. Now, 99.9 percent of the employees (including me) were punks — probably mostly because we could be had (and abused) for real cheap. Cosmo’s was probably the only place in all of Indiana with more than two employees that would let you wear torn punk t-shirts and spiked wristbands and sport a mohawk on the job. Even the delivery guys (like me) were allowed to wear our punk rock on our metaphoric sleeves. (No self-respecting punk actually had sleeves, but you know what I mean.)

One of those employees was “Starvin’” Marvin Goldstein, and thanks to him Cosmo’s began to host punk shows on the weekends. In mid-’80s Indiana, this was no small thing. Whole years could go by with no steady venue for punk shows. House parties were regularly busted and shut down by the cops. A venue (such as the Indianapolis Arts Academy) might crop up and have shows for a few months, and then vanish. Being over 21 was no solution — convincing the bars to book any band that didn’t play covers, let alone punk or hardcore, was like taking the mountain to Mohammed one spoonful at a time.

Almost everyone working at Cosmo’s was a member of a band or involved in the Indy scene somehow: I was in Tha Paranoidz, Rapper was in The Primates and had been in The Slammies, Bam Bam was the drummer for Dandelion Abortion, Marvin was a promoter from the early days, and I know there were others (sorry y’all, my memory fails me after all this time).

As a result, for a little less than a year Cosmo’s “Punk Rock” Pizza was the Hoosier Mecca for punk shows. The Zero Boys reunion show documented on this DVD was, without question, the crowning moment of the time. (Ultimately, the original Cosmo’s ran into all sorts of trouble. One day I showed up for work only to discover the place had been padlocked by the IRS. It later re-opened, and had a few more troubles along the way. In the end Rapper bought the business and re-opened it, even managing to open a couple branch stores after a while. The punk shows, however, were long gone.)

The Zero Boys were and remain the punk band from Indiana. (Personally, I still think they were also one of the very best original hardcore bands, period. I may be biased, but no less than Jack Rabid hisself puts them on the same level as Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Bad Religion, and even the mighty Dead Kennedys.) The original members first met in 1979, forming the band in the summer of 1980. In September 1980, they released the so-so Livin’ in the Eighties 7-inch EP. A single cut, an early version of “New Generation,” appeared on the 1981 Gulcher Records compilation, Red Snerts.

Original bassist John Mitchel was replaced by Tufty “My English Accent is Totally Fake” Clough in June, 1981. That August, in a single four-hour session recorded live in the studio followed by a single mixing session, they completed the seminal Vicious Circle LP, which was ultimately released in early 1982. (Fyi, Vicious Circle has just been reissued on limited-edition vinyl. You can also purchase MP3s of the album at eMusic.com.) The difference between Livin’ in the Eighties and Vicious Circle is astonishing. While the EP is lo-fi and, frankly, rather plodding, Vicious Circle is well-produced, manic, ultra-tight and head-and-shoulders above most of the hardcore releases that proliferated at the time.

Around that time (1982), lead singer Paul Mahern formed Affirmation Records and released a great and locally-influential compilation of midwestern punk bands, The Master Tape, which featured three Zero Boys classics.

In the midst of all this, the Zero Boys did two tours to support Vicious Circle. A brief east coast tour included dates in Boston and NYC. A later west coast tour that same year — described by Paul in a contemporaneous interview published in Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll as “a total unorganized fiasco” — led to the break up of the band. Despite their undead status, in 1983 additional tracks appeared on the double-LP compilation The Master Tape, Vol. II (scroll down for full track listings) and, according to the previously cited interview, there were plans for a second LP to be titled Payback is Hell. Nothing ever came of that LP (though reportedly some recording was done). 1984 saw the final Zero Boys release, the History Of… cassette — a compilation of previously released and a few unreleased recordings made by the band when they were still together.

Following the 1982 west coast tour, bassist Tufty Clough joined Toxic Reasons, which then went on to greater punk rock glory and numerous vinyl releases. Lead singer Paul Mahern went on to form the garage-psychedelia influenced Dandelion Abortion (releasing a cassette and an EP) and then, in the late ’80s, The Datura Seeds (which released an EP, an LP, and I think a single or two). Ultimately, Paul pretty much stopped playing live (except for the occasional Zero Boys reunion and possibly other side projects I’m unaware of, having left Indiana in 1984), moved to Bloomington, IN, and devoted his attention to being a recording engineer and raising his son, Paisley. He has since resurrected the old Affirmation Records label, motivated in large part by the musical efforts of his nephew and his band, John Wilkes Booze. Guitarist Terry Howe went on to join Toxic Reasons circa 1986. Eventually (in no particular order) he married, relocated to Florida, and became the father of twin sons. Sadly, he died of a heroin overdose in 2001. A very tragic loss. Drummer Mark Custinger has remained active in the Indianpolis music scene lo these many years, participating in more bands than my Google fingers can keep up with. From what I can tell, though, he is widely — and quite correctly — regarded as one of the best drummers around.

Around 1988 or so, Terry Howe was replaced by (talented) young pup, Vess Ruhtenberg — who was still in junior high when Vicious Circle first came out. Over the years this new line up has played the occasional rare reunion show, and even recorded two albums of new material (which I confess I’ve never heard): Make It Stop (Bitzcore [Germany], 1991) and The Heimlich Maneuver (Skyclad, 1993). Fwiw, Jack Rabid describes these records as being “more metallic-shaded.”

In 1991, Selfless Records released a limited edition bubblegum-colored split 7-inch EP with Toxic Reasons on one side (“No Pity” and “White Noise”) and the new-line-up Zero Boys on the other (with new versions of “Black Network News” and “Blood’s Good”).