MX-80 rolled into Rochester to play Scorgies on Thursday, October 30, 1980. They had just released their first album on Ralph Records entitled “Out Of The Tunnel” and they were touring the East Coast. Martin Edic, Peggi and I caught MX-80 at Max’s in NYC and some other place uptown before their appearance here. Each show was sensational.
Peggi and I were good friends with Rich Stim, lead singer and sax player (pictured on the left). Rich taught Peggi how to play play sax. The first song she learned under his tutelage was Hava Nagila. And the drummer, Dave Mahoney, was my best friend and roomate for years. Peggi and I were in a band called the Chinaboise with these two in Bloomington, Indiana. Bruce Anderson, second from left, could be the best guitar player in the world and Dale Sophiea is a monster bass player. Peggi and I left Bloomington for Rochester and MX-80 eventually moved to San Francisco.
We opened for them in Rochester and in Buffalo. They made the Hi-Techs sound like a toy band with their powerful anthems, “Follow That Car”, “I Walk Among Them” and especially “Someday You’ll Be King”. We were blown away by their performances. Unlike most of the Scorgies bands, MX-80 is still around. Check out their video of “We’re An American Band“.
Here’s an mp3 of “Someday You’ll Be King”
[audio:http://www.quadrupedmedia.com/downloads/mx80SomedayYoullBeKing.mp3]
Tags: Hi-Techs, MX-80 Sound, Scorgies
-
Those guys had a huge sound, totally original and the shows in NY were amazing. I think we saw them five times in one week and I wanted more. Agree about Bruce- he is a true original as a guitar player.
-
I remember shooting video of their show in the Archive back room. Is that still around anywhere?
-
I really liked their first EP.
The first LP…Not as much.
I also really liked their name. I ALSO thought it was cool that Peggy and Paul knew this band that was all the way from Bloomington, Ind. That was completely baffling to me at the time.
After that, on future records, they lost me. But I still have “Tidal Wave” on an old cassette tape mix that I put together probably 30 years ago and I still know all of the words.
The laughter at the end of the song…classic stuff.
-
I’m going through boxes of posters, Freetime Magazines, and pictures this morning and somehow, I came across a letter that I received from Bloomington, Indiana, with a postmark of January 11, 1978.
It’s a letter that I received from Rich Stim and it’s pretty comical.
I must have written MX-80 a letter (but I truly don’t recall doing so) and Rich wrote back…and included an ariticle about the band and review of the Hard Attack LP from “Sounds”, dated November 26, 1977.
One last funny note: I always knew that Paul & Peggy knew these guys….and in this letter they say, and I quote;
“Rochester is a cool town and we have friends in a punk group called New Math. maybe someday we can come up there and play but right now, nobody is shelling out big bucks for a tour.”
The band autographed a picture of Charlie’s Angels and included that in this envelope.
I’m still trying to figure out why, out of all of the bands in the world back then…I wrote MX-80 a letter.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: https://scorgies.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=591