PLASMATICS AXEMAN RICHIE STOTTS AND KING FLUX CELEBRATE THE REIGN OF THE INSANE
If you happened to be around the Cat Club in New York City anytime around the mid-1980s, chances are you remember King Flux, and with very good reason.
They were a fabulous band, of course. But they also felt like a personal secret, shared between the members of a dedicated audience, but unknown to anyone else.
No record labels were pushing them in all manner of directions, no management hassling them to write “a hit.” King Flux just got up and played their music, blew the crowd away, and that would be it until the next time they played. Frontman Richie Stotts describes them as “a mom and pop organization,” and he’s right.
“Following the devastation of losing my gig with the Plasmatics,” he explains, “it didn’t take long to feel a sense of freedom. There was no management anymore. No financing from a record label. And yet, it seemed so organic just creating music and relying on the assistance of friends who came together to get the word out. It was like a mini King Flux compound of people building sets, designing logos, postering the city and getting the word out without Instagram.”
And the Cat Club, a two level bar on E 13th, equipped with its very own cage dancers, was their home from home.
King Flux never made a record during their lifetime. Of course the band received offers from record labels - plenty of them, in fact. They turned them all down… or rather, as Richie puts it, he turned them down. “Mr. Smarty Pants Stotts didn’t think they were big enough,” he says with a possibly rueful laugh.
But they recorded a lot of material and now, a full 40 years on, Richie has cracked open the vault, for a forthcoming album of hard riffing rock’n’roll and, released today as a limited edition 7-inch single, alongside all digital platforms, a single of “Reign Of The Insane,” one of the key numbers in the band’s period live show.
“‘Reign Of The Insane’ was a lot of fun to write,” recalls Richie.. “I pulled lyrical inspiration from a bunch of different places, including Ronald Reagan’s famous over-use of the phrase ‘Back in the saddle again.’ For the rap section, I went straight to the headlines of the New York Post and worked some of that tabloid insanity into the lyrics.
“One line in particular was inspired by the headline: ‘Rock star’s wife beats murder rap.’
“That was a reference to Gail Collins Pappalardi, the wife of Mountain bassist Felix Pappalardi, who was charged with second-degree murder after shooting and killing Felix in 1983. She was ultimately acquitted. The shooting took place in the same building—Waterside Plaza—that my brother Wayne was living in at the time.
“You couldn’t make this stuff up. Whoa!”
