Music Style Funky Rock and Punk

Musical Influences Funk, Rock, Punk:

Group Members Ryan Payntor – Guitar and VocalsMichael “Joe” Terry – Lead VocalsChris Cole – Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Sequencers, Drum MachineRob Ruman – Drums and VocalsEric Heinbuch – Bass and VocalsKevin Chaney – Bass and Vocals

Instruments Guitar, Bass, Drums, PC

Albums Dead Opus Project: Napalm Children "Live"

Press Reviews Before there was grunge, there was smenge.When the topics of Akron, Ohio and popular music are mentioned in the same breath, the trinity of Devo, Chrissie Hynde, and the DOP are mentioned without fail. Mark Mothersbaugh has gone on to make music for The Simpsons; the Pretenders have done an "MTV Unplugged" set and put out a greatest hits record or two; the DOP, however, remain at the fringe of the average pop fan's musical knowledge. Theirs is a name that's tossed around, like Rimbaud's or Lenny Bruce's or Big Star's, as being so influential on everything that followed—but has anyone actually read Rimbaud, seen Lenny perform, or bought any of Big Star's music?The DOP has always been a critic's darling of a band, partly as a result of their work ethic and creative output, but also as a result of their lack of commercial success. When "Napalm Children" started creeping up the Billboard Hot 100 in the Spring of 1986, the band was briefly in danger of losing their credibility with rock's cognoscenti. Imagine Casey Casem announcing a DOP cut in between, say, power ballads by Brian Adams and Journey! Luckily for the band, the song peaked at #71 before dropping off the charts. Their reputation was saved.And what a reputation. Chris Cole's solos careen from sounding like slack-key Hawaiian guitar mastery to the noise your tape deck makes when you hit the "scan" button. Eric Heinbuch's bitch-slapping bass riffs would later be a major influence on the Red Hot Chili Pepper's Flea. Rob Ruman's machine-gun fills and syncopated backbeat is the glue that holds it all together—and the lads were sniffing plenty of that. (Their chemical intake is even now regarded as legendary in punk circles. Between that and management more interested in lining their pocketbooks than lining up gigs for the band, the DOP never made it financially.)What of the vocalists? Ah, there's the rub. Like Black Flag and Van Halen, the DOP managed to swap in and out of them without much dissent from their fans. Ryan Payntor's snotty delivery may have owed a tip of the hat to Johnny Rotten ten years previous, but not as much as bands like Offspring and Rancid owe Payntor now. And none of them come close to Payntor lyrically; there may never be another punk couplet as dead-on as the one rhyming "emporium" with "DeLorean" (in "Meat Emporium"). Michael Terry, widely given credit for penning the Vietnam horror story of "Napalm Children", was no slouch himself as a writer.But in the end, it was the coming to blows of the two de facto leaders that divided the band. A dictionary definition of Creative Differences. Terry believed the success of "Napalm" gave him a leg up—and the right to take the band to the next level. "Critics always like to pigeonhole everybody, put you in a certain place in their heads so they can get to you," he noted in his autobiography. "They don't like a lot of changing because that makes them have to work to understand what you're doing. A lot of critics started putting me down because they didn't understand what I was doing. But critics never did mean much to me, so I just kept on doing what I had been doing, trying to grow as a musician." As part of the DOP Mach II, Terry had hired a sitar player and began experimenting with a theremin before the group imploded. (Tapes of these sessions have never materialized, though rumors of them still abound.)The old guard (Payntor), meanwhile, had other, seemingly glue-deluded plans for the band. "I don't care who buys the records as long as they get to the black people so I will be remembered when I die," Payntor told Britain's Melody Maker at the time. "I'm not playing for any white people, man. I wanna hear a black guy say, 'Yeah, I dig the DOP.'"Unfortunately, few people, black or white, ever dug the DOP. But perhaps this record will change that. Like Dylan's recently released "Royal Albert Hall" concert, this classic set was traded around in bootleg form for years before getting an official remastering from the original source tapes. Listeners accustomed to the low quality sound of the bootlegs may be surprised by what technology can do.Mike PorterChicagoMarch, 1999

Location Tuscaloosa, Alabama - USA

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