While HiFi was still togehter in February, 1980, Mike Bryan stopped by my apartment and wanted to know if I wanted to get a band together. I was a little hesitant at first because HiFi was still going strong and starting a new band would surely cut off my only source of revenue for awhile. (I had made a vow not to get another "regular job" at this point - I wanted to just play music.) On the other hand, I was getting tired of HiFi and the top 40/lounge band scene big time. It took Mike a few more visits to convince me to quit Hifi and take the plunge into a new direction, but it really wasn't that hard of a decision to make. Jeff was just as ready as I was to get out of that band.

I'd known Mike from his old days in Canterfield Canoe and I remembered him as a bass player in that band. Since then he had taken up guitar and when we practiced for the first time I was blown away at his playing. This guy was, and still is, the best guitar player I've ever played with. I'd even go so far as to say he is a genius at the instrument.

Mike, Jeff and I sounded great together and after our first practice in the old basement studio, we knew we had a winning combination. We promptly went down to Frank And Steins, had a celebratory beer and started thinking of a name for this new band. The Retros became the winning name because it sounded neat and it seemed to fit the vibes.

We started working up cover songs at first, and examples of these tunes are: The Police's Roxanne amd Message In a Bottle, Burt Bacharach's (!) Little Red Book, The Swinging Blue Jeans' Hippy Hippy Shake, Elvis Costello's Peace, Love and Understanding, Nick Lowe's Cruel To Be Kind, and the Stone's Mona. An interesting combination to be sure but it gives one an idea of where our heads were at. New Wave had just made the scene and there were a lot of great artists that influenced our sound, the Police probably being the greatest since they were also three piece.

Eventually we started working up originals and recording them on the Teac. For the record, we recorded a total of 33 original songs in our brief history of 9 months! These songs are all available on the Retros site at MP3.com.

Because there is so much more to say about this prolific band than there is room for here, you can visit The Retros Official Web Page to hear the whole story (and download a bunch of freebies.) You can hear most of our songs (for free) or buy our CDs here.

1980

THE RETROS 

(left to right) S.W, Jeff Porter, Mike Bryan