IT NEVER ENDS #10
REACTORS ~ Meltdown EP (Nuclear Waste 1979)
Additional sources: DRR, band members
Sensing the Social Distortion
installment of INE failed to satisfy y'all's insatiable appetite for radioactivity,
I decided further exposure was in order. While
Three Mile Island
may not have delivered on its promise of cheap and easy energy, it sure did wonders
for punks with writer's block. Bands calling themselves The Reactors sprung up like
bums on a New York City sidewalk, like fistfights at a Texas shitkicker bar, like
boredom across the Oklahoma plains. Two thousand five hundred miles away from TMI-2's
core, some fallout settled on the Inland Empire and San Bernardino, too, got its
own Reactors.
While the 5-song EP has long been scarce, the appearance
of "L.A. Sleaze" on 1995's Killed By Death #8½ kicked collector war
games into high gear. The record went from seldom seen to virtually vaporized. Luckily,
I'd scratched this one off the want list early on and didn't have to face the same
heat as my other collecting brethren ... or so I thought.
Band name, song titles, label moniker... radiation sickness indeed!
It wasn't until this summer that I learned my Geiger counter was way off. On
a brief stop in Portland, Dr. Abraham King blasted me with a debilitating gamma
ray in the form of a rare Reactors picture sleeve variation. While the front of
the sleeve was identical, the back had a "cityscape" motif instead of a radiation
symbol. Moreover, according to Abe, the "cityscape" sleeve was FIRST. I departed
green with my hulkish new burden: find the cityscape sleeve.
A few months later, my nuclear winter thawed thanks to a replacement guitarist.
Stored among his records was an expendable Reactors EP complete with the cityscape
sleeve. "As for the 2 covers, if I remember correctly what Mike the bassist told me,
I think Rob the drummer did one and Dash the singer did one and they printed both
up and when one ran out they used the other one. The cover you got was the first
one."
And so with the missing Reactors sleeve variation now settled among the stacks so
concludes another installment of It Never Ends. Or does it?
— Ryan Richardson
October 4, 2005
