The influential Milwaukee psychedelic band Plasticland will be inducted into the WAMI Hall of Fame Sunday, April 19 at the Turner Hall Ballroom 35 years after their formation. Glenn Rehse (keyboards/vocals) and John Frankovic (bass/vocals) had previously played together in Arousing Polaris before forming Plasticland, a project that refracted their love of psychedelic acts and expanded on rhythm and blues sounds.
Along with guitarist Dan Mullen and drummers Victor Demechei, Bob DuBlon and Rob McCuen, the band developed a sound that was out of time, and garnered praise in the underground press across the United States as well as Europe.
A series of albums followed which traced the evolution of primary songwriters Rehse and Frankovic. The records also showed the band had learned to make use of the recording studio as another color in their sonic palette.
“I like to think that we took the music from that brief psychedelic era in the ’60s as a starting point to create something new for the ’80s and beyond,” Mullen said. “Plasticland was really a do-it-yourself project. There wasn’t much of a neo-psychedelic audience when we started, but that didn’t stop us.”
Mullen recalls the days before MTV and the Internet made obscure pop culture available at the push of a button. “
In the beginning, we would often play to crowds who were hostile to what we were,” he says. “We would occasionally play before crowds firmly stuck in the 1970s that did not want to hear anything ‘new wave’ or ‘punk rock.’ America was a very reactionary place in the early 1980s. But we went over real well at CBGB. It was hit or miss.”
Live, the band’s feral energy was blended with a bit of humor. When firing on all cylinders, there was no questioning their musical authority. According to McCuen, “Most nights when we played live, regardless of how we were or were not getting along at the time, I would look up from behind my kit and think, ‘Right here, right now, we are the best live band in the world,’ and you know something? We were.”
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Conceived as an entire package, the band created a distinct visual aesthetic. Live shows were multi-media events. Rehse refers to the band as an ever-changing experience. “The music was meant to appeal to hardcore fans of a genre,” he says. “Because we had a diverse sound it attracted different people for different reasons.”
Just a glance at the artwork and photos from the band’s old records highlights how different they were. Most bands at the time weren’t playing Mellotrons and sitars, and fewer yet were wearing Carnaby Street-inspired clothes.
“In addition to the music, a lot of time was spent on the look and imagery of the band,” Mullen said. “We scoured resale stores looking for vintage clothes and if we couldn’t find what we wanted, we’d have someone make it for us. I spent many hours printing photos from all the photo shoots we did. We did most of the artwork on our albums.”
“I listened to the psychedelia of the ’60s and ’70s, and it had its own aesthetic,” DuBlon says. “Plasticland took from the aesthetic to form its own version of the genre.”
According to Rehse, several Plasticland reissues are in the works, along with new and unreleased material.
