Tru Fax & The Insaniacs

by: hhex65

Fri Aug 01, 2008 at 13:13:44 PM MST

With a sound somewhat akin to Pylon or The Waitresses, TFATI were a fixture at the 9:30 Club in DC which had a big pole right in front of the middle of its small stage. The club's interior was painted black, perhaps in tribute to how someone imagined Berlin was like. The band played mostly in DC but ventured out reluctantly to NYC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. Like most DC bands of the time they seemed content to indulge in regional comforts. This was a hallmark of the New Wave Counter-Reformation and produced many desirable results in cities where pop music was seen as an acceptable outlet for stray or excess energy rather than some sort of serious endeavor, either in the political or financial sense. Many DC bands followed this pattern, some by choice and others due to ignorance about the general structure of the music business or due to personal miscalculations such as drug addiction or lack of a vehicle.

Tru Fax and the Insaniacs got some local airplay with their great song Washingtron. It captured perfectly one very large side of the archetypal DC lifestyle, a side oft disguised by numerous occasion to irony or downright lying-- and, indeed, this uneasy balance between satisfaction and emptiness can be a source of mild self-recrimination for many a DC resident to this day:

"Washingtonian Magazine" named Tru Fax and the Insaniacs the worst band of 1980 without ever having heard them. Washingtonians thus became informed about the band and could then comment knowledgeably upon them.

Tru Fax and the Insaniacs were one of six bands picked to play concerts to close the original location of the 9:30 Club (actually, I think they used to call it "club 9:30"...) and 4 songs are featured on the 1996 CD commemorating  that event. They definitely deserved the honor.

In the 80s, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs released a vinyl 7-inch and a vinyl 12-inch record on the WASP label.