Action Toys

The Action Toys were an admittedly minor part of the Austin, Texas punk scene back in mid 1979 and 1980. They played the haunts of the day; Raul's, Duke's Royal Coach Inn, The Continental Club, and some places of far less repute. We even made a jaunt to Houston to play the legendary old Rock Island. Back then, the Action Toys seemed to enjoy themselves more than they were enjoyed, which might have had something to do with our own incompetence. Our transition from practice to stage was, to be kind to our youthful selves, rough. We definitely had our moments of sonic glory, but there were all those other moments to live down. None of us had the money at that time to do any studio work, and so our entire recorded output was stored on cassette tapes, mostly recorded on early boom boxes. We each went our separate ways, and the rhythm section evolved into Secret Science. The individual members of the Action Toys stayed somewhat upright and functioning and lived good lives, holding real jobs in which you had to wear something other than ripped up t-shirts, raising families. But they shared a common burden, a little itch, an inner twitch. You see that nasty funk from their inner punk just would not vacate the premises. You can take the kid out of the punk band, but you can't take the punk out of the kid.One day, serendipity brought a couple of members together, and an astonishing revelation jolted the universe. The tapes still existed. The songs could be resurrected. Mother Earth, after so much suffering, had been offered a chance to heal herself.So these XPunks, well they had to scratch that itch and embrace that funk from their primal punk. The songs sang to be sung. The guitars cried to be restrung. Sweet harmony was well on its way to being restored.And so four of the five original action toys spent 96 hours near Corpus Christi, Texas, in Port Aransas at the 3rd Coast Studios, recording most of the original songs they'd written in their youth after 28 years of not playing together, most of which was spent not playing at all. Seventeen songs in 4 days, but such labor and toil was of no import to these fellows. Onward they roared for 4 days and nights, giving nary a thought to being pretty, packaged or processed. Nah, they just did it like they used to do it. And it felt real good...