Hoosier Hysteria by Dow Jones & The Industrials / The Gizmos

First time ever on cassette, the rare 1980 split Hoosier Hysteria album with The Gizmos and Dow Jones & The Industrials!! The tape includes the non-LP Gizmos track "Johnny Got A Gun," and both bands' cuts from the 1981 Red Snerts comp are Bandcamp bonuses.

Hoosier Hysteria first arrived at record shops in 1980 on Gulcher Records, becoming the first punk LP release in Central Indiana.

Gulcher issued the first Gizmos EP in 1976, predating the first Ramones album. They were also early in the DIY movement, which would ultimately swerve around the obstacles of major labels and provide an ecosystem of sorts for the underclass of independent imprints.

Gulcher owner Bob Richert, a Bloomington record store proprietor and zine publisher, saw something special there, a strange hybrid of Indiana University music school prodigies, artsy IU students, and local talent that combined to produce an array of off-center music. The Gizmos were his opening salvo; a loose aggregation of disaffected teens inspired by the Dictators, MC5, the Stooges, and Creem magazine, who combined to create an unpretentious, exuberant bunch of tunes.

Three EPs later, the Gizmos were a completely different band. Subsequently, the Hoosier Hysteria lineup, featuring Dale Lawrence, Tim Carroll, Billy Nightshade, and Dave "Shadow" Myers added power pop refinement, and frequent live performances grew their fan base across Central Indiana, stretching from Indianapolis to Bloomington.

In West Lafayette, there was really no punk scene. When four Purdue University students formed Dow Jones & The Industrials, they had to make their own venues and found themselves at house, frat, and sorority parties, with a spirited, weird mixture of punk riffs, electronic experimentation, and tight, catchy and sometimes goofy songs. Their visibility was enhanced by the election of bassist Chris "Dow" Clark as Purdue's student body president. The Dow Jones candidacy originated at a 1979 Christmas house party (Gizmos Go To Purdue Live 1979, Gulcher 436) as a marketing gambit for the Hoosier Hysteria LP release. Some incoming Purdue freshmen were initiated into campus life by the Purdue Student Government’s outdoor punk music festival, "Fascist First Nighter," which few would have anticipated. This was a play on the traditional Purdue "Freshman First Nighter" event, which suffered a precipitous drop in attendance that year. The lineup was the Last Four Digits, Latex Novelties, Zero Boys, and Dow Jones & The Industrials, natch.

As the Gizmos helped establish Gulcher as an ongoing label, Bob Richert added other local bands to his stable, re-issuing MX-80 Sound's Big Hits EP, and addditional 7-inchers by the Panics, Jetsons, Dancing Cigarettes, and even Johnny Cougar (nee Mellencamp). This firmly established Gulcher as the pioneers in documenting Indiana punk and new wave.

Dow Jones and the Gizmos first met because Dow guitarist Greg Horn heard of Gulcher Records and the Gizmos, prompting him and Clark to drive down to Bloomington to see a Gizmos show at the Bassaloon, a wacky pizza shop/country bar on the outskirts of town.

Hoosier Hysteria happened because it was time for Gulcher and the Gizmos to graduate to the LP format, and because Dow Jones & The Industrials were a popular live act that needed a record release. Each claimed a side and the title, spoofing the Hoosier State's obsession with basketball, was brought into the world. In fact, Gizmo Billy Nightshade’s vision of the cover art was a basketball with a knife stabbing it, resting in a pool of blood. Hoosier Hysteria was snapped up by a growing legion of punk/new wave fans; 2500 copies were pressed and were gone quickly. Both the Dow and Gizmos sides were recorded on 4-track reel-to-reel at Zounds Studio, 919 North Salisbury in West Lafayette. Zounds, a partnership of Dow's keyboard wizard Brad Garton (Mr. Science!) and Purdue's Rick Thomas, was a key recording option for area punk and new wave artists.

Despite the popular Gizmos ode "The Midwest Can Be Alright," they relocated to Hoboken, NJ in 1980, hoping to crack the NYC scene only to disband soon thereafter. Hoosier Hysteria also documented the original Dow Jones lineup, drummer Tim North along with Clark, Horn, and Garton. By this time there were dozens of Indiana punk and new wave bands. Gulcher was overwhelmed with potential releases, so the logical solution was a compilation album, Red Snerts--The Sound Of Gulcher (Gulcher 102/404), which featured many of the active Central Indiana bands circa 1980-81. But that's another story.

--Rick Wilkerson, Indiana Music History Project (Indianafound.org)

Gulcher/Gizmos Cosmic Meeting: Eddie Flowers (left) hanging out with the legendary Richard Meltzer in Portland, Oregon 5/24/25. Richard more or less invented rock journalism, wrote lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult, fronted his own punk band Vom, and released the book Gulcher in 1972. Eddie co-led the original Gizmos, and Meltzer wrote liner notes for the first three Gizmos EPs. Photo by Wade T Oberlin.