It was a dark and stormy night... Halloween 1979 to be exact. And the unthinkable was about to occur. WSHE-FM, “She's Only Led Zeppelin,” er,“Only Rock 'n' Roll” is scheduled to broadcast the Cichlids, live in concert, from Peaches Records and Tapes on Sunrise Blvd in Fort Lauderdale. The Peaches building had originally been an A&P Supermarket, probably since the '60s. And although all that square footage made for an appealing in-store performance space, the wiring wasn't up to the power drain. In the store, localized power loss dropped out instruments throughout the first five songs (Missionary Man; Ups And Downs; Tourists Are Pink; Motorboat; and Did You Ever) while on the air, low cloud cover and literally electric atmosphere sporatically replace the right channel of the stereo mix with police band conversations, static or other audio distortion. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty.
But, the engineers at Moss Music have taken the best available tape of the broadcast and painstakingly re-channelled and stereo-enhanced the recording and cut out the above-mentioned songs, to make it a very listenable, uninterrupted, new wave trainwreck captured live. Say what you will about their “punk status,” refuse them their rightful place on “Killed By Death” or whatever compilation you of the punk aristocracy use to promote your narrow world view. The facts remain, The Cichlids were there, you weren't. Nyaah!