Issue #170 – The Pandoras
Four decades after recording their cult classic debut It’s About Time, pioneers of both the LA garge-punk scene and the paisleyUnderground THE PANDORAS return to set the record straight. The original band – the musicians who actually played on the 1984 record at captured LA’s primitive garage sound – are reclaiming their rightful place in rock history.
Present day member Anna Vinton joins them from the inside to document a band whose time has come again
Blue light flickers in the television studio. The presenter holds up the It’s About Time album, introducing Paula Pierce and The Pandoras. The camera zooms in on the cover, revealing her bandmates’ faces, each one crossed out in black marker. Only Pierce’s face remains untouched. It’s 1984, and the version of The Pandoras that had worked so hard on their most famous album is no more. Weeks earlier, Pierce had turned down both X and Agent Orange shows declaring they weren’t “authentically ’60s” enough for her vision. When she rejected Agent Orange, the band’sbassist Bambi Conway had seen enough. “If we can’t play that show, I’m leaving the band,” she declared. Pierce seized Conway’s departure as amoment to reshape the band entirely – telling keyboardist Gwynne Kahn she was out of the band too. The band’s drummer, Casey Gomez, decidedto walk not long after. None of them knew they wouldn’t perform the songs from It’s About Time – the album that would become a cult classic –together again for 40 years.
“Primitive.” Kahn doesn’t hesitate when asked to sum up the original Pandoras in one word. “That was a popular one. There was a song called‘Primitive’ from a ’60s garage band called The Groupies – The Cramps covered it – it was a very common adjective, ‘Man that’s real primitive.’”
Primitive, raw, unfiltered – these aren’t insults in the lexicon of garage-rock. Especially when you’re talking about a band that helped define LA’s Paisley Underground scene before it even had a proper name. For the original Pandoras, “primitive” meant stripped down and basic, gritty and unpolished – but also tight, focused, and powerful. It meant not overthinking or over producing; just capturing that electric moment when everything clicks.
The original Pandoras – Kahn, Conway, Gomez, and the late Paula Pierce – are the musicians who actually recorded the It’s About Time album in 1984. This distinction matters because subsequent lineups toured under The Pandoras name for decades, creating confusion about who created the cult classic that’s been continuously in print for 40 years.
The band’s name itself came from Kahn, who suggested Pandoras as both a reference to the Greek myth and the legendary Sunset Strip club. “Paula had some really terrible ideas. I had to come up with a decent one in a hurry so we wouldn’t have a stupid name,” Kahn recalls with characteristic bluntness.
“We didn’t know when we recorded the album that it would become a cult classic. It’s still crazy to think it’s been for sale since it came out,” Conway reflects. “Playing those songs again still feels so wild and alive – like the spark never went out.”
Now they’re back together for the first time since opening for The Ventures in June ’84, reclaiming not just their name, but their rightful place in garage rock history.
To read the whole story order issue #170 here. Subscribe to the mag here.
