Happy Toons
The Happy Toons story as told by Keith Lyons and Brooks Smith.
Keith: The best I can recall is that after the breakup of Negative Element - the move of the Steppe brothers to Peoria IL, Tom Faulkner and I wanted to continue playing music. First I went and started playing drums for the first line up of Life Sentence. Erik was a good friend and a mentor but it was just too far for my brother or friends to drive and too much for him to do every other night. Tom and I got together also about the same times and I had a number of ideas for songs that were too psychedelic and weird for Negative Element. Strange enough, I wasn't really into Hardcore but freaky music. Hell, I liked Black Flag and the Circle Jerks and all the current music from 80-82 but I was literally buying Fugs albums and Sandy Nelson albums at the Salvation Armies. My mind was elsewhere. It must have been Mick Calhoun who introduced me to Robert, so Robert, Tom and I rehearsed some. Faulkner wanted to be more of a Chicago scenester so it only worked out for a little while with him. I knew Cheeze Romano from the pop, new wave band Kidz and I knew that Bryn Zellers was on his way out. He was and always will be a great musician. So eventually it was Robert, Bryn and I. We started to learn a number of weird country/psychedelic songs. Through the relationship of Mick Calhoun and Robert Byrne (both of Dead Fink) I started hanging out with Dan and some others like Ross Vondersmith and Jamie Munroe and I started skating again. We needed a singer and Brooks popped up around that time. Brooks started showing up with this cool guy Mike, I forget his name, but he ended up being one the first promoters for stunt Freestyle Bike events in the USA. There was a connection there because of skating and BMX/Freestyle bicycles. Brooks was this kind of mysterious dude from 'California'. Pismo if I remember correctly. His claim to fame was doing the longest wheelie in the world. So we asked him to sing.
I can't remember our first show but I'm sure it was a party in the garage. We played all the clubs in Chicago and we became a regular attraction at West End. The manager of that bar was the coolest bar manager I've ever met. We had quite a few early admirers from the 'old' school hipsters of the late seventies. I think Shrub's (Robert Byrne) guitar skills for a 14 year old were unprecedented and at first we were doing really bizarre music - at least for Chicago. We played dozens and dozens of shows. Jeff Pezatti even used us to introduce Big Black to Chicago youth. Ain't that funny? I have to say that the highlight was playing at a Mothers Day Peace Festival in downtown Chicago in front of 40,000 people. We played Bryn's song "Suicide Trap".
I think after Dead Fink started we became more of a cult - the two bands combined with Dan's own charisma and my tweaked past we forged a kind of scene in the Western Suburbs. The drugs and drinking took precedence at some point and the rest is history... Rest in Pieces.
Brooks: In 1983 I took up drinking and started throwing nightly parties at my mother’s rented home in Downers Grove. The normal cast of characters included all the members of Dead Fink as well as a number of classmates and their friends. Keith started showing up at these soirees and it was at this time that he and Robert Byrne were starting what would become Happy Toons.
One night Keith brought Bryn Zellers, who I had know from the BMX world, to my house and they sprung on me that they needed a singer for Happy Toons. I met those guys at Keith’s house to "try out" and after nearly a case of Black Label beer I worked up the courage to scream into the mike. Apparently it worked because we started practicing on a regular basis from there in the now legendary "Keith Garage."
I’m not sure how long it took us, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks, but we played our first real show at West End with Killdozer and Die Kreuzen.
We put on two shows at "Keith Garage", one of them was written up in Maximum Rock and Roll. Legendary skater Steve Caballero's band, The Faction, was on tour and made a point of stopping in Downers Grove to play that show.
We somehow ended up on a lot of good bills opening up for the likes of The Exploited, The Dicks, D.R.I., A.O.F., Adrenalin O.D., Toxic Reasons and too many more to remember. I suspect Keith’s trailblazing with Negative Element opened up quite a few doors for us.
Most importantly, we found ourselves at the center of a really powerful suburban scene that spawned a lot of great and very active bands. And cemented our places in drinking history!
Members
- Brooks Smith - Vocals
- Keith Lyons - Drums
- Robert Byrne - Guitar
- Bryn Zellers - Bass
- Dave Lyons - Bass (replaced Bryn Zellers, 1984)
- Kevin Folta - Guitar (2nd guitar, 1985)
- Chris McCracken - Bass (replaced Dave Lyons, 1985)