The Dangling Units

The Dangling Units were a short-lived band featuring future members of Happy Toons Insane War Tomatoes and Out of Order.

Members

• Kevin Folta - Vocals/Bass
• Chris Pawola - Guitar
• Mike Byrne - Bass
• Devon Brock - Drums

History by Kevin Folta

Dangling Units started in 1981 with a 4-track demo. The first songs were "You Suck", "First AIDS", "He's My Hero", "Skid Marks", and "Blow My Brains Out". The first shows were a guitar-bass combo with a drum machine, that was Kevin Folta and Chris Pawola. Soon after Mike Byrne started playing bass and KF moved to vocals. When Devon Brock joined the group played a few shows, recording the demo including "You Can Only Be Castrated Once" and "Barbeque Bop".

The songs reeked of teenage angst with a heavy dose of self criticism and teen sexual undertones. Many remember shows where the crowd was pelted with hot dogs and turkey. Costuming and props were also common. The music was muddy punk rock with Chris adding searing guitar solos atypical of hardcore music at the time.

Shortly after Devon went on to Out of Order, Kevin and Mike started Insane War Tomatoes and Chris went on to become a music teacher at a religious school.

History by Devon Brock

Dangling Units was a short-lived band. I can't remember if we were a three piece or a four piece. I played Drums and Kevin Faltas ran vocals. The other member or members I don'tr recall. I only remember doing one show with them - opening for the Effigies at the West End after the Mother's Day Peace March at Grant Park. We grilled hot dogs on stage and distributed them to the hungry crowd. I used turkey leg bones for drumsticks, wore a shark-skin suit and a nazi helmet. Kevin recently reminded me that at that show I set up several thousand plastic army men on the drums. He said it took me several hours to complete and about 3 seconds to knock it down. Dangling Units carried on for a bit after I left to focus more on OOO.

History by Brooks Smith

Dangling Units was an actual band with some notoriety in the western suburbs. They had a local hit titled "Floating Down a River in a Hefty Bag" that got airplay on WNUR and a couple of suburban radio shows. It was headed up by my buddy Kevin Folta who joined Happy Toons as a second guitarist toward the end of our run and was also a founding member of the band Insane War Tomatoes. Kevin is now a head in the Microbiology Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

External Links

• Devon's CPP post about Dangling Units