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'The Buzzsaw Hour' hits airwaves on KABF
 Terry Wright // I'm Terry Wright -- better known as Claymore Mine. I ran the Buzzsaw Hour on KABF radio from 1984 to 1986.
I worked at Discount Records in Little Rock from 1983 to 1986. A friend and fellow worker, Clyde Phillips, told me about a new independent radio station starting up -- free of commercials and corporate playlists. He already attended the first organizational meeting and asked me if I'd like to partner with him on a show. He called his show Little Rock and Reggae. It did feature some reggae, but it was primarily a progressive, alternative rock show. I signed on.
We had a Thursday night slot from 8-10 and were followed by a one hour comedy show. But the comedy show deejay usually didn't show up, so we had to fill the extra hour. As almost a kind of joke, I started The Buzzsaw Hour -- an hour of high-speed punk and hardcore. In a few weeks, the show had received a regular Thursday night slot.
In a way, I was a likely candidate to host such a show. I was the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for The Malls (1979-1981) -- a Fayetteville band that many people ... (More)I'm Terry Wright -- better known as Claymore Mine. I ran the Buzzsaw Hour on KABF radio from 1984 to 1986.
I worked at Discount Records in Little Rock from 1983 to 1986. A friend and fellow worker, Clyde Phillips, told me about a new independent radio station starting up -- free of commercials and corporate playlists. He already attended the first organizational meeting and asked me if I'd like to partner with him on a show. He called his show Little Rock and Reggae. It did feature some reggae, but it was primarily a progressive, alternative rock show. I signed on.
We had a Thursday night slot from 8-10 and were followed by a one hour comedy show. But the comedy show deejay usually didn't show up, so we had to fill the extra hour. As almost a kind of joke, I started The Buzzsaw Hour -- an hour of high-speed punk and hardcore. In a few weeks, the show had received a regular Thursday night slot.
In a way, I was a likely candidate to host such a show. I was the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for The Malls (1979-1981) -- a Fayetteville band that many people (like "Nightflyer" magazine) have called Arkansas' first punk band. People from Little Rock regularly drove up to hear us play. The Malls were to tough sell in Arkansas at that time -- trust me on this. We had trouble getting gigs, got the plug pulled by rednecks, and had the cops show up regularly when we played. We'd play anywhere -- frat parties where they'd throw drinks at us, benefit gigs where we'd follow country bands (to their shock), friends' backyards. We learned a bunch of punk covers (Clash, Gang of Four, Wire, etc.) hoping that would get us into clubs -- but it didn't.
We had a kind of Elvis Costello circa "This Year's Model" sound -- guitar, bass, drums, and Farfisa organ -- and found ourselves squeezed between the firmly established, popular country rock and the more aggressive hardcore that eventually followed on our heels. We were very political and satirical. We'd snipe at Reagan frequently and mock local politics and culture. I'd tear up science books and melt down plastic army men and fling them into the crowd. We had bizarre stage props and a bank of barely working TVs lining the front of the stage and synced to pulse with our sound system. Sometimes they'd semi-explode and exude plumes of smoke. We broke up just as we had enough original songs to make an album.
So I had an interest in punk -- and working at the record store gave me access to much obscure new music. But Clyde and I also wrote many independent labels -- and many jumped at the chance to be heard uncensored on a radio station putting out 100,000 watts. We were playing stuff few people in Arkansas had ever heard at the time -- soon to be staples like Husker Du, The Minutemen, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and the like -- but also Culturcide, Pop O Pies, Hula, Dead Milkmen, Flipper, Code of Honor, Social Unrest, 7 Seconds, Maximum Rock and Roll LPs, and much more.
KABF went everywhere, or so it seemed. Memphis called often -- but we heard from people in Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, even from South Dakota and Wisconsin. It was like Beaker Street for punks. Sometimes people would just show up at the studio or dive by and honk or shout out. Some said they were passing through town and just had to stop by and tell us how much they liked the show. "We never expected to hear this out here," they'd usually add.
Of course, not everyone liked our show. We'd get hate rant calls -- from outraged listeners (who said they'd never again listen to us but still did just to be outraged) and even the Klan called in with a threat one night. We'd just egg everybody on. I'd play ZZ Top at 78 and call them speedcore. Then run them in reverse -- to check the "backward masking" -- only to find a song by Saccharine Trust would start instead. We pioneered "reverse simulcasting" by bringing a TV into the studio and miking it and bantering with it during breaks ("We watch TV for you so you can listen to your radio."). When a guild from Central High School showed up one night to do community service, we brought them all into the studio and dubbed them "The Buzzsaw Hour Drill Team" and played stuff like "The Cheerleaders" by the Minutemen ("Do you have to see the body bags before you take a stand?"). When Black Flag played the SOB, we interviewed Greg Ginn. "Don't you get tired of jerks like us asking you questions?" I said to him. "You're not jerks," he replied, "and what you're doing here is very cool." We always tried to plug and play regional and local bands whenever we could.
But my wife got pregnant. I got a full time job at a university and had to quit the record store. I just couldn't keep up with the demands of the show. And the shine somewhat wore off, too. Many of the independent label records we'd worked so hard to get were stolen and began showing up at local used record stores. Without music access from both the station and the record store, I couldn't maintain a decent playlist -- nor could I afford to fund the music out of my own pocket. I quit the station. Clyde, to his credit, stayed on -- and continues to run a great progressive music show to this day.
I never had much of a sense of the audience for The Buzzsaw Hour while doing the show. I did hear stories in later years though -- from Little Rock punk musicians and from subsequent deejays that the show profoundly influenced them. One drummer told me he and his friends would gather around the radio every Thursday night at 10:00. "It was like our hearth fire," he said.
Best to everyone,
Terry Wright (Claymore Mine) (Less) 
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Claymore Mine
Discount Records
Malls
