What Twin Cities band has the honor of being named both the best and the worst band by the City Pages in one issue? The Suicide Commandos formed in 1974 when guitarist Chris Osgood and drummer Dave Ahl asked bassist Steve Almaas to join their new band, thus becoming one of the very first punk rock groups of the era, one whose career roughly paralleled (rather than mimicked) the emergence of the Ramones in Queens, New York. The trio jump-started the Minneapolis punk scene with their arrival at the legendary Longhorn Bar in the spring of 1976. The Suicide Commandos released independent singles in 1976 and 1977 before becoming one of two crucial bands (the other being Cleveland’s Pere Ubu) to sign with Polydor's short-lived Blank label in 1977. Their debut LP, Make a Record, failed to capture the excitement of their live shows, and did not catch on nationally. After a West Coast tour, the band felt that they had peaked, and deemed it wise to go out in a blaze of glory rather than to fizzle out slowly. The Suicide Commandos played their last official shows together at the Longhorn in November of 1978. There are those of us who were there who will swear up and down that the Suicide Commandos remain the greatest rock and roll band to ever emerge from the Twin Cities.

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