The Name
Mike and I use to hang out at his house and listen to all of his punk rock records. We tried to come up with good band names. I said No FX after a band who had put out one record and broken up called Negative FX. Mike agreed that it was the best one so far. There seemed to be a lot of gimmicky bands around at the time. We like to think that our name meant we were against that shit. In 1983 three of the four members were into the straight edge movement following Minor Threat's first single, but we were never a straight edge band, OK?

First Gig
There was a club on Selma and Argyle in Hollywood called Cathay de Grande. Some of the bands we would go see there were D.R.I., the Stains, Reagan Youth, Minor Threat, Black Flag before Henry, the Bangs who later became the Bangles, and Social Distortion. On Tuesday nights new bands would play and it was one dollar to get in. Some friends of ours from Pomona had a band called Justice League. They were having their first gig one Tuesday and we asked them if we could use their gear and play after them. We were all there, except for Steve. We played all 4 songs we knew. For years after, those Justice League kids swore that was our best show ever. When Steve found out that we had played without him, he quit the band that he was never really in.

So we were a 3-piece. Mike and I were going to trade off singing, but I could barely even play guitar, let alone sing at the same time, and that's how Mike became our singer.

First Demo
It was time to record our songs and put out a tape. By some freak act of destiny, Don Bolles, of Germs fame said he would produce our demo for us if we filled up his car with gas. We made flyers advertising our Demo release and placed an ad in Flipside to send your own cassette and a self addressed stamped envelope and we would copy it for you and send it back.