Back in 1973, teenage fanzine writer Ken Highland first traveled from his small-town home in upstate New York to Brooklyn, New York, to jam with pen-pal Solomon Gruberger and his younger brother Jay in their living-room rock band O. Rex. Three years later, in early '76, Ken recorded the first infamous Gizmos EP in Bloomington, Indiana--and then joined the United States Marine Corps! Finding himself stationed in Maryland, near Washington, D.C., he quickly found his way into the burgeoning D.C. punk scene. He became friends with the Slickee Boys, and began writing songs on guard duty. Some of these became later Gizmos tunes, but the main project was a new band with the O. Rex brothers called The Afrika Korps. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.