Actionslacks is an American
indie rock
Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...
band formed in 1994 in the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
. The band has long been associated with the region's
noise pop
Noise pop is a subgenre of alternative and indie rock that developed in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom and United States. It is defined by its mixture of dissonant noise or feedback with the songcraft more often found in pop music. Shoegazi ...
scene.
History
Actionslacks formed in Northern California's East Bay in 1994 when ex-Pillbox members Tim Scanlin and Mark Wijsen met drummer Marty Kelly and discovered a mutual appreciation of late-70s English
punk rock, 1980s American
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-r ...
and guitar-based
New Zealand indie rock. The band played one gig in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
under the name
King Friday
The Neighborhood of Make-Believe is the fictional kingdom inhabited by hand puppet characters on the children's television series '' Mister Rogers' Neighborhood'', which originally aired on PBS (and its predecessor NET) from 1968 to 2001, and ...
but changed their name after Scanlin realized he "just couldn't be in a band named after a puppet."
The band soon became a regular on the San Francisco and
West Coast club circuit and released the "Tugboat Mutiny" b/w "A.C.R.O.N.Y.M."
7-inch single
In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most cases, a single is a song that is released separat ...
on their own Permanent Records imprint. In 1996 the band's first full-length, ''
Too Bright, Just Right, Good Night'' was released on the Minneapolis
Skene! label. Actionslacks' second LP, ''
One Word
"One Word" is a song by British singer Kelly Osbourne, released as the first and only single from her second studio album, ''Sleeping in the Nothing'' (2005), in May 2005. Unlike the pop-punk sound Osbourne sported in the past, "One Word" is a sy ...
'' (a reference to the spelling of their name as well as a nod to the influence of