This line-up performed only once, and the guitarist Gaylene Goudreau (who had previously played with the all-girl punk band Lois Lain) was added in late 1979.

had replaced Marquis with the guitarist David Thomas (who had previously played in St. Louis punk bands The Singapores and Cool Jerk).

By that summer, the band had become a fixture on Chicago's early punk music scene, performing regularly at area clubs like Exit, Oz,[1] O'Banion's, Tuts, Waves and Space Place and opening for visiting groups including the Fall, DNA, Bauhaus and Mission of Burma.

's manager, Terry Nelson, a local punk radio DJ, formed Autumn Records with the producer George Kapoulas.

The first single, "Dark Rooms"/"White Castles",[2] was produced at Acme Studios by Kapoulas and Mike Rasfeld.

attracted attention from outside Chicago, and performed in Milwaukee with the Ama-Dots, in Minneapolis with Hüsker Dü, and in Madison with X. Kapoulas, an engineer at WGN-TV, produced a music video for the single and "Dark Rooms" went into heavy rotation on "Rock America", a pre-MTV video cable service available in music clubs.

[1][3] The music historian Joel Whitburn once speculated that the band had recorded "Ready 'N Steady", a lost song credited to "D.A."