[1] The history of Plaid Retina begins in 1984, in Visalia, a small city in California Central Valley, when drummer Don Hudgens joined metal band Oblivion, a high school band established by Travis, Jeff Gilley, "Bryan T" Thompson, Alarick Garcia and Mike Matthews.
It was at this time Hudgens and Matt Morris met up with Kelly Casper, who was part of that scene at Redwood High School.
The advent of hardcore punk acts such as Minor Threat and the Suicidal Tendencies, whose first album made a huge impression of the metal scene, caused the members of the band to splinter.
The music was played and performed as brash and as abrasively as they could possibly deliver it, and recorded with a 'ghetto-blaster' onto very old used cassette tapes that were actually found in the boxcar, with vocals by both Morris and Casper sung directly into the built-in microphone.
They were kicked out of the talent show when panic ensued because no one other than the punk scene knew what was going on when the fast music and slam dancing erupted.
Casper had to leave the band amicably, so Don Hudgens brought in Rob Anderson, who grew up with him during their teens and knew Matt Morris from the local BMX scene on that side of town years earlier around 1982.
They changed the name to Aggravated Assault, the band then started to gravitate toward Fresno, California, a city 40 minutes north which had an active punk scene, shops and interesting places to skate, especially in its classic downtown area.
Hudgens and Morris posted a flyer at "The Record Factory" which led to their first real gig at the legendary Knights of Columbus Hall, opening for the Wimpy Dicks (San Luis Obispo) and the Sea Hags.
Stewart convinced the band to change its name to Plaid Retina (the name itself was a group decision), mostly to help them grow just in case they grew out of the piston-pumping D.R.I.
Thru the mail, Hudgens crossed paths with Musical Tragedies, a record label in Germany that later released Boxcar as a 7-inch EP.
The band spent a lot of personal time exploring these influences and getting them ready before presenting a radical change in their sound.
Before the new album's release, the band debuted much of the new material in outside stage matinée performances at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, to stunned audiences.
The music still felt at home in the punk shows, because it has retained its brashness (and in some tracks, high speed tempos) in spite of the original approaches.
Visalia pro skater Tom Knox met the band and most of Pinkeye appeared on Santa Cruz Skateboards' Strange Notes No. 3.
Even though the band had roots in Fresno, they only really knew a handful of people, mostly from the Capitol Punishment camp (due to the distance from Visalia) and this release brought them more inside the scene.
Around this time, Matt Morris put together certain pieces of equipment that helped define his sound: a Mesa/Boogie amplifier (from the factory, purchased around the time of recording the album) in conjunction with a Roland JC-120 amplifier, a Paul Reed Smith guitar, and a complex, well defined system of delay and other effects.
In Austin, Mark Hughes joined on keyboards and Travis switched equipment from his Ampeg to a new Trace Elliot rig .