The Suburban Reptiles were conceptualised by Auckland students Simon Grigg and Brett Salter in late 1976, with some encouragement from filmmaker David Blyth.
The first practices did produce the nucleus of a live set, consisting of a mix of covers (including songs from Roxy Music, the Damned and the Modern Lovers) and originals.
The members then, in the tradition of punk bands the world over, took stage names: Salter initially became Jimmy Vinyl and later Jimmy Joy and Lino Clone; Elliot took Sally Slag but quickly became simply Zero (although to the band she was simply Zed); Nicholls was Shaun Anfrayd; Pendergrast naturally identified with his (highly strung) Buzz Adrenalin but opted for the more user friendly Billy Planet; Scott was Sissy Spunk; and Hough, though wanting Buzz, became Buster Stiggs.
Over the period the band was fired from a Catholic Boys School; was pursued and vilified by a hungry media, repeatedly making the front pages of various newspapers; and were attacked by a vigilante mob at a student arts festival in Wellington.
The second session a few weeks later, produced by the band and Doug Rogers, re-recorded two of those songs, "Megaton" and "Desert Patrol", and these, after some gestation came out on Phonogram's Vertigo label in January 1978, selling about 500 copies at the time.
His arrival and the subsequent fawning caused a great deal of friction between the members who effectively divided into two camps, with Judd and tag-along Hough on one side and Pendergrast and Salter on the other, with Zero in the middle.
The resultant single, "Saturday Night Stay at Home", with Judd's soaring guitar and little else audible or recognisable of the Suburban Reptiles, was an instant classic, selling hundreds of copies.