No Wave Archeology: Digging Out the History of the Stick Against Stone Orchestra’s Get It All Out

Pittsburgh, summer of 1981: longtime friends Richard Vitale and Brook Duer decided to channel their post-punk proclivities into a slightly different breed of band, a group of like-minded players with an ear for everything from West African drumming to Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time.

They founded Stick Against Stone. Originally a leaderless collective—no doubt a holdover from the democratic social ideals of the ’60s, and juiced considerably by punk rock’s anti-con agenda—there was no denying that singer John Creighton was the de facto frontman. “A lot of people have a tune that’s stuck in their head,” friend and designer John Gallone observed years later. “Creighton seemed to have a gamelan stuck in his. He was always thinking about different types of music.”

With high-octane tunes, wild-eyed musical diversity, and broad influences from Afrobeat to no wave, SAS built a cult following, but soon faded into obscurity in the mid-80s, especially after Creighton’s departure and subsequent death. That is, until 2006, when soundman, entrepreneur, and filmmaker Will Kreth stumbled across some dusty cassette tapes of their earliest mind-blowing shows and decided he couldn’t let the music die.

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