Telekin

Telekin was formed in 1980, in Hollywood , California, by former child actor Teddy Quinn (‘the Aspirin Boy’; “Does it Hurt and Have a Temperature?’; “Mothers are like that. Yeah, They Are!”) and Catherine (Cathie Kimble) Shinn (The Deadbeats; Geza X and the Mommymen), along with Quinn’s former band-mates (from the unironically named The Eighties, best known in town for their buttons, worn ubiquitously in 1979), Donald Kaiser and Denise Fraser; Quinn’s sister, Debra; and Shinn’s 'spiritual sister’ Elizabeth (Taylor) Taubman. Originally a couple, Quinn and ‘Kimble’ wrote many of their earliest songs together to cheer Jimmy and Cathie Kimble’s toddler daughter, Autumn (Visiting Kids), who was recently in remission from neuroblastoma, a rare cancer, akin to leukemia. Quinn’s lyrics and Kimble’s music, whimsical, dream-like, optimistic and satirical, did not fit easily into any of the categories popular in L.A. in the early 80’s. Their Kraftwerk/Bowie/Eno-influenced sound was mistaken for the fluffier style of Duran Duran and other lightweights gaining attention from across the ocean. They weren’t punk, rock-a-billy, faux-funk or Sunset Strip metal and were largely dismissed by the heroin-laden hipster scene in Hollywood. One exception was Israeli-born, avant-garde fashion/pop music photographer, Moshe Brakha, best known for his early, classic black and white Devo portraits, who fell in love with the group, perhaps seeing himself as a fatherly “Andy Warhol” to their “Velvet Underground.” Indeed, he called their music “Electronic Bohemia for the Teen Underground,” while taking hundreds of smoke-filled, photo-noir stills of the band. A record producer took their master tapes to Europe, resulting in a minor hit in Germany, Belgium and Holland. “Imagination,” written to honor the recently slain John Lennon, bittersweetly foretold the bands eventual demise (“Once I had a vision, you and me and our imagination.”) The song has recently attained cult status as a staple of 80’s DJ’s at clubs, raves and parties around the world. The legendary, late Herbie Cohen, who had brought Frank Zappa, and later, Tom Waits, to the world’s attention, became the band’s manager, also unsure of what to do with them. Although is heart was in the right place, he tried to press them into a mold of dance music, popular on the radio at the time. When the offspring of a legendary Hollywood family robbed the band of all of it’s gear, somewhat ironically, to feed a drug habit, the once-distant musical community of Hollywood gathered to perform a benefit to help them replace their instruments, to little avail. Disheartened, the band split in 1985. Stories based upon the band surfaced in the work of novelist Francesca Lia Block (“Ecstasia,” “Girl Goddess #9”, the “Weetzie bat” series.) Of the core members, only Denise Fraser (Sandra Bernhardt) found any real success in the music industry, while Quinn pursued his muse into the desert of Joshua Tree, where he has achieved notoriety as a cultural activist, along with (original Telekin drummer) the late Fred Drake (The Earthlings?), founder of the influential Rancho de la Luna recording studio; ‘Taylor’ (Taubman) continued making music, with little luck, while watching her two daughters follow in her musical footsteps; ‘Kimble’ (Shinn) found marital bliss in Colorado, raising a son and her daughter, Autumn, now a grown woman, in full remission for over 25 years; Kaiser also married and raised two daughters in San Francisco; Debra Quinn returned to San Francisco, as well, then to Philadelphia, and now resides in Boston. During their 5 years as a band, Telekin recorded close to a hundred original songs. Re-united via the internet, strangely fulfilling the prediction inherent in their name, Don Kaiser, in 2010, pulled out the remaining tapes, salvaged them, remixed and remastered them, resulting in the band’s ‘first’ album, “The World Electric,” ‘thirty years in the making.’ Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.