Plaid Retina

Plaid Retina from Visalia California was a punk rock band from 1986-1994. "Punk" is an overall term, the music itself has many styles according to, but not limited to, the chronolgy of the recorded music.

The story more or less begins in 1984 with "Oblivion", a band Don Hudgens joined in high school that was already established with Travis(Retina), Jeff Gilley, "Brian T" Thompson, Alarick Garcia, and Mike M(update needed). The crew for that band also included Matt Morris and Jeff Beck. It was at this time Don & Matt Morris met up with Kelly Casper who was part of that scene at Redwood High School.

Don wasn't in Oblivion long before things changed. Oblivion was driven by the hardest rock at the time which evolved from bands like Iron Maiden and Dio, to underground Los Angeles metal such as Slayer and Metallica, and others like Raven & Mercyful Fate. Oblivion had the ability to keep up with the evolution (a quality strong in Visalia) but things were changing so completely and so rapidly that the members splintered.

Matt and Don were friends from the BMX scene years earlier around 1982 with Rob Anderson. Don and Matt saw that together they might be able to accomplish their own band, so they gave it a shot and convinced Kelly Casper to join in on bass, Matt playing guitar & singing. Kelly had to leave the band amicably so Don brought in Rob Anderson from the BMX years. This was the line up that recorded the first album PLAID RETINA, that when pressed was actually a little 7" but was in fact a full length album (relatively speaking). The band met Dale Stewart of Capitol Punishment at his record store Stage Dive records in Fresno, which although out of town, became one of the bands favorite hang outs whenever they could get a chance to be there. Dale connected them with a studio where the album was recorded and also with MAXIMUMROCKNROLL magazine where Dave Hayes entered the picture.

This article is incomplete.