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Magnolia Thunderpussy formed in 1984 in the aftershock of Los Angeles' punk/underground explosion, gleaning its name from a burlesque dancer who started an erotic dessert store of the same name in SF's Haight-Ashbury district during the 60's. Its short existence was a brilliant flash of catatonic sound waves that influenced and inspired the likes of Thurston Moore, Flea, and Greg Ginn, the latter of whom offered to sign the band to SST based on hours on tour listening to their first & only ever studio recording. In the tradition of the Bad Brains' ROIR Session, this recording came and went in a scant 2 hours in a Santa Monica 24-track studio, but yielded an amazingly smooth 11 tracks on a thirty-minute reel. All the songs were recorded live, and all but one was a first take. Dave "Zippy Pinhead" Travis (who as an upstart teen co-directed Black Flag's "Slip It In" video, and later formed bands such as Carnage Asada et al), saw the genius of MTP and offered to buy another hour so they could "mix" the recording - or at least run it off onto tape. Somehow, the recordings turned out sounding remarkably good, and word spread fast about this new band whose diverse aesthetic managed to impress a lot of people in the scene, despite the members having just finished high school. The LA Weekly took quick notice, announcing in 1985 that they sounded like a cross between Blood Sweat & Tears with The Minutemen. Travis saw the talent as well, and with his help they found themselves on bills with SST artists like Black Flag, SWA, DC3, Lawndale, and Saccharine Trust. Before their sudden implosion in 1986, MTP managed to reach many musicians who would later become prominent in the core of SoCal's very successful scene, including musicians like Abby Travis (Beck, Elastica), Blake Schwarzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets To Brazil), and even the Inclined, who covered one of the Magnolia's songs on their major label release for Columbia. Nearly 20 years later Mar Vista Records has released "Starin' Down the Sun," a beautifully designed CD in digipak featuring the band's 1985 studio recordings, one of the band's live "generator" shows at the beach in its entirety (including the police bust), a 28- page booklet with band history, lyrics, photos and testimonials, and a collage cover by muralist, art professor, and MTP fan Alessandra Moctezuma.