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Joe Gore | Ursula Blind | Sally Dana | Cynthia Smith | Pat Campbell

Uneasy listening? Transistor noir? Bad-mood music?

Take your pick. Action Plus, a combo conceived by guitarist Joe Gore and audio architect Ursula Blind, shoves forgotten soundtracks, "nice" AM-radio pop, 70's Euro-sleaze, and spiky crime jazz through a meatgrinder of millennial neurosis. The resulting sausages — er, songs — are seasoned with both innocent pop bliss and world-weary perversion.

Since their debut in 1996, the band's recordings and startling live shows have drawn critical rhapsodies and a sizable, if strange, following. The group's second CD, "Wanderlust" (Songs of Adventure & Disappointment), delivers more sweet-'n'-sour paradoxes, flickering between sunshine and darkness at a seizure-inducing rate. Like retsina or candy corn, the complex flavors of Action Plus don't suit every palate — but nothing else in current pop tastes quite the same.


Joe Gore was permitted to play guitar with PJ Harvey and Tom Waits despite the fact that he has worked extensively as a music journalist, an entity both artists view as evolutionary kin to the spores and lower fungi. Joe toured the world with Polly Jean and appears on To Bring You My Love and Is this Desire? He has accompanied Waits live and on record, including The Mule Variations and the Grammy-winning Bone Machine. Other credits include Tracy Chapman, Lisa Germano, Tipsy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Oranj Symphonette, and Les Claypool--plus remix sessions for Live, Bush, Moby, and other artists with even more than four letters in their names. A high-school valedictorian, Joe was born with two uvulae (that punching-bag thing in the back of your throat).

Singer/keyboardist Ursula Blind spent her childhood on an uncharted desert isle, learning to make radio components out of coconut shells. Though her social skills are still rudimentary, as an adult she has learned to communicate through a variety of vocal utterances, from low threats and sarcastic asides to a wordless, birdlike soprano. In addition to writing music and lyrics for Action Plus, Ursula composes music for films and TV, and is a classically trained cat socializer.


Vocalist/percussionist/Theremin manipulator Sally Dana debuted in the Seattle Opera Company's La Bohéme at age nine. The nadir of her dual singing/acting career came while performing in a puppet show subsidized by the Washington State Dept. of Ecology, when the head of her "Jenny Clean" puppet accidentally flew into the audience, wounding a kindergartner. Since then she has sung with numerous Seattle and San Francisco combos, toured with drag artiste Pussy Tourette, drummed with Pansy Division, and appeared in various critically heralded theater productions.


Cynthia Smith plays bass and guitar, plus she's a gorgeous Amazon jock and frontwoman of her own band, Smitty. She started out playing Hawaiian-style lap-steel guitar — so much hipper than Cat Stevens songs or "Smoke on the Water." Though her tastes lie closer to mainstream pop than those of her bandmates, she is twisted as only the rebel alumnus of a fundamentalist Baptist education can be.



Drummer Pat Campbell is celebrated for playing with his mouth open yet rarely drooling. His father, a professional drummer (and Pat's junior high music teacher) acknowledged the child's drumming skills by urging him to take up the tuba. After attending the University of Utah on a tuba scholarship (this part is true!) Pat morphed into the Beehive State's leading ska drummer. He has also played with Oranj Symphonette, Jim Campilongo, Johnny Dilks, and the Old Joe Clarks, among others. Pat recently recorded a sample CD entitled Brush Artistry, available through Big Fish Audio.

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