Bombers

The brainchild of producer George Lagios, Bombers was a studio project he assembled at the tail end of the disco era. He recruited guitar virtuoso Walter Rossi, whom he’d worked with several times on Rossi’s solo albums, to lead the foray and be the unofficial bandleader. Rossi recommended drummer Marty Simon and keyboardist Dwayne Ford (ex of Bearfoot) on keyboards, who were both in a short-lived project with him a few years earlier called Rockers.

After Lagios signed a deal with New York-based West End Records, and along with Buster Jones on bass, they worked on some material with infectiously groovy beats and released their self-titled debut album in 1978. Predominantly re-workings of German techno maestro Kurt Haunenstein, the album featured mostly lengthy club-oriented numbers including Haunenstein’s “Don’t Stop The Music,” “Dance Dance Dance,” and “Super Max,” as well as the Rossi-penned “Main Man” (the only track under four minutes long), and a reworking of a traditional Mexican song called “Per Quaiche Dollero in Piu” simply dubbed “The Mexican.” The three Haunenstein tunes were shipped as 12″ dance club albums through various labels around the world, making them hits with the all-night party-goers and the DJs that played them.

A follow-up album, BOMBERS 2, was in the dance clubs a year later, following the same disco formula. For the most part, it was the same group of musicians, but this time the songs were originals, with Simon penning or co-writing most of them. Again, the album only contained five lenghthy tunes that found their way onto various EPs across the globe and into night clubs through several distributors. But with disco finally dieing by the end of the decade, and with everyone having other projects to do, Bombers went out without a fizzle.

Unidisc re-released the first album in the early ’00s, adding 12″ dance remixes of “The Mexican” and “Dance Dance.”