Not many people remember the Wendy Tunes today; even fewer remember what bassist Andy Bennie once claimed, that "we were so desperate to get a record deal that as soon as we got one, we broke up." But if they have any claim to fame, it's for spawning one half of what would become, unjustly briefly but undeniably all the same, one of the finest British rock bands of the early '80s, a group whose hybrid vision of post-punk neuroses and pre-punk dynamics saw them tearing up the club scene even as their records reposed on a label whose very name defined its potential. It was called Zilch, and that's what it delivered. The bandmembers were not strangers, even if circumstances had split them apart for a while; Bennie and guitarist Buzz Chanter had played together in Sleaze, a brilliant Cockney Rebel-esque band operating around Torquay in the mid-'70s, and fronted by future Adverts vocalist TV Smith. Aptly named drummer Mallett and vocalist Martyn Watson, meanwhile, first met at college, before Watson joined Bennie in the Wendy Tunes. The group shattered after Bennie and Watson announced they were leaving hometown Leicester for London, but by February 1980, Last Touch had formed from the wreckage and, a month later, they made their live debut, opening for TV Smith's new band, the Explorers (themselves making their own live debut). Within a year, Last Touch were on the road with XTC, after which they signed with Zilch and set about preserving their live set on tape. "Clown Time," the band's first single, landed one review which compared it to David Bowie, but Last Touch continued landing high-profile shows (including a couple of nights opening for Steve Harley), and spent the summer of 1981 working on their album. A self-produced second single, "Killing the Ones You Love," had already been taped; now it was onto an eight-song mini-album which they envisioned being released at a mini-album price. Unfortunately, RCA, Zilch's distributor, thought otherwise; the major label wanted to bang it out at full price, and what started out as a mere disagreement swiftly escalated into a violent morality play. Neither party would budge an inch, and one by one, the barricades fell. "Killing the Ones You Love" disappeared into a black hole, somewhere between the pressing plant, which barely churned out 1,000 copies, and the stores, which didn't know enough to stock it. The album was shelved, never to see the light of day. Zilch itself pulled away from the major, signing a new, but vastly inferior distribution deal with the Stage One indie; and Last Touch found themselves out in the cold. They killed some time rehearsing in a farmhouse in Wales, then returned to London and started playing acoustic shows every Thursday at a pub in Parsons Green, in southwest London. But a projected third single, "In My Little Place," was canceled, and a whole new live set was worked up, retaining only a handful of the old favorites, and ditching the band name as well, to become Plan B. Within months of this rebirth, however, Bennie quit (he would later rejoin TV Smith in Cheap, and now plays with the pride of south London, Waxed). Chanter, too, quit and, by 1983, the remaining duo of Mallett and Watson were gigging as the Pookah Makes Three, and signing to Virgin's Ten subsidiary. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide