KO? K.O.? K O? AKO?
Here’s another mystery record. All I know is what’s written on the label and there’s a lot of information there but not much useful stuff. There is not an address and only one last name (Hardaway) in a single songwriting credit.
I’m not even sure about the band’s name. It’s written as KO but is that KO or is it K.O.? The name on the label doesn’t have the periods. If it’s not K.O., what does KO mean? There is a Japanese character next to the name on the label so I thought it might be Japanese. I ran KO through Babelfish, it came back as KO. That wasn’t any help.
I looked on Collectorscum and didn’t find anything under either name. I did a Google search and found one mention of the record on a want list. No other information though, although they did have the record listed twice, once as KO and again as AKO. AKO?
The song titles are not very helpful either. Allmusic.com has 271 entries for songs called “Out Of Control” and none of them are by our mystery band. There aren’t any entries for this song and Homeland Security is gonna start listening to my phone calls if I put the name on the blog.
I think the band had heard the Weirdos, I hear a lot of that band in this song. It's KO's best moment.
The label does say that there are NO Ballads – NO Lovesongs which is true, there aren’t any. The songs were published by Magical Music, Hardaway was published by Milene Music, which makes me think he was not a member of the band.
The record didn't have a picture sleeve. The record came in a paper sleeve with ‘For Sale ONLY NO Promotional copies’ stamped on it. The record is on Wow Records Inc. and has a 1979 copyright. The band may have been from Bowling Green, Kentucky. That’s where I found the single in a used record shop near the university in 1986. There were at least a dozen other copies in the same box. I wish I had bought all of them. They were marked 75 cents each.
Update:
Here's a couple scans of the KO single:
Thanks Melissa!