My Favorite Bands

Kix is an American hard rock/heavy metal band who achieved popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Kix was started by Brian "Damage" Forsythe and Donnie Purnell in Dec. of 1977 in Hagerstown, Maryland. The first song Brian and Donnie played together was Atomic Bombs. They played with two musicians from Pittsburgh, "Tee" and "Tunes." The first practices were at the Old Mill Inn, in Williamsport, Maryland, just outside of Hagerstown. Because "Tee" and "Tunes" lived so far away the rehearsals didn't work out. They started rehearsing with Ronnie "10/10" Younkins, whom Ronnie asked to join the new band. Soon after they invited Donnie Spence to join as a drummer. He didn't have a car so he was picked up every day for rehearsals.
Steve Whiteman was added to the band after a couple of other lead singers (Terry Brady and Sam Smith) didn't work out. Steve also played drums, so he and Donnie Spence, who was also a good singer, would alternate drums and lead vocals. Steve though, sang all the difficult songs. The guys met Steve at a show at The Other Place in Ridgely, WV. They had heard about him, and went to see him play with his old band. During the break they took him out to the car and played him a cassette of their original songs. They asked him to join. A week later Steve moved to Hagerstown, to join what was then called "The Shooze."
After a while, Donnie Spence didn't work out anymore. Jimmy "Chocolate" Chalfant was recruited as the drummer for "The Shooze." Jimmy was Donnie Purnell's old bandmate and had played with him in his previous bands "Fire and Rain", "Starship" and "Jax". Brian used to go see Donnie and Jimmy playing those bands. From the beginning Ronnie had envisioned this as the perfect line-up: Donnie (who also wrote cool songs), Jimmy and Ronnie, all musicians he knew and admired from around town. So by late 1979 the classic Kix lineup of Steve Whiteman (lead vocals), Ronnie "10/10" Younkins (lead guitars), Brian "Damage" Forsythe (rhythm guitars), Donnie Purnell (bass, keyboards, backing vocals), and Jimmy "Chocolate" Chalfant (drums, backing vocals) was complete.
They changed their name to "The Generators," when they realized there was another band out of Chicago, named "The Shooze." They began recording their first album on Atlantic in 1980 before eventually settling on "Kix."