Artist · chart history
The Plasmatics
Band New York United States Active 1978–1983 US punk/metal band
The Plasmatics formed in 1978 in New York, United States and was active until 1983. The Plasmatics has 2 chart appearances on 1 radio countdown from 1 station on RockLists, spanning 1981. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Sex Junkie”, which appears on 1 list with a best position of #54. The station that charted The Plasmatics most often is KROQ (Los Angeles, CA), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1981.
The Plasmatics were cooked up in New York City by Rod Swenson and Wendy O. Williams, and they treated punk rock less as a sound than as a demolition derby. Their shows were chaos by design: guitars sawn in half with chainsaws, speaker cabinets smashed, television sets taken apart with sledgehammers and cars blown up right there on stage. Nobody walked out of one bored.
Williams was the lightning rod, roaring out front while the musicians behind her came and went. Richie Stotts co-founded the band and anchored the guitar sound through the core years up to 1983, Wes Beech was the other lifer on guitar, and the bass chair passed from Jean Beauvoir to Chris Romanelli. Their punk had plenty of heavy metal in it, too: Beyond the Valley of 1984 brought "Sex Junkie", and the Metal Priestess EP, the same year, brought "Lunacy", and both sound like a punk band discovering what a wall of amplifiers can really do.
They got five studio albums and a string of EPs out of the madness on labels including Stiff and Capitol, before the whole thing finally came apart after Coup d'etat.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by The Plasmatics on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sex Junkie | 1 | #54 | – | 1981 | |
| 2 | Lunacy | 1 | #81 | – | 1981 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | 54 | Sex Junkie | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1981 |
| 1981 | 81 | Lunacy | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1981 |
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