The Pigs were a three-piece band featuring Michael Rushlow (guitar/vocals), Steve King (bass), and Alan Faye (drums). While some of the bands were taking their cues from The Ramones, The Damned and The Sex Pistols, The Pigs found their sonics and styling more inline with the likes of Jonathan Richman or Elvis Costello.
Rushlow says he had been using the name The Pigs since 1970 for various musical groups he had formed that never left his basement or garage. It wasn’t until Rushlow saw an ad the Detroit News that said “Punk Rock Band Wanted” in late 1977 that he decided to take his music out of the house. Answering the ad, Rushlow says he met Jack Tann and Don Fagenson who were putting together the Motor City Revue concept featuring three bands – a kind of throwback to the late 1950s with rock and roll acts or, closer to home, “The Motortown Revue” which was the traveling act of Motown stars in the early-mid 1960s.
Through a suggestion by a member of The Traitors, Rushlow auditioned Steve King to play bass to round out the group. The Pigs left “The Motor City Revue” by late summer of 1978 and would rename the group the Rushlow/King Combo, adding Mike Murphy of The Denizens on drums. Both Rushlow and King went on to form The Boners with Jerry Vile and Mike Murphy.
After working with Tann-Fagenson, Rushlow worked up a one-night only musical satire about a similar experience featuring a fake band called “The Birminghams”.
Rushlow left Detroit for Southern California in October 1980.
King would become a Grammy Award Winning music producer/engineer in Detroit working with acts as varied as Aretha Franklin, Patti Smith, George Clinton, and Eminem until his death in 2014 at the age of 56.
I played drums briefly with Mike and Steve when I lived in Wayne..