Outnumbered

In Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, Jon Ginoli on vocals and guitar teamed with Paul Budin on vocals and bass to launch the jangle-punk band the Outnumbered in 1982. The pair had first crossed paths while writing record reviews for the University of Illinois student paper The Daily Illini. With the addition of lead guitarist Tim McKeage and drummer Ken Golub, the quartet played its debut show on Halloween that year. Taking cues from local heroes the Vertebrats, the Outnumbered set out to merge the Byrds’ melodicism with the Ramones’ energy and soon became a fixture on the regional underground circuit. Their first LP, Why Are All the Good People Going Crazy?, appeared on the Homestead label in 1985 and yielded a college-radio hit with “I Feel So Sorry Now,” leading to national tours supporting the Replacements, The Violent Femmes, and Soul Asylum. The 1986 follow-up Holding the Grenade Too Long failed to lift the group beyond cult status, and the Outnumbered disbanded the next year. The local Edible label released a third album, Work...Buy...Die, posthumously in 1988. Ginoli later settled in San Francisco and formed the pioneering queercore band Pansy Division. Parasol issued the Outnumbered retrospective Surveying the Damage in 1998.