So, let's start at the beginning...

Brad Eisenberg. Senior year of high school.
Brad was a guitar player who needed a bass player.
He asked Bill if he'd be interested.
Bill had no experience with guitars or basses but 2 weeks later they were up on stage at a talent show.
They played Suite Madame Blue by Styx and
My Sharona by the Knack.
They called themselves AlphaXL because the room where they practiced at high school was A40.

Bill wrote his first song with Janice Busen, the AXL keyboard player.And no, that song is not available for download or any sort of listening; it's locked in a vault to be opened after his passing or when he's too senile or famous to care.

ATD... look at all that hair. *sigh*

1st year at the University of Virginia:
the band: Annoy the Dorm: classic rock covers
with John H on drums and Dawn M on guitar.
After college, John and Dawn got married.
A bit later, they got divorced.

The band didn't last much past first year.

In 1981, guitarist Gary Hawthorne wanted to start a band with Charlottesville singer songwriter Kym Fields.
They put an ad in the University Journal for a bass player,
an ad Bill answered.

Soon after, Kym dropped out and Bill recruited his high school friend Claire to sing. About this time, Dave Hyde came on board as drummer. He brought his friend Paul to play keyboards and The Tease was born.

It was a hodgepodge of music of the day from the Ramones to Genesis to Pat Benatar and the Go-Gos.
Fun and danceable.

Gary

Danette, the Tease

Claire left after two performances and through another ad in the school paper they hooked up with Danette Clemmons.

After a little unpleasentness, Paul left and they were a quartet.

Spring of 1982 found them playing all over Charlottesville. And here are some pictures to prove it:

a fraternity party
the Mousetrap
Pavilion XI
a country club called Max

these pics all come from contact sheets so it kind of looks like old film, but, you know, people pay good money to have perfectly good video look like old film, so no apologies.

thanks to Dave for the pics

After a while, Danette called it quits.
She was followed by Sue Anderson who called herself Bitsy.

Bill and Gary wrote some songs together and apart
and the earliest recording anyone has of the song Loneliness with You features Sue.

But she didn't last that long.
Pam Glasser followed her
and the band added Bob Coster on guitar.
Also around this time, Dave left to be replaced by Michael Johnson on drums. Mike didn't have a drum kit so one was hastily bought for him and the new Tease performed two weeks later.

Listen to Stay Away - the Tease demo with the lineup of Pam and Bob and Mike.
This was recorded in a church (because the price was right). Mike is singing lead.

Pam didn't last too long either - she had a boyfriend/manager/svengali who thought she would be a star and thought the Tease would be a vehicle for that stardom
but of course it didn't happen.
He drove a Trans Am.

And tired of female singers, the Tease became KGB Secret, Secret because there was a band in Richmond called KGB.
And KGB Secret played around central Virginia for a year or so.

Check out Loneliness with You from their demo
and Ladies Man live at Hardway in Richmond.

Like so many things, KGB whithered and died.
Bill formed the Plaid Rabbits with Michael Johnson and Chris Gillette to perform original songs. It lasted a year.

check out the history of Loneliness with You for a more detailed account of all of this...

Chris went on to play in 98 Colors with the Mendecino brothers. Bill did sound for this band and produced one of their demos at a recording studio in Richmond. The engineer was so stoned during one of the sessions he punched in a guitar track at the end of a song and erased all the tracks. To cover his mistake he suggested they fade the song and the band, unaware of the error, aquiesced.
Another song from that session is Chris' On and On a fun piece of pop included here because of Bill's backing vocal -
"oh you can't hit that high note at the end," various people said...

Mike went on to play with a band called Subject to Change.
Bill produced a couple of songs for them at Robbie Cribbs' studio,
including Baby I Think. The song is based around a rototom pattern Mike is playing and, of course, when we unpacked the rototoms at the studio, they were broken. So Bill held them in place for the duration of the recording. Also, the scream in the break is the guitar player Arnie yelling at himself for messing up.

Mike went on to play with Gary in a band called Modern Logic.

Gary continues to play music, off and on, in Charlottesville.
Michael, also, continues to play music in Charlottesville.
David is an aerospace engineer in California who plays music occasionally recreationally.
Bob passed away about ten years ago.
Chris plays music in Seattle.
So far, none of us knows where any of the girls wound up but feel free to pass on any info...

thanks to Gary for his memory