The Numbers Band (or, if you prefer, 15-60-75) formed in Ohio in 1969 and are still going strong with original frontman Robert Kidney.
The first time I heard of the strangely named group 15-60-75 – usually known to fans as The Numbers Band – was after the death of David Thomas, who had mentioned them in an interview.
Which is odd as they were formed 56 years ago and are still going strong in a career marked by a failure ever to break into the mainstream.
Apart from a brief hiatus when their founder, Robert Kidney, required a kidney transplant. And no, I didn’t make that up; I guess it’s just nominative determinism for you.
The Numbers Band come from Ohio and their music, rooted in Chicago blues with elements of jazz, is part of the so-called Akron Sound that sprang forth from their state and had a moment in the early days of punk with bands like Devo, The Waitresses and David Thomas’s Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs.
It was an incestuous scene: Devo founder Gerald Casale passed through the group in the early ’70s – he was expelled for wearing a monkey mask onstage – and Chris Butler from The Waitresses had a stint as bassist, while a 1982 single, Here In The Life, was released on Thomas’s own Hearthen label.
The central figure in the band is guitarist and vocalist Robert Kidney, who formed the group in 1969 with Chrissie Hynde’s brother Terry on sax, Hank Smith on guitar and keyboards, Greg Colbert on bass and drummer Tim Hudson.
They made a name for themselves in and around their hometown of Kent, Ohio, though they had a brief break in the early ’70s when Kidney left to join his brother Jack’s band King Of Hearts.
Weeks later they became a new Numbers Band with a new lineup of both Kidney brothers, Hynde, Drake Gleason (bass) and Jay Brown (drums).
Guitarist Michael Stacey was added in time to play on their 1976 debut album, Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town – recorded live in Cleveland during their support slot with Bob Marley & The Wailers.
This track, Animal Speaks, was covered by Anton Fier’s alternative supergroup The Golden Palominos – notably featuring the vocals of John Lydon (at his whiniest) and Jack Bruce on bass – but the band’s first studio album, The Numbers Band 2, did not arrive until six years later.
Four years after that, a third album, Among The Wondering, brought them some small local success with a single called High Heels Are Dangerous.
In 1990 Robert Kidney received a kidney transplant – necessitated by a birth defect and complicated by years of hard living – but he managed to release a second live album, Blues By The Numbers, the following year, plus a retrospective and a new studio album Hotwire in 1992.
In 1998 both Kidney brothers, Robert and Jack, performed with David Thomas and his Mirror Man stage production at the South Bank Centre and in 2000 the entire Numbers Band performed there.
Now in their 55th year, and with a record of performing more than 6,000 shows since 1970, The Numbers Band celebrated the anniversary with a concert in their hometown of Kent, Ohio, in March 2025.
Oh and in case you’re wondering, The name 15-60-75 comes from a sequence of numbers mentioned in a book by Paul Oliver – The Blues Fell This Morning – about the Numbers Racket in Harlem. The numbers also have a musical significance: 15 divided by 15 is 1, 60 divided by 15 is 4, and 75 divided by 15 is 5, which is known as the “universal progression” in music theory.