The Controllers enjoyed a brief moment in the first wave of LA punk bands, including this love song for an amputee.

“She’s the only one for me. She’s my amputee.” Now there’s a chorus to stop you in your tracks – if the song title Hot Stumps had not already.

This is by The Controllers, a first-wave LA punk band I’ve never come across before, from the original Class of ’77.

I have to confess I only found them because this song popped up uninvited on my YouTube feed – not by The Controllers but by a new French band called Dynamite Shakers.

It was only in the comments, while being simultaneously amused and appalled by those lyrics, that I found out it was a cover version.

“My baby’s got no legs no more / Now she’s crawling on the floor,” he sings, having explained that she missed a red light and “left her legs on the  highway one night.”

His passion remains undimmed; in fact: “My heart goes thump thump / I love her hot stumps / They give me goosebumps.”

The Controllers were formed in the summer of 1977 by Johnny Stingray (guitar, vocals), Kidd Spike (rhythm guitar, vocals), bassist DOA Dan and drummer Charlie Trash.

That’s the lineup that recorded their first single, Neutron Bomb (B-side: Killer Queers), released on a small local label called What Records later that year; not to be confused with a different song of the same name by another LA punk band, The Weirdos.

The original quartet had already split by the time they played the inaugural show at LA’s legendary punk venue The Masque and had slimmed down to a trio by the time they released a second single, Slow Boy, backed with Do The Uganda and Suburban Suicide.

Their rhythm section , DOA Dan and Charlie Trash, had left the band, so Johnny Stingray switched from guitar to bass and they found a new drummer – a black woman no less  – in Karla “Mad Dog” Barrett.

This lineup also recorded three more tracks, Another Day, Electric Church and Jezabel (a Frankie Laine cover, of all things), for a compilation of local punk bands called Tooth And Nail, put together by a fellow called Chris D and released in 1979.

By then The Controllers had split up, leaving a slender legacy in the annals of punk history, though they did get back together for a brief reunion in 1996.

As for this track, it was part of their original live repertoire but was only recorded as a demo in 1977, being re-recorded in 1992 by a band including members of both The Controllers and another first-wave LA punk band, The Skulls.

It did not come out until the band’s entire repertoire was assembled on an eponymous album released on Bacchus Archives in 2000.