The Coctails were a musical group from Chicago, who formed while its members were attending the Kansas City Art Institute. The band was active from about 1988 to 1995, with reunions in 2000 as the last band to play on stage at Lounge Ax before the famous Chicago club closed its doors; December 2004; January 2005 for the release of their Popcorn Box CD collection of rarities; and July 2005 for a tour of Japan. Members Members Archer Prewitt, Mark Greenberg, John Upchurch, and Barry Phipps were largely self-taught musicians who experimented with various instruments and played in a manner they described as the Chinese fire drill method, in which they rotated instruments during live sets. For example, though Phipps often played bass, he was as likely to play guitar, drums, bass, saxophone, or theremin. Originally considered a loungecore band because of their name and because they covered some Martin Denny tunes, they considered themselves a garage jazz band. Unfortunately, when the lounge/easy listening revival bubbled up after the first Esquivel CD reissue in 1994, the Coctails—because of their name—were too-often presumed to be part of the trend. However, the foursome were always curious musical adventurers and eager for a challenge, and in their final years they explored avant-garde jazz and indie rock, so their stylistic changes weren't entirely due to being pigeonholed as musical lounge lizards. The four group members were also visual artists, and using a printshop which was installed in their loft created their own Coctails' line of merchandise, including buttons, calendars, t-shirts, newsletters, and similar music giveaways. They even created their own line of stuffed dolls in the likeness of each band member. Later a line of 12-inch action figures of the band were produced in Japan by Presspop Gallery as well as a book of the art of the Coctails' flyers. At some point during a Coctails show, the audience would be served popcorn in bags (and sometimes boxes) imprinted with the band's images. The band created their own vinyl only record label called Hi-Ball Records. In addition to issuing their own records, they released records by the Vandermark Quartet (featuring Ken Vandermark), Masters Of The Obvious, Dame Darcy, Evergreen (featuring Britt Walford of Slint), Log Letters (featuring Mark Greenberg from the Coctails), Dianogah (featuring well known poster artist Jay Ryan (artist)), Dump (band) (a side band by James McNew of Yo La Tengo), and