to cassette at the Roxy nightclub in West Hollywood during the filming of the Cheech & Chong movie Up in Smoke. According to Pyn, the tape recorder was brought into the venue surreptitiously. Release and reception Ashford conjured up a music label, What? Records, and convinced Peaches to sell its inaugural 45—according to Smear, on the promise that it would be the "only store in the world" to offer it. (What? would issue another seminal L.A. punk single, The Dils' "I Hate the Rich", in September.) Acting as the band's manager, Ashford arranged a photo session for the single at The Masque, a central punk nightclub, in June. According to a 1977 interview with the band, 3,000 copies of "Forming" were printed, but the first 1,000 were "messed up". Ashford later explained that "the pressing plant goofed up and flipped the labels, and they threw like 800 of them over a hill at some houses". Despite the small number of copies and the drastically limited distribution, it made Billboards New Wave Top Ten chart. Interviewed by Slash in 1978, Pyn said that "Forming" was "about breaking down the government and forming our own." Heylin regards the song, whose chorus declares "I'm your gun/Pull my trigger", as a vehicle for Pyn to enact a punk version of Bowie's provocative Ziggy Stardust persona. Comparing it to The Damned's "New Rose"—the first single from the English punk scene—Jon Savage wrote that it articulated both its specific subcultural context and the broader punk notion that artists do not have to master their craft before seeking an audience: "As the riff churns repeatedly at the end, Pyn delivers a critique of the band's performance: 'The drums are too slow, the bass is too fast, the chords are all wrong, they're making the ending too long—Aaah I quit!'" Claude Bessy, founder and editor of the local punk scene's leading fanzine, Slash, described the "Forming" 45 as "beyond music...mind-boggling...inexplicably brilliant in bringing monotony to new heights". Retrospectively, popular music historians Brendan Mullen and Marc Spitz characterized it as a "surly drone ... with a tempo that could be kept by a wind-up, cymbal-crashing monkey", while Clinton Heylin finds it most notable for its "ineptitude". It is a "primitive blast", according to AllMusic's Ned Raggett, "un-produced and proud of it". "Sex Boy", he wrote, the "hilarious, chaotic" B-side, features "bottles breaking while Crash practically attacks the audibly scared