The first modern Creeps album is generally considered to be "Sounds of the Pogo", an extremely low-distribution cassette by a pre-teen Jeffrey Scott Holland in 1974. The album's title refers not to the punk dance - which didn't yet exist - but to a character in a homemade comic book drawn by Holland and Greg Hisle. The star of "The Pogo" comics was a very "Incredible Hulk" type sympathetic monster whose head, bizarrely, resembled Walt Kelly's Pogo Possum. The "music" on the album mostly consisted of some "atmospheric" sounds that was quite industrial-noise before its time. There were also spoken interludes with Hisle, filled with in-jokes (the meaning of which have been long since forgotten). Among the juvenile chatter, however, are references to "the Creeps".

Retrovirus & Opportunistic Infection made their first early primitive recordings around 1976 and continued to record throughout the late 1970s, though their true career didn't really kick in until the early 1980s when they blossomed into the purest of all Creeps bands. The early recordings were heavy on singing along with other musical sources from radio, TV and albums, and also featured predominantly covers of then-popular classic rock songs. A common motif for RV&OI at this time was to try to cover the songs completely straight and serious at first (as best as possible with their extremely limited musical abilities) and then gradually let the song build up to a complete insane rant and freak-out, much in the way that Sam Kinison would do with his cover of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" many years later (not to mention The Soft Boys' cover of "That's When Your Heartaches Begin".)

The early RV&OI cassettes were all given names like "21 Heavy Hits", "Rock Gold", or "30 Rock N Soul Magic Moments", taking these titles directly from common cheesy K-Tel type compilations of the era. Years later, another Creeps group, The Hartman Band, nodded to this tradition with their album "20 Great Truck Drivin' Songs".

In the late 1970s Holland formed a short-lived band called Threshold. Though there is no evidence that they thought of themselves as a "Creeps" band, they certainly qualified because they were so primitive, they mostly existed only as a concept. They played no actual concerts and made only a handful of crude demos (none of which actually featured all members performing together at the same time), but sleeve art was designed for their non-existent albums, stage costumes were made by crudely sewing aluminum foil to polyester shirts and slacks, and posters were placed around Model Laboratory School in Richmond. Threshold's main influences, musically and stylistically, were Kiss, Queen, and the Bay City Rollers. The lineup was JSH on guitar, his cousin David Holland on drums, and Kristi Nordgulen on keyboards. Their first album was to have been self-titled, and their second's projected title was "Stairway to the Stars". Of Threshold, Holland has this to say: "I have nothing to say". Another largely conceptual JSH band, Tofu, at least actually released one cassette tape in 1983.

In the early 1980s, Holland began taking trips to Atlanta each summer to visit friends, and it was during this time that he began his life's calling as a street performer and panhandler. During this time he began using the term "Creeps Music" to describe his style of low-budget Americana. RV&OI met Holland somewhere in the early 80s, and he influenced them greatly. By 1984, songs with "Creeps" in the title began appearing in RV&OI's repertoire, such as "Key Ring Creeps", "Pop Can Creeps", and "Kenwood House Creeps", an ode to a Richmond nursing home (a decade later, several lines from this song would resurface in their almost-a-hit-on-WRFL song "Nurse's Registry".) In all instances, "Creeps" was used exactly in the way that one would use the term "Blues" in Blues songs, and this set an important precedent for all modern Creeps Music from then on. Sometime during this period RV&OI purportedly released a couple of ultra-rare vinyl 45s on an obscure label called Gonzalez Records.

While influencing RV&OI with his notion of "The Creeps", RV&OI in turn influenced JSH with their guerilla tactics of giving tapes away in large quantities rather than trying to sell them. Homemade cassette albums were left in public restrooms, phone booths, bus stops, and even placed in people's purses and coat pockets without their knowledge. Spreading their creations were far more important than mere commercial success.

Meanwhile, other purveyors of primitive sounds were emerging in Richmond. An eccentric fellow calling himself simply JLK began making simplistic but heartfelt tapes at home, sometimes by himself, sometimes backed by friends with only slightly more musical skill than he, and sometimes backed by his Apple MacIntosh computer's music software. JLK;etc., as his primary aggregate eventually become known by, was heavily influenced by such diverse sources as Bruce Springsteen, Japanese anime themes, songs performed by his high school band, and Bill Cosby. Among his early works, his album "Toasting Mr.Pizza Company Man" has come to be regarded as a classic example of pure Creeps music, devastatingly nerdly in a powerful way that bands like Pavement could only hope to achieve. He also was the manager of a duo called Central Rock Company.

Central Rock Company - who took their name from a local quarry business - were two high school misfits (Shay Quillen and Kurt Adams) who performed a highly peculiar act. It consisted mostly of jumping up and down with way too much teen angst and singing mostly acapella versions of 1980s hits mixed with original tunes of their own, such as "Polka De Pineapple", "Middle School Rapist", "Upon Hearing That Supergirl Is Dead", and "Penis". Sometimes they were backed up by a motley gang of local kids (called "the CRC Dismembers"). Jeffrey Scott Holland also played guitar on some of their studio sessions for JLK Records, and at an infamous party gig in Shay's back yard. After a handful of cassette releases that did generate some attention in their community, CRC dissipated in 1987. Strangely, these highly adrenalin-pumped kids, whose puerile and childish antics were rivaled only by RV&OI, abruptly grew up and moved on past such silliness. At least for a while.

There were other low-budget garage bands floating around Richmond during this time, such as The Herbivorous Dayglo Spamtins, Decembrist Uprise (which featured Otto Helmuth years before his Blueberries fame), and Fleem (a minimalist-absurdist art project). All of these bands, along with Central Rock Company and JLK;etc., were generally not thought of as Creeps bands at the time, though the concept was in evidently in the air at the time, since an extremely similar term began to emerge called "Pusm".

Pusm Music was the term of choice for JLK and many others in his camp, and its definition echoed the Creeps philosophy of deliberate primitivism. Shay Quillen summed it up best: "Pusm music is about doing the best you can with what you've got, whether it be a temperamental 4-track or a peanut butter plate & knife combo. It's about making music that is enjoyable to make, and hoping that other people enjoy it too but being perfectly happy if they don't. It's trying to make pop music without waiting until you can afford instruments. It's some of the best music in the world, and it has nothing to do with the idea that it doesn't matter whether you suck or not."

Be that as it may, after CRC disbanded Quillen went on to college in Virginia and ended up taking part in several bands who were much too good to be strictly Creeps/Pusm, such as the Kabirs, Gamewardens, Pilgrims and the Brandon String Trio. Of these groups, the Kabirs were the more primitive and spontaneous, and in fact the word "Pusm" is first heard on record on their song "Dance My Little Butt Mama". In the years since, JSH has covered their song "Lipgloss", RV&OI have covered "Blueballs", and JLK;etc. have covered "Goddess of Love".

In 1991 Jeffrey Scott Holland founded Creeps Records, a highly ambitious record label with many projects planned, nine out of ten of which never saw fruition. Although a few low-distribution cassettes of his own solo projects floated around, JSH and Creeps Records focused primarily on Retrovirus & Opportunistic Infection, releasing large quantities of their recordings over a seven year period and pushing them over the air at Lexington's WRFL-FM, resulting in several "almost-sorta-local-hits" for them. JLK;etc. also received their biggest radio hit, "Justice League of Kansas", thru WRFL.

Creeps Records also signed up Grillo the Clown, a Moondog-like street lunatic who had already been infamous for years for his surreal (and often nauseating) performance art, usually done on sidewalks all over the central Kentucky area. JLK;etc. did a rare live performance with Grillo at The Wrocklage in which Grillo turned every song into a Sonic Youth-esque discordant grunge-fest, much to JLK's horror and dismay.

During the early 1990s other Creeps bands included Penis Your Majesty (a Gwar-ish spectacle of a band with over-the-top stage antics), Badbaac (with umlats over the A's), Formula LX-321, Tetanus Toxoid, Gatorbait, Industry Standards, JS Box, Staph & Strep, The Hartman Band, The Licorice Quartet, and Cannibal Ferox (whose proclivity for goofing around onstage prompted critic Bill Widener to opine in a review: "Y'know, if these gimps would stop screwin' around and going for easy laughs, they might rule this fuckin' burg." However, Creeps fans liked them precisely because they did nothing but screw around onstage.)

In 1995 JSH met up with a young new UK student named Todd Dockery, who shared a similar love of Beat writing, a similar rural upbringing, and a similar fascination with Edward Hieronymus, the Jackson County mystic whose loutish adventures were legendary. Hieronymus went on to be a key figure in Creeps lore, both as himself and as his retarded-wrestler persona "Black Tar Feather". JSH enlisted Dockery to join him on his street-busking performances on drums, and soon the duo began appearing regularly as Cheeseburger & Fries, one of the best-known Creeps acts of recent years. They released several tapes and a CD, and confused audiences with their blues-based blend of Creeps music, which it was in spades because it was often completely spontaneously conceived. Dockery also played in The Kentuckians and Holland's Jug Stompers (a jug band ensemble in which musical talent was greatly frowned upon).

When JSH (whose behavior was becoming increasingly strange) was gone on one of his long "fishing trips" that usually resulted in his being missing in action for weeks or months at a time, Dockery often performed with Brian Manley as Eggroll & Fries, Mickey & The Wild Bunch, and ultimately as a glam-garage band called The Smacks! with an exclamation point. For a time The Smacks! also had a questionably female bass player named Jennifer Ray, who has since gone on to front her own band, The Crunchies, whose reputation for being "the stupidest band in Kentucky" (according to Ace Magazine) is unparalleled.

Nowadays things are relatively quiet on the Creeps front, but a batch of low-fidelity low-budget tapes from Husk Records out of Nicholasville are rather reminscent of the good old days of Creeps Records. There is still hope that Central Rock Company will someday reunite, or that Kurt Adams will be induced to record a solo album. Currently JSH still has his jug band project and street-busks with Sherry Deatrick (from the classic D.C. punk band The Nurses) under the name of Toast & Coffee. For the most part, however, these days he is pursuing his solo career. JLK;etc. is still happily recording tapes in JLK's living room, and Retrovirus & Opportunistic Infection are still out there roaming the countryside, providing the purest Creeps Music that has ever been made, and probably ever will be.