After a period playing shows and making music business connections in the Los Angeles scene, Felony appeared in the horror b-movie Graduation Day (1981), playing their song "Gangsters of Rock." Soon after, they signed with producers/managers Don Rubin, formerly of pop group The Ivy Three, and Artie Kornfeld. Live shows mixed by sound engineer Steve Sands, who is also credited as second engineer on the debut album “The Fanatic”
During the developmental stage of Felony, Jeffrey Spry left the band briefly to be the singer with Detroit Proto-Punk/Hard rock legends, Ron Asheton (of Iggy & The Stooges) and Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson (of The MC5) in a short lived super-group (based in Los Angeles) that was called "The New Order" (preceding the English new wave group of the same name). He quickly returned to Felony and continued working with his brother Joe and the other members of the band.
Felony went into the studio and emerged with single "The Fanatic," which became a hit on Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM with help from program director Rick Carroll. The song peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1983. It became a key track in the development of the Modern Rock radio format. "The Fanatic" was included in the influential 1983 Valley Girl soundtrack, which also featured Modern English's "I Melt With You". Felony also performed the track on American Bandstand. A video was made from "The Fanatic" "The Fanatic" video was shot in Hollywood, California, in 1983 and aired on MTV. The Fanatic video includes a cameo of Jeffrey Spry with his first wife, SAG actress, Lucrecia Sarita Russo.
The band, which now included Jeffrey on lead vocals, Joe on guitar, Danny Sands on piano/keyboards, Louis Ruiz on bass and Arty Blea on drums, recorded their first full-length album, also called The Fanatic, which was released in 1983 on Scotti Brothers Records with distribution by CBS Records. It included the single and nine other tracks that helped define the trendy-but-never-huge power-pop new wave sound of the early 1980s.
- Copyright © – CBS Inc.
- Phonographic Copyright ℗ – CBS Inc.
- Manufactured By – CBS Records
- Manufactured By – CBS Inc.
- Distributed By – CBS Records
- Distributed By – CBS Inc.
- Produced For – CBX Records
- Recorded At – Santa Monica Sound Recorders
- Recorded At – Indigo Ranch Studios
- Mastered At – A&M Studios
- Pressed By – Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Carrollton, GA
- Bass – Louis Ruiz
- Drums – Arty Blea
- Engineer – Tony Papa
- Engineer [Second] – Steve Sands
- Guitar, Backing Vocals – Curly Joe Spry
- Keyboards – Danny Sands
- Lyrics By, Lead Vocals – Jeffrey Scott Spry
- Mastered By – Bernie Grundman
- Music By, Arranged By – Felony
- Producer – Artie Kornfeld
- Producer, Management – Don Rubin
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