Michael Mariotte was a punk-rock drummer who later became a nationally known anti-nuclear activist. He died May 16, 2016 at his home in Kensington, Md. He was 63.



Michael Lee Mariotte was born December 9, 1952, in Indianapolis. He spent four years in Paris during his youth, when his father was assigned to France as a civilian employee of the Army.



The family later settled in Reston, Va., and Michael Mariotte graduated in 1970 from Herndon High School. He attended the University of Texas at Austin before graduating from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1978.



While living in Arlington, Va., in the late 1970s, Michael Mariotte and his housemates were interested in starting a band but did not have a drummer. Michael Mariotte, a onetime guitarist, learned to play drums on the job.



He and singer-guitarist Diana Quinn, guitarist David Wells and a changing cast of bassists began performing in 1978 as Tru Fax and the Insaniacs. Through the mid-1980s, the band was a mainstay at the 9:30 Club and other Washington-area venues, along with other leading groups in the local punk scene, including the Bad Brains, Insect Surfers, Slickee Boys, Urban Verbs and others.



When Washingtonian magazine named the Insaniacs Washington’s “worst band” in 1980, the group gleefully used the epithet for publicity.



The Insaniacs released the album 'Mental Decay' in 1982.



Tru Fax and the Insaniacs continued to perform occasionally until shortly before Michael Mariotte's death. In recent years, the band was working on a new recording, 'ArtiFax', which is scheduled for release later in 2016.