For the town in Belgium which was called 'Wipers' by British soldiers during World War One, See Ypres. The Wipers were a punk rock group formed in Portland, Oregon in 1977 by guitarist Greg Sage, drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal. The Wipers were one of the earliest American purveyors of the genre, and the group's tight song structure and use of heavy distortion has been hailed as extremely influential by numerous critics and musicians. Career Is This Real?, The Wipers' first album, was self-recorded and first released in 1979 on Sage's own Trap Records. It quietly gained a cult following, although the band was better known for their live shows around the Portland area at the time. While the Wipers began with Is this Real? by pioneering the tight, catchy punk rock that Nirvana and others would bring to the mainstream a decade later, the band quickly evolved into producing guitar-so