Reading the Village Voice in my in my parent’s bed I remember seeing the ad in the Public Notice Musicians section which I read religiously. I don’t remember the exact wording. Something like “ No Wave punk/pop band seeks lead guitar” was the headline. I think it mentioned something about the band playing a New Years Eve show at Max’s with Tom Verlaine from the band Television. It might have said something about James Brown. This must have been around 1980. I called. The lead singer told me he was a regular bartender at CBGBs and could also get good gigs there. Also he said they were one of the early bands to have a single out on Ork records that was produced by Fred Smith from Television called “The Way”. It was apparent to this fairly new to the city ex Long Island suburban rock & roller that this band was at the center of a pretty exciting scene. Embraced early on by New York’s coolest bands and well received in the recently developing “No Wave” scene, whatever the hell that was, the Revelons seemed like a very happening group to be involved with. After describing my guitar sound, bands I liked and my obsession with fuzzboxes they gave me my timeslot to come down and audition. From my Upper West Side Apartment I remember Dragging my Les Paul Gold Top onto the subway as I headed downtown to the Revlon’s rehearsal loft located in an industrial by day, dangerous late at night address on Christie Street near Delacney. There was a park in the middle of the block near there filled with drug addicts and hookers which added to the local flavor as I walked down the street with condoms and works strewn in the gutter. The Revelon’s rehearsal place was in the singer and leader of the bands artist studio/living space in a run down industrial building on Christie Street in the section where Chinese businessmen sell and warehouse industrial kitchen equipment.. Entering a very scary industrial creaky freight elevator I slowly ascended up to the higher floor of the loft. As the big metal doors opened I self consciously entered the large space. The first thing I noticed there was a rooster darting around the room, pecking and strutting around the huge paintings that filled the large space. I noticed a small band set up in the center of a huge empty room with stacks of paintings everywhere. The whole band were artists. When I say artists I don’t mean recording artists, I mean art schooled serious abstract and realistic painters and who knows; possibly several of them were even starving (they were all quite thin). I didn’t sense they were a trust funded band, like the many located here in NYC these days. The band greeted me, took their positions, picked up their instruments and ran through part of a song. It was obvious this band was truly one of those art/punk bands where no one really knew how to play their instruments very well, technically speaking, it was apparent they had natural musical ability, and quite good timing. With the Revelons sound their instrumental inexperience actually worked to their advantage developing a style that was part of the whole point. Rolling Stones influenced garage bands years before had a similar raw approach to playing rock music but I guess this was more conceptual, purposely minimalist or consciously intellectual yet still had the right feel and makings of killer rock and roll. Maybe abstract painters/poets who picked up guitars and transferred their visual creative abilities into the most immediate art form, rock and roll was a method that could lead to some very interesting musical creations. Well yeah, lots of musicians went to art school in their pasts but in the tradition of Patti Smith or the Talking Heads the musicians creating this music were ultra art school types, but with a sound that rocked hard and was more fun than pretentious.

They showed me a few simple songs, and played some of the riffs and fragments from parts of other songs. Then we tried a mutated version of a jam on a James Brown riff. I remember doing some Steve Cropper type licks with a boost from my beloved fuzzbox which seemed to elicit a pretty good response, “that’s cool, I like that”. After a few manic Chuck Berry/Johnny Thunders riffs I tossed off they would say, “that’s great but its too good, too musical, can you do it more…more like….spastic, nervous, “you know, play it worse!” You see part of their concept was to have the lead guitar match the oblique lyrics and the frantic yelping delivery of the lead vocalist. The singer had a truly astonishing voice, an amazing voice that was somehow never discovered by the masses. The classic punk phrasings of Patty Smith, or Richard Hell, the nervous tremor of David Byrne or Rick Ocasic, but with a much better range that could get up to an ear shattering falsetto. A great, dare I say “pop” voice. Under all that artiness there were also influences of really great pop songwriting that were very apparent to me. A lot of Doo Wop, 60’s girl group, Motown and Brill Building influences that somehow blended seamlessly with the punk, garage and minimalist no wave sounds the band bashed out. No Wave pop was the kind of contradiction the band liked. Of course since my early formative musical years were spent growing up with a bunch that were more like fifteen year old rock critics than just some friends who played guitars or went to rock concerts, and being a songwriter myself who co founded the ahead of its time power pop band Radio City (Which is having a release that was recorded in 1977 on Radioheartbeat Records this summer) I had ideas for songs using his voice and the bands style from the very start. They liked my guitar sound enough and I agreed to learn some songs and some of the harmonies that sounded like a chorus of retarded do woopers (one of the interesting endearing and almost comical aspects of the early bands sound). The singer wrote me out song charts of the chords on orange construction paper with a red marker. I can’t believe I remember this.
The songs were great. The chord changes, simple.

Guitar wise they wanted their lead guitarist to sound just like Robert Quine who’s frantic oblique guitar style nervously stuttered and fizzled with groups like the Void Oids(later Mathew Sweet, Lou Reed and many others) and of course a major influence were the sometime chaotic squealings that emanated from the guitars of TomVerlaine and Richard Lloyd. I soon developed the art of incorporating wrong or odd notes into a more conventional guitar solo. Start out with a classic Chuck Berry or surf guitar riff then you would build up the tension and then explode in a frenzy of spastic sputtering guitar freak out. That wasn’t that far from Jorma from the Jefferson Airplanes early playing, or Quicksilver’s John Cipollina and Neil Young who were all influences in my lead style, but psychedelic hippie leads weren’t quite what they wanted either. Any time I would play any type of solo that veered close to anything smooth or jazzy or resembling a Jerry Garcia lick someone would make a face and say, “no, no, don’t do THAT!.” I realized it was actually hard to play “bad” on purpose and had to work on sounding off kilter yet more naturally spastic. I had to play like Chuck Berry having an epileptic fit. A bit like Johnny Thunders I guess. Having no lack of my own nervousness and anxiety I learned how to channel that feeling into my solos. Maybe coming to rehearsals with my usual Quaalude hangover actually helped matters.

The band had this perfect look for what they sounded like. The handsome lead singer was tall, dark and demented looking. Onstage he looked like a brooding James Dean acting at times with the mannerisms of a manic mental patient but mostly a serious looking stare, like a serial killer deep in thought. He was quite attractive to the many motorcycle jacket wearing females in the audience. The bass player also had a great look of a young anorexic David Bowie who had natural cool moves when his long lanky frame swayed in time as he savagely plucked the strings of his bass. Very Sid Viscous or like the bass player from the Clash. The drummer was from the school of looking so straight that you look cool like the young nerd scientist/mathematician look of David Byrne or the Feelies. Although the other band members were basically from some form of Suburbia too it felt to me like I was the one who was the outsider trying to gain access to this very exclusive hip society. Although I too now lived in the city I didn’t live downtown and I somehow still had the more conventional aura of a Lawn Guyland Jewish rocker dude who was basically in it for the sex drugs and rock and roll. They didn’t smoke pot either which was considered “old guard” by these artiste types. Although speed and a lot of alcohol were used, I guess they gravitated to substances that were more beat poet writer instead of hippie rock band stoner. Actually, I too was an artist and cartoonist myself in my younger days but I suppose that wasn’t enough to earn me the badge of official downtown living bohemian art school artist turned no wave art rocker. Another reason I felt a bit self conscious was my slot in the band was to be a temporary fill in for their original lead guitarist who now played a limited role in the band due to the obligations of his own band, one of the original CBGB bands The Miamis and various projects he was doing. The Miamis were on the first CB’s album. He was a very tasteful rhythm guitarist and could always manage a great psychotic surf solo. So I was referred to as an auxiliary member.

Still I played many gigs over the year and a half or so and really dug the way the band was evolving. Loved playing those frantic solos over the minimalist chugging punk rhythm section and din of cheering fans at some really fantastic shows. And being the semi shallow person that I am, and a bit of a rock and roll cliché, I did manage to maximize and take full advantage of my new found fame as The Revelon’s (auxiliary) lead guitarist. Hey, why not make the most of it, getting right into clubs for free, complimentary drinks and of course the big plus was the ability to impress and attract more than a few of the many females heavily into the scene. My first gig with them was at CB’s opening up for the dissonant noise band chaos of the Arto Lindsay led group known as DNA. The club was empty, but opening for this just insane sounding very avant-garde band seemed like a perfect first gig. It went well. The band sounded pretty damn good. Then I remember a gig opening for the Shirts. Another original CB’s band who was also on the first CB’s album had their whole fan base from Brooklyn filling the club that night. It’s fair to say that musically and even judging by the crowd’s reaction that we pretty much blew them away. I remember another time A big moment for me was ruined when my turn came to solo during a jam with a drugged out woozy Richard Lloyd in front of a big crowd at Hurrahs. I kneeled down to do a kind of Johnny Thunders version of the Chuck Berry duck walk when I stepped on my guitar cable pulling it out cutting off my guitar. I remember trying to produce the right guitar tone that would compliment the sound of the lead singers beloved Hagstrom guitar through his Fender Super Reverb with the one blown speaker that produced the perfect sounding distortion for his chugging staccato rhythm guitar. Every different overdrive setting or new fuzzbox I would try he would say, it sounds too much like my guitar, you need a different sound. The bands leader and I never actually wrote together but later in his career he did gravitate to the more polished pop sound that I tried to sway him towards. Here I was this auxiliary member, but as I said, I was a writer myself who knew I could write and I couldn’t help throwing my two cents in. How this would sound better if you used more Paul Revere and the Raiders or Beach Boy type harmonies, or that would sound better with more power chords or jangling guitars. He did write a good song when he used the “Feel A Whole Lot Better” guitar figure from that classic twelve string byrds part that I showed him, so I obviously had some influence. His movement to a more polished poppier sound was certainly a logical progression for someone who was working with more professional producers and musicians. It was his vision and after maybe a year and a half of playing live shows with the band I was told I wouldn’t be needed for any more gigs. That was that

I suppose I could take solace in that the whole band was eventually replaced, except for the lead singer/writer who was in essence now “the band”. The major labels that were courting him must have suggested he had a better chance to hit big by basically using pro musicians like Patty Smiths drummer and various other players as a backing band and that would be The Revelons. As with many unique bands the inclusion of the pros robbed the band of its special magic and innocence of its early period. I’m not just saying this cause I wasn’t in the band anymore because they were astoundingly good before I joined and after I left. It’s just the original line up syndrome that has happened to many bands. Perhaps the irony of using the new better players was that they were just too experienced to keep the same magic or original sound alive. I liked the earlier songs better too, except for the later release of the obscure Playboy Records critically acclaimed “Outlaw Without A Gun.”

At any rate it is amazing to me how many current “hip” bands from the Strokes to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ,(I know I’m not exactly up to the moment and to some degree I think both these acts have peaked) to the hundreds of bands I will never hear ended up sounding more than a bit like the early Revelons , when in fact most probably never even heard the band. Maybe its because too many new bands are all trying to use too much of the same influences, Television or the Gang of Four with a bit of power pop. When everyone’s influences are the same three obscure bands, what do you get, instead of something obscure you get something homogenized. Results = Four out five new bands sound just like Franz Ferdinad. Listen to the second version of “The Way” (you touch my hand) on the Revelons anthology and I dare anyone to tell me that is not one of the ass kickingist songs of all time. A punk band from Scotland called the Nomads covered “The Way” and got a great response cause the song is just so good. You can and should get the Revelons Anthology which is currently available.