The Rat-Taled Dream

 Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

A Rat-Taled Dream
In the dream, it is the present time, and despite the fact that the club The Rathskeller (aka The Rat) in Boston is long gone, I went to see a show with Kandy Kabot, who lived in the city for a number of years. I had been to the club numerous times between 1980 and 1985, so I was a bit familiar with it. However, the map does not match the territory in my dream.

As we approached the club, the front of it was lined with people waiting to get in, and there were windows on the front that went longer than the club’s entrance could fit in reality. We looked inside and there was a big room with marble floors, as people lined up.

Inside, at the head of the line, was a fortune teller reading tarots, who had to be paid in order to get into the club, above the cost to get in. I am not a believer in mysticism, especially having dated the assistant of a professional psychic during the early 1980s, so I was trying to figure another way into the club. When I got back to the glass doors, Kandy was gone, I looked in and she was on line to the fortune teller.

The Secret Service
(ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

Somehow, I got into the place in a roundabout way, avoiding the seer and, for the moment, since the doorman was not there, I got in without paying. I went backstage and ran into the opening group (didn’t catch the name), which were a bunch of young guys who were in good spirits and friendly, and I hung out with them for a while, getting along well. They reminded me of the Long Island band The Secret Service, who I had seen at The Dive Bar in New York City in real life in the 1990s.

Naturally, I had my camera with me, but questioned whether it would work since I have not used it in a long time, and was unsure of the batteries.

I heard someone speaking behind me, and it was well known Boston musician Al Quint who I do not know personally, but with whom I am Facebook friends. In dream logic, however, I had seen him play before, in the 1980s. I turned around and said hello, and he said, “I know you! You took that picture of me onstage that I really liked.” I was impressed he remembered me.

The Dogmatics at The Rat
(ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

We walked down a long corridor together and talked generally, until we got to the main room, where he took off to get ready. And instead of the lovely dive bar that the Rat actually was, in the midst of the dream, it was a large room with rows of folding chairs with a dais in front with four or five tables. The place was crowded, and in about the fourth row sat the opening band, who called me, saying they had saved me a seat. As I shuffled through the row to their enthusiastic waving me over, I woke up.

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS: Wait and See (1981)

© Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1981/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

Bassist Ali McMordie in the forefront

One of the great and little-known aspects about Irving Plaza in New York during the 1980s was that the back door was not only open, but unguarded until a couple of hours before a show. While I didn’t often take advantage just to see free shows by hanging around, settling down for a long wait (and not wanting the management to become aware of the situation, killing the golden goose), I did occasionally use this knowledge to gain access to bands that were playing at the club.

Alan Abramowitz and I went through the back door one late afternoon and caught the Stiff Little Fingers soundcheck. After, we approached the band about the possibility of an interview. The only SLF member who did not have a previous appointed place to be was Ali McMordie, the bass player, and we propositioned him. Ali agreed to the interview, which we did upstairs in the Irving Plaza dressing room.

This interview was published in FFanzeen, No 8, dated 1981.

Stiff Little Fingers: Wait and See

I am not one to extol the virtues of the new music coming out of England right now. When the punk movement died and the Blitz and New Romanticism fashions came in, my interest sort of declined. The better groups still seem to be the older ones, like Buzzcocks and the Jam.

About a year ago, a friend came to me telling of a great new song he’d heard called “At the Edge,” by some group called Stiff Little Fingers (named after a song by the Vibrators).  When I saw a copy of SLF’s Nobody’s Heroes in a cut-out bin, the album on which the song appeared, I figured what-the-hell. And I’m damned glad I did.

Stiff Little Fingers has been around quite a while now –since the mid-punk days of late ’77. Their first album, Inflammable Material, is a social comment, as well as a musical one. A rare, successful cross between the power of the music of the Ramones and the biting lyrics of the Pistols.

The band’s four members – Jake Burns, guitar and lead vocals; Henry Cluney, guitar and vocals; Ali McMordie, bass guitar; and Jim Reilly, drums, replacing Brian Faloon after the first album – hail from strife-ridden Belfast, and have since moved to London to help their careers (Henry, however, chose to remain a resident of Belfast) – which has been going full-guns since Nobody’s Heroes was released. From the time I first started listening, two more albums have followed: the live Hanx (Irish slang for “thanks”), and the recently released Go For It.

I caught up to the band when they appeared in New York City on a cross-American/Canadian tour. The following interview was done upstairs at Club 57/Irving Plaza, on June 20, 1981, with bassist Ali.

FFanzeen: Where do you head from here?
Ali(stair) McMordie: I wish I knew. I don’t know the exact dates, still. It’s always the same any time we come over here because to organize anything in the States, you actually have to be in the States. You can’t do it on the phone because it just takes too long and nobody bothers calling you back. We sent our manager over two days earlier than us to do that, specifically. We’re going to both coasts and Canada. Last tour we just did the two coasts.

FFanzeen: When the group first started, I read that you rented out your own gigs, and then sold tickets on the sly.
Ali: Yeah, because any time we booked a club, there were some places that were really cheap, like $20 for a night. The club made its money on the bar, and of course, you weren’t allowed to sell tickets because that would mean you’d be making quite a bit of money. So, we’d sell them for 60p; that’s less than $2 anyway. We sold them at the carpark outside so the management couldn’t see us. We used to give them to record shops to give to people or to sell. We never got our money back anyway, so after a while we Just let people come in for nothing to try and fill up the place. It was pretty hard in Belfast, finding clubs; there weren’t that many. There were only about two clubs left in those days.

FFanzeen: There’s a large music scene growing out of Belfast now.
Ali: There’s a lot of bands there, right.

FFanzeen: The Undertones, Protex –
Ali: Protex, yeah. They’re based in London, right now. They did okay over here. Not as far as records go, though.

FFanzeen: They played a lot of gigs here.
Ali: Back in Belfast, we played our first gig of the tour. You’ve heard of the recession over in England, nobody’s got any money? It’s crazy. Out of all the towns, they’re hardest hit in England, up north there, Belfast being in it as well. But we really enjoyed being back there; part of the fact that it’s our home town, they don’t bother much about worrying about the recession because they’ve got so much else to worry about.

[Ali leaves to get cigarettes, then returns]

FFanzeen: According to the souvenir books at your concerts, the band has, “always done things the hard way.” How true is that when your first single [independently released “Suspect Device” b/w “Wasted Life,” on Rigid Digits Records – RBF, 1981] sold over 30,000 copies?
Ali: The first sold about 60,000 so far. I know what they mean about making it the hard way. I think we were very lucky to start off with. We brought the first single out, and the two guys managing us, Gordon Ogilvie and Colin McClelland, took the single an sent it off to (London DJ) John Peel, and thanks to him, basically, people heard the single and picked up on the band. And from then on it was pretty plain sailing. We were sucked into the big music business, where so many things are hyped. Over here, it’s not how good a band is, it’s how much money their management has. Over in England, it’s not quite that bad. I was talking about this earlier when we first came to London, we didn’t really know our way about. We didn’t know anyone over there. It was quite a big move from Belfast, across the sea. We joined Rough Trade and that gave us a kind of breathing space where we could sit back and look at things objectively, detached. We could see that record companies weren’t as they were cracked up to be. Our first experience with record companies was Island Record, and from that we said, “Fuck this, we don’t want any part of it.” So, we put the record out with Rough Trade and a couple of singles, and just took our time with lots of offers from record companies, but we waited until we could get a deal where we could virtually tell them what we wanted instead of it being the other way around. And Chrysalis did it. In the U.K., we got complete control. We didn’t get any advance or anything because that’s not important, it’s only money. We deal with the record company and we’re in the black. Which is good. Most bands work heavily in the red, like the Clash. They’re so much in debt that they’ll be tied to CBS for as long as CBS wants ‘em. You have no control of your lives, virtually. It gets to that stage. New York pays a lot of money. For the gig we’re doin’ here – I don’t know what it is, exactly – but they’re giving us all the money and we could easily just do a lot of gigs here and then piss off and make a profit. Instead, we’re just using the money to go to other places around the States and up to Canada. Most of the clubs here seem to jump at anything.

FFanzeen: As long as you’re from England, you can get plenty of gigs here.
Ali: Japan’s just like that. I haven’t been there yet.

FFanzeen: Your booklet also called you “exploiters of Northern Ireland’s troubles.” They seem to rip into you as much as compliment you.
Ali: That’s pretty close to the truth, though. They’re not saying we’re cynical exploiters, they’re saying that’s what we’ve been called.

FFanzeen: Well, why have you been called that?
Ali: I don’t know; we’re not cynical. I don’t see how we can exploit Northern Ireland since we come from there. On the first album, there actually is only about four songs on there about Northern Ireland. The rest of them could apply to any place. There are as many songs about the troubles as there were about the fact that there was a fuck-all attitude in Belfast. That’s why the band came about, because it was a hobby, something to do on a Saturday afternoon. And a place like that, you look for your own entertainment or you really have to go out and search for it. Here (in New York), you go two blocks and there is something there. It’s completely different. We were the top acclaim as rebel heroes, yet with the first album, the reviews that Inflammable Material got in the British press, they were very good. They were all five-star reviews of over the top, which meant it got a lot of publicity and all that, and that’s something that’s hard to live up to. One of the main reasons why that was so, is because at the time, people were getting fed up. It was just about the time of the demise of the original punk bands, and people were looking for something new. We came along and they said, “At last, a real punk band.” We took no claims to what kind of band we are. We just play rock’n’roll.

FFanzeen: Yeah, but you’ve been around just as long as they have [1977].
Ali: Yeah, but most of the time we spent rehearsing in Ireland. We just had a couple of gigs here and there. We were always pretty much apart from the rest of the music scene. The Sex Pistols, Gen X, they all hung around and knew each other. We came over and didn’t know anybody.

FFanzeen: Did you find the move to London difficult to adjust to?
Ali: Not now; I did then. There’s a couple of songs written about it, like “Gotta Getaway,” when we first came over from Belfast. The very first time was with Island Records, and they fucked us about, so we just got fed up and decided to move out on our own with no money and no support. Rough Trade was interested, but that was all. There were five of us stuck in one dark hotel room in West End Grove in West End, London, with no money, so we had to live off Gordon. Imagine five of us – four guys in the band and one guy who was working with us – and the arguments that went down. We couldn’t get out anywhere because there was no money and we didn’t know anyone. There’s no way I’d like to see that again. In that way, it’s been hard. We’ve been lucky, though, because it’s so much harder for other bands. There’s so much competition. All it really takes is a lucky break or lots of money. And no one’s got money now. Especially over there. It’s a shame because there’s so many people I know who’re great musicians. Good bands. They haven’t done that well. Even recorded bands; Sector 27 – I think they’re excellent. That band’s really good, and I loved TRB [Tom Robinson Band] – but they’re not doing all that well.

FFanzeen: It says here that you consider your new album as “punk.” Do you really think that is accurate?
Ali: Call it what you want. It’s punk in that – well, what does the word “punk” mean? It’s an attitude. Jake said that he said that punk is more an attitude than a style of music. You know the Ruts? A lot of their music is more heavy-metal-oriented than punk, but because of their attitude and their lyrics, and so on, they’re considered a punk band.

FFanzeen: In the fanzine Damaged Goods, they commented that this past album is different from your previous albums, but I found it very similar to the others, which is a quality I liked about it.
Ali: I don’t think it changed that much. There are a few things on the new album that are pretty different. “Gate 49” is done tongue-in-cheek in rockabilly style. It’s good fun playing that. There was an instrumental [“Go For It”]. It’s the second time we’ve done that. First time was “Bloody Dub” from Nobody’s Heroes. That didn’t work very well. I think the “Go For It“ instrumental is a lot better. That was written in the studio. There were supposed to be lyrics, but we decided not to spoil it. The thing I like about the new album is – well, what I like and don’t like – is that it was done in two weeks, in February and March, and none of the songs were written before January. It’s just suddenly all these ideas came together. Listening to it now, there’s a lot of things we could have done – all these ideas and arrangements and so on – but maybe if we spent a month doing it we could have lost that initial roughness and impact. I think it’s a rougher album than Nobody’s Heroes. Who knows, we might put an album out in six years’ time that will be like Inflammable Material. Kickin’ up a racket. It’s the sort of thing we regret three years ago. It’s just different. We’re just playing songs that we like. There’s no way we could be calculating about it. It’s impossible to figure out what people will like. We just do what we do and hope people will like us. The new songs have been doing okay so far. We were worried about it because where we come from, things are so different. But fans that we’ve got, most of them are die-hard fans, and they’ll always be there. The people who have come and gone are those who come in and then go away because all they want to hear is “1-2-3-4” Ramones stereotypes. Don’t want to get in a rut, now; it would get boring for everybody, including us. That’s the first album over and over again.

FFanzeen: It’s a bit passe now.
Ali: I don’t like to listen to it now. I think the songs off the first album we do live, they’re a lot better than the album. But the thing is that it was perfect at the time; that’s the way we felt. It was done really roughly. It’ll be the same with every album – it’s the way we were, at the time. Times change, so we still do the songs live, because they mean a lot to us.

FFanzeen: Are you really heavily influenced by Marc Bolan [d. 1977], or is it just Henry [see album covers]?
Ali: No, just Henry. Henry is in love with Marc Bolan. Necrophilia.

FFanzeen: What about you?
Ali: We used to argue about it. Everyone’s tastes are completely different. We can’t bother arguing because it’s pointless now. The first band that really sort of influenced me was the Velvet Underground. I got back and discovered all these great Velvet Underground records. From there, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, things like that. Patti Smith, I think she’s great. The main bands are American, but they’re not mainstream American. I’d even listen to some jazz-rock. I like a lot of reggae. If any music influences, for me anyway, it’s reggae. That’s one thing that we all like.

FFanzeen: Why do you think reggae is such a big influence in England right now?
Ali: Mainly Bob Marley (d. 1981). Reggae has always been associated with punk, since punk came along in ’77. I don’t know why it all came about, really. I think they were supposed to share the same ideas, the same philosophy. I think it’s that the rhythms of reggae are important, because it’s better dancing to reggae than dancing to disco. Reggae has such a great beat, a distinctive rhythm. [In a Jamaican accent:] Dat’s wot it’s all about, mon.

FFanzeen: Is that the point of the song, “Roots, Radicals, Rockers and Reggae” [on the Go For It album]?
Ali: Have you heard the original? You should play the original. Its far better, obviously. We did it so different. The original is about half the speed. It’s a brilliant single; Bunny Wailer (d. 2021) brought it out. It’s on Island Records. If you ever get the chance to hear it, it’s probably really hard to get over here. It’s pretty hard getting it in England, but it’s a great song. That’s if you like reggae. It’s like “Johnny Was.” That’s another great thing about reggae: you’ve got a lot of space, a lot of freedom to be spontaneous. It’s different every night.

FFanzeen: As the bass player, don’t you ever get tired of playing the same rhythm for extended periods of time [on Inflammable Material, “Johnny Was” runs for 8:05, and on the live album Hanx, 10:15 – RBF, 1981]?
Ali: It’s not all the same. There are differences, but it’s very subtle. As the bass player, I reckon there’s one difference in the song. Listen to it tonight. It’s a lot shorter now, it’s only five or six minutes instead of ten. That went on a bit long. Listen to the reggae break and you can hear the changes – I hope [laughs]. Whenever I get home and listen to reggae or watch a band, the main thing I get into is the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if it’s virtually the same for five-ten minutes. The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” had this rhythm going all the way through it – sort of mesmeric.

FFanzeen: Same thing with Fred Smith’s bass line in Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel.”
Ali: I have that. On the original Ork label. In Belfast, it took about six months to get it.

FFanzeen: A friend of mine asked to ask you this: there is supposedly a video game called “Go For It,” which has a boy climbing up the side of a building. Have you seen it?
Ali: A video game? No, [ours] has nothing to do with that. I’ve never seen it. I’ll tell Gordon (Ogilvie). That’s the sort of thing he’d be really choked about. Most people think the guy (on the cover) is falling off the top, but –

FFanzeen: – He’s climbing up.
Ali: Originally, it was just that [covering up the right side of the album cover that has the character’s arm and leg – RBF, 1981], which looks like he’s falling so the guy who was doing it works in the creative department at Chrysalis in London added a knee and leg and arm reaching up.

FFanzeen: Here’s an original question: What do you think about the whole punk movement, then and now?
Ali: The music then had a bit of energy to it. I suppose, looking back now, I’m a lot more cynical than when the whole thing started. At the same time, I believe in what we’re doing. I couldn’t get cynical about that. It’s funny looking back at those early punk bands and to realize how shallow a lot of them were. I think at any start in music, whatever point it is, it’s the second wave of bands – heavy metal came along; Cream were pioneers, really, but they didn’t last. It was Led Zeppelin who took over.

FFanzeen: Unfortunately.
Ali: The Sex Pistols, the Damned – the Damned are still going, but that’s to be reckoned with. They’re like a comedy routine. With the Sex Pistols gone, it’s just up to us to keep the plan flying. Punk doesn’t have to be a noise. We’ve met a lot of very nice people – but now, there’s beach punks. These guys come along, they’re wealthy with rich parents and they can afford to have a beach of their own.

FFanzeen: You know, with all the first wave bands changing and all, one of the things I like about your band, as I said, is that you’ve been consistent. Not like in the Clash who have gotten “glossy,” or the Ramones who have gone the way of Phil Spector.
Ali: I like what the Clash are doing now. I like the ideas that they’re trying to do, and they are trying to break away. They’re trying to make it in America. It really was a conscious decision. They’re doing it quite good enough. Their reggae songs are not true reggae songs. You’d really have to come from Jamaica to do real reggae. It’s just really an influence, a rhythm.

FFanzeen: Sort of like the difference between the Police’s white reggae as opposed to the real Black reggae.
Ali: I remember when I first heard them, I really didn’t think of any reggae connection. Then so many people started saying about their second record, Reggatta de Blanc, “White Reggae,” everybody started calling it that. But it really didn’t seem that reggae-oriented as far as I could see. I haven’t seen them live, but I think I’d get bored. I like some of their songs, but (Sting’s) voice does grate on the nerves.

FFanzeen: I think he’s a better actor [laughs] [I saw the Police at the Diplomat Hotel when “Roxanne” was a hit, and was incredibly bored; I totally agree with Ali about Sting’s vocals – RBF, 2022.] What do you think of the style of some of the other bands, like Adam and the Ants, and Echo and the Bunnymen?
Ali: I saw Echo and the Bunnymen, and I thought they were pretty good. Adam and the Ants; I like a couple of their singles. I never thought they’d become as big as they did; but that’s fashion. The Pirate. Malcolm McLaren (d. 2010) did it with Bow Wow Wow. He (even) told Adam how to dress. I think Bow Wow Wow are better, musically. They’re a very strange band if you listen to them. The bass player’s incredibly fast. There’s just one drummer and he can do it live. I understand from people that he can get that sound live, where Adam and the Ants takes two drummers. It’s been done before, with Gary Glitter and the Glitter Band. 

FFanzeen: Stiff Little Fingers’ lyrics are pretty political. Have you had any trouble getting airplay because of them?
Ali: Whenever we play the U.K., our most requested song is “Alternative Ulster.” It was the second single we did. It was on Rough Trade and Rough Digits, in collaboration. It was banned at BBC. We sent it to them three times. It was up for playlists three times, but they said no. We had to change the lyrics. Whenever you send a single in, you have to send a single and you have to send a sheet wit the lyrics on it. One of the lines is “RUC dogs of repression are barking at your feet.”

FFanzeen: What’s the RUC?
Ali: Royal Ulster Constabulary; Irish cops. Instead, on the sheet with the lyrics on it, we had, “All you see are dogs of repression,” which is practically the same, but because anything – anything close to home that might be in any big way politically-oriented – there’s a complete clampdown from the BBC. It’s ridiculous. I think that’s our most catchy single. It’s got a good bass line, a nice guitar riff on it, but just because of the lyrics, they don’t want to know. That’s censorship, you know? The BBC and the media over there got pretty radical – they get more radical the further away from England. If there’s anything close to home, right on their doorstep, you only hear what they want you to hear. It’s worse over here, though. It’s like, if the Mafia pulled out – if they stopped business right now – the whole U.S. would collapse. And everybody knows it’s going on, but there’s never any mention of it, because Reagan (d. 2004) eats jellybeans. I mean, there’s got to be somebody above the president.

Ali is on the far right

As the interview was winding down, Ali commented that he was feeling peckish. I asked him if he had ever eaten sushi. He answered in the negative, but had been curious, so Alan and I invited him to join us. We walked over to one of the better local sushi houses at the time, Shima, the place where I was first introduced to sushi by Dawn Eden Goldstein, which used to be on Washington Street near the old The Bottom Line club (at the time, there was no proliferation of sushi bars, not even in New York). It was an enjoyable dinner, and lively conversation about music and politics. After the dinner, we all headed back to Irving Plaza. Alan and I were able to walk in again, thanks to Ali. Thanks, Ali.

I managed to see Stiff Little Fingers play twice, once at the aforementioned Irving Plaza, and once at a sweat-filled, pogo-bouncing night at the Peppermint Lounge. I came out as drenched as if I had stood under an upturned bucket of water. Both times there was a strong energy level from the band and the audience equally. They were great nights.

Stiff Little Fingers broke up some time in the 1980s, and reformed without Ali (his choice), who eventually rejoined, and they are still playing out today.

Kids Just Wanna Hear THE FAST (1980)

Interview by Robert Barry Francos and Stacy Mantel
© Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1980/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

Mandy Zone, Paul Zone, Miki Zone

The core of The Fast, previous to when this interview was conducted, consisted of the three Zone brothers from Brooklyn, Miki, Paul and Armand (aka Mandy). Miki Zone was the leader of the group, writing the songs and playing a wild guitar. With dark, spiked hair and pencil-thin mustache, Miki Zone drove the band, with flourishes that would have made Pete Townshend proud; he used pencils and other-purpose implements as picks, to achieve new and strange sounds. Paul Zone had long hair consisting of rows and rows of tight curls and movie star good looks. Mandy Zone, who played keyboards, usually sat in the upper left corner of the stage, with Phantom of the Opera type dark clothes. His falsetto background vocals helped give the band their distinctive sound.

And then, just as Dylan had gone electric, The Fast decided to go metal-lite. Armand left to form another band called Ozone, and Miki and Paul went all-out leather. The biggest physical shocker was Paul cutting off his idiosyncratic locks. One had the feeling The Fast were just tired of playing and not really getting anywhere out of Brooklyn. They decided to overhaul their sound. You can hear it in the band’s two versions of their song, “Kids Just Wanna Dance.”. Occasionally changing the band name/brand to Miki Zone Zoo didn’t help.

My then-Managing Editor, Stacy Mantel, arranged for this interview, and so she came along and therefore became an integral part of it. The intro, however, I wrote. It was published in FFanzeen, Issue No. 5, dated August-September 1980). – RBF, 2022

Kids Just Wanna Hear The Fast
By RBF and Stacy Mantel; intro by RBF

There it was, almost eight o’clock in the evening on May 19, waiting to be picked up by Miki and Paul Zone, the lead guitarist and vocals, respectively, of The Fast, one of the premier rock’n’roll groups that have been around since the early days (pre-1975), when the new rock’n’roll sound was known as “underground” and punk as we know it didn’t yet exist.

The first time I had seen The Fast was at a free concert they gave in Prospect Park (Brooklyn, where we all live), Summer of ’74, before Paul was in the group. Their songs included the “Batman Theme” and early Who stuff. Years passed and they added Paul and started playing at Max’s Kansas City and Rockbottoms. They went through a phase known as “super-pop,” but were unsatisfied with that sound. Eventually, brother Mandy (keyboards/falsetto) left to form his own group, Ozone, and Miki and Paul went “hard.” It took a while to get used to – and now their first album is coming out on Sounds Interesting Records, a label formed by Charles (Record Raves fanzine) Lamey – but that’s another story.

As we waited, there was a tension in the air. FFanzeen’s resident record reviewer Richard Gary had semi-panned the last Fast (Miki Zone Zoo, actually) single, “Coney Island Chaos” b/w “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” and we did not know what would be their attitude toward us.

Eventually their van pulled up and we climbed into the back. We stopped off to buy some beer and pulled up along the service road to the Verrazano Bridge, between 86 and 92 Streets, and drank and talked. And it went like this:

FFanzeen: Tell us a little about the album.
Miki Zone: It’s done and it’ll be out in July. One side was produced by Ric Ocasek [The Cars; d. 2019] and the other side is produced by Ian North (d. 2021) of Neo [also of Milk and Cookies – Ed., 2022]. It’s going to be on Sounds Interesting Records.

FFanzeen: That’s an independent label.
Miki: Yeah, and it’s the way we want to go at this point. It’s the best way. I’m in total control of the sleeve, total control of the recordings which I’ve produced, control over where I want it sold, how much I want sold, everything – even as far as where I want it distributed, what countries. At this point it’s cool because I can make a lot of money on it whereas if I was at a record company, I’d just be selling everything away.

FFanzeen: The album’s been done for a couple of months now.
Miki: The stuff we’ve done with Rick Ocasek. That was done in December.
Paul Zone: We did everything in December, except it’s going to have the “These Boots Are Made For Walking” 45 on it that we made over a year ago, and all the rest of it is “Cars Crash” and two new tracks than the old “Boots” single. So that’s six songs.
Miki: We had a tune on Sharp Cuts (compilation) on Plant Records [Elektra Records]. One of the tracks that’s going to be on our album is on the Planet Records compilation LP that Ric Ocasek produced, “Kids Just Wanna Dance.” We did a version of that with Ric; this is a new version of it – today’s Fast version. That’s out now and it’s getting a lot of airplay in a lot of cities, even New York.
Paul: WNEW’s playing it.

FFanzeen: How did your involvement with Ric start?
Miki: He came to see us at a club in Boston – he didn’t really come to see us, he came to see a band that was on the bill with us, and when the night was over, we had a date to play with them in a 20,000-seat auditorium and he offered to produce an album for us – and this was all in one night.
Paul: Just from seeing one show at a small club. We played with the Cars on Halloween at that 20,000-seater in Portland, Maine.

FFanzeen: How were you received?
Paul: All of The Cars were on the stage watching us after the first two songs, not believing it, because every band, with or without albums – name groups – were booed off the stage, and we did a 45-minute set and went down really well. By our second or third song, they were all in the wings watching us ‘cause they were flipping that we were able to pull it off for our first time at such a large place. We just did a concert up in Toronto with Mi-Sex. We do real well up there, like club dates. We sell advance tickets ... A lot of our friends had albums out and then the record companies sent them on tour and after their first tour they either broke up or had nervous breakdowns ‘cause they really weren’t used to it – they didn’t know what it was like to go out and struggle in all these little clubs.
Miki: That’s also an advantage where doing it ourselves is concerned ... where the album sales are the best is where they’ll go and play more often and that will be an easier thing for us to do, so we’ll have proof that there’ll be an audience for us and we’ll just zoom out there and do a show.
Paul: Two years ago we played in Washington, DC. with the Police and there were 50 people there three nights in a row.

FFanzeen: As long as I can remember, you’ve had this big cult following. These Long Island/Queens girls would stare and swoon.
Miki: You see, that was like a different stage for us. In ’75, the band was different then it is now. Then we had a couple of weird looking people in the band.
Paul: Now we still can’t realize what we’ve got.
Miki: We had so many crossovers of images that we were attracting different audiences, like young girls, people who came for crazy guitars, and we still maintain that image today. The reason we benefited by changing around The Fast today is that the music is better. I haven’t changed in two years. It took me this long to find a band I was happy with. I realized that I didn’t want to play with a keyboard player, that had to come out of me. Not because he was my brother.
Paul: It just wasn’t right for the sound.
Miki: Right. The songs that I was writing, certain sounds I was hearing, were too much for keyboards.

FFanzeen: On stage, you have changed a lot – like Paul used to have long hair with those amazing curls, and Miki’s hair was forked.
Miki: So many people would just look at us and say, “What the hell is going on?” like we were the rock’n’roll Village People because everyone was so totally different.
Paul: We didn’t plan on anything; I guess it’s just what happened, as we are now. We didn’t go in for thinking of things, things just came natural; the way we acted on stage and looked. We just act as we are personally and visually, and maybe enhance it a bit. We don’t go out of our way; it’s just not comfortable.

FFanzeen: I realize this is not a very intellectual question, but I’m really curious: Paul, why did you cut your hair?
Paul: I just got tired of it. I didn’t like it any more.

FFanzeen: Miki, your guitar style is very varied, ranging from very rock to avant-garde. Who are your influences, if any?
Miki: Pete Townshend – not today, but up to about 1970. He, at that period was, like, my mentor, but not like anything after late ‘60s because what he was doing with guitar then was not really playing – he was playing it like a machine, playing the electronics of it, getting sounds out of it that Eric Clapton never could have gotten. That’s why when we do extended things on stage, I’ll play every piece of the guitar and get as many sounds out of it without even using the fret board.

Miki (ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: Pencils.
Miki: Ha, yeah, pencils or feedback – you could do such amazing things. We have a couple of tapes of live performances and I didn’t even hear those sounds when I was making them on stage. It sounded like a plane or something and I said how it’s great that you don’t know where it’s coming from but you’re making it. Coming out of your guitar and amp put together. That’s where guitar could be as revolutionary as synthesizer, if you just take it that far and not play it as a conventional instrument.

FFanzeen: Isn’t “Cars Crash” done with synthesizer?
Miki: No, it’s guitar. I’m using some phasing on it, which I have in my amp, and everyone asks us who’s playing synthesizer and it’s totally guitar.
Paul: Queen never used synthesizer, it’s all guitar and you’d never know it if you listen to Queen albums.

FFanzeen: Isn’t it done with the aid of the mixing board in the studio?
Miki: No, it’s just if I layer or overdub certain parts over each other, it doesn’t even sound like guitar after a while. I like to do things where the voice comes in and matches with the guitar and you don’t know what’s what, and there’s a part in “Boys Will Be Boys” that’s like that. This new single, “Cars Crash,” I’m playing the guitar in a different way than I do live for the first time. It’s very spacey and danceable. We just wanna do something different.

FFanzeen: So I guess there’ll be no more go-go dancers.
Miki: Ha-ha, no, that’s not true. I mean, there’s so many things we got to say. I’ve got a backlog of material that The Fast did years ago that just had to be shelved because I was writing so much new stuff. All that will be out eventually.

FFanzeen: Who writes most of the lyrics?
Miki: I write all the music and lyrics. The only thing I’ve ever co-written with anyone was this last single with Charles Lamey (“Cars Crash”). I agreed to write a couple of songs with him because I like the lyrics that he writes, so I put music to them and it worked so well that we said, “Let’s do a single,” and then from there the whole album stemmed.
Paul: I’m the interpreter.
Miki: After the year’s end we may probably have a 12-inch live EP. You see, that’s the thing about independent labels. Whatever I think is a good idea they think is good and they‘re just as into it as I am. The big money isn’t there, but a lot can be made.

FFanzeen: Aren’t you afraid of producing “culture shock” with people expecting to come in to see the old Fast?
Miki: No, because they’re never disappointed. All they find missing is the keyboard. What we lost in a keyboard and high-pitched voice, we gained in different songs and in different live presentations, which is a lot more forceful and gutsier – what The Fast should have been all along. We didn’t lose any of our visual things.

FFanzeen: On stage, you said that heavy metal will make a comeback. Did you mean that or was it said because of the way the song was going?
Miki: Ha-ha, well, I don’t know ...
Paul: I guess it was the way it was going. Heavy metal is very big in England.
Miki: Yeah, that’s kind of why I said it ...
Paul: Listen to Blondie’s “Hardest Part” – it’s as heavy metal as you can get. Heavy metal and pop is the result of “power pop,” which everyone’s been using for a while. It’s just harder sounding pop songs.
Miki: There’s a lot of things we do that I would consider heavy metal that we do live because there are some things that I would like to hear heavy. There are just some things that I don’t want to hear harmonies and “la-la-las” with.

FFanzeen: You were talking about your influences ...
Miki: Yeah, beside Pete Townshend and the early Who, next has to be early Alice Cooper, even though what he’s doing today – his new record [Flush the Fashion] is great. I think it’s smart of him to get contemporary – Love It To Death, I was totally blown away by. That and, of course, the early Stooges. I like people in their initial years – that’s when their best stuff comes shootin’ out. If you can follow that stuff, great.
Paul: Iggy isn’t famous now for the stuff he’s putting out now, because the records he’s making now really aren’t that great. The only reason he’s big now is because of the things he’s done with the Stooges.
Miki: It’s always that way. We used to listen to a lot of pop. I like to listen to a lot of vocalists, too. I like Gene Pitney. [Miki would later go to perform Gene Pitney solo shows; see HERE – Ed., 2022]. He’s my idea of pop. No one will ever be able to put that stuff down. At one point, rock’n’roll was just one sound you heard on AM radio – WMCA was the Good Guys – that’s what rock’n’roll was. And whatever you heard there would influence everybody if you were a certain age at that time. Now you just have to go and decide what you want to hear, from reggae to hardcore punk to whatever, country ... I don’t put any style down, it’s just that there are so many different categories where people are taught to be enlightened to it.
Paul: Like New Wave, anything is really New Wave and every other New Wave artist that’s making it is just taking an old style and reworking it. The Police and Joe Jackson are taking every old reggae riff there was and they’re New Wave now. You’re New Wave if you have a nice sounding pop record – that’s New Wave: Blondie, Linda Ronstadt ... It’s just really strange, like anything that comes out now in the ‘80s is New Wave.

FFanzeen: Can you tell us a little about the band before Paul joined?
Paul: They were just a band for about two years and that was it. I was too young to be in the band then.
Miki: I guess the band was first conceived in 1973 where I’d be sitting in school and failing everything because all I would think about was having my own group, and it came about because I was influenced by all the groups I mentioned before. I just put together friends I went to high school with in Brooklyn ... we’d do “Batman” and we’d dress in polka dots and stripes and do things like throw Cheerios boxes all over the place.

FFanzeen: The Speedies do that now. 
Miki: Yeah, I wonder where they got it from?
Paul: I wonder where they got their name from?
Miki: We’d just throw Cheerios and use fire extinguishers, and every song would be a “la-la-la” in it. That’s when we were set up like we are now. There was still no keyboards – just guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and we’d have, like, two stacks of amps behind us painted with arrows. I didn’t even take them seriously when I look back. I don’t even remember having a real guitar until maybe 1974, when I finally bought a real amp, real guitar, and took myself seriously. But the two years from 1974-76, we started playing New York clubs. We were one of the first groups to play. It was like Wayne County, us, Teenage Lust. Blondie wasn’t even around as the Stilettos then.
Paul: It was just like, The Dolls, the [Forty-Second Street] Harlots.
Miki: Maybe Suicide ... and we’d play the Coventry, any place you could play. You’d either play at a loft party or you’d rent your own place out. Clubs wouldn’t book us then, any group then.
Paul: All there was, was a place called the Mercer Arts Center and Max’s.
Miki: Max’s, which didn’t have anything except label acts that would attract a huge following.
Paul: Max’s used to have Bruce Springsteen, Sparks, Aerosmith, the Stooges.
Miki: This was late ’73.
Paul: They didn’t have, like, rock’n’roll – I guess you’d call it Glitter Rock, except the Dolls, and of course the Dolls were number one – the biggest thing, locally.
Miki: The thing that really started it all, of course, The New York Dolls and their popularity, and then everything started bursting open. The Hotel Diplomat would be able to rent you out a ballroom to have your own shows, like three or four bands together that would spring up overnight like they do now.
Paul: It’s just like, the Dolls were just kids that didn’t know how to play their instruments. And once everyone started going wild over it, every other person in the world wanted to be in a band.
Miki: We formed after seeing the Dolls.
Paul: Just like thousands of bands formed after seeing the Ramones.
Miki: Exactly ... and we played Max’s for a while, and then a guy took us into the studio to record like an album’s worth of songs in late ’75, and while we were in there recording we decided to let Paul become the lead singer because he was just as popular as the rest of us because he was always seen with us so...

Paul (ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: So this is your first band.
Paul: Yeah, when we played at Max’s, our first show, I was only eighteen.

FFanzeen: A lot of people thought you were in the navy, because of “Boys Will Be Boys.”
Paul: I was in the navy, for three days; I got a dishonorable discharge.
Miki: Ha, and then we recorded this whole album’s worth of material, which “Boys Will Be Boys” came off of, the Max’s version [Live at Max’s, Vol. 1]. The rest of it got canned.
Paul: Except, “Wow, Pow, Bash, Crash.” Someday it will be on the “Long Lost Fast Album”. I have demos that big New York bands did before they got their deals, like the Ramones, Blondie.

FFanzeen: I’m surprised; you were so popular, that a major label didn’t sign you.
Paul: We had all the offers also, and we weren’t going in any good direction. We weren’t really happy with the band. Everybody liked us but we knew something was wrong with the sound. We made that “It’s Like Love” and “Kids Just Wanna Dance” single and it just didn’t spin our heads around; we liked it but we knew we wanted to do something different.
Miki: You just can’t keep it going if there’s clashing in the band. Now, these members of The Fast [Miki Zone, guitar; Paul Zone, lead vocals; Louis Brian Bova, bass/vocals; Joe Poliseno, drums], we work together as one, musically and personally; we don’t have any management problems so everything we’re doing now is coming totally from us, even negotiating our record contract and putting out our albums; it’s just down to what The Fast believes – we have nobody telling us what to do. We get references and help from people, but it comes down to us in the end. If we fail we don't have anyone to blame but ourselves, and if we succeed it will be all ours. We’ve seen all our friends make it.
Paul: Experience in the music, too. The different versions of “Kids Just Wanna Dance” is like day and night, really.
Miki: Sometimes I wish that [first] version didn’t exist, but I wouldn’t be here now if it didn’t.
Paul: We’re not gonna put it down.
Miki: I’ve changed my style of writing, because being that we played so much live in the last two and a half years all around America and played in front of every kind of audience.
Paul: It’s not like New York.
Miki: No, not at all. Everyone dances from the beginning to end of your set. If they’re not out on the dance floor after two songs, you know you’re not going to get anywhere.
Paul: Just recently, all that started in New York with Heat and Hurrah and Club 57, but about two-to-three years ago at CBGB or Max’s, no one would ever think of dancing. But we were playing Philadelphia and Boston, and they had dance floors right in front of the stage and tables all the way in the back.
Miki: And people don’t look at you when they’re dancing.
Paul: They’ll watch for the first two or three songs and then it looks like a movie from the ’60s where everyone grabs each other’s arms and runs to the dance floor.
Miki: At first, I thought it was weird. I thought that they thought we must be the ugliest band they’ve ever seen, but then you realize that they’re just going crazy ... New Wave is everywhere now, it’s happening in every city.
Paul: You go do a discotheque in Arizona and you’re gonna hear the B-52s.

FFanzeen: Why did Armand leave?
Miki: We made an amicable split because he wanted to do a lot of writing.
Paul: He wanted to have his own band, to sing and write his own songs.
Miki: He’s got his own band now called Ozone. So, it’s cool, you know, spread the family out.

FFanzeen: Any more at home?
Paul: Ha-ha, there will be someday.

FFanzeen: What happened with the Miki Zone Zoo name that you reverted back to The Fast?
Miki: I wanted to put out a 45 under my own name. It just showed people who was behind The Fast, which I wanted to see happen. If I called it The Fast featuring Miki Zone, it would have done the same job.

FFanzeen: What I think is strange is that you have such a big following and you have had very little written about you.
Miki: I’m not really worried about what a critic has to say about my music. It could destroy a lot of people and it has, I think that if we were to put out an album when we had a lot of prospective offers, if we didn’t fuck it up management-wise, we would have had a very credible relationship with the press, and people taking us seriously.
Paul: You can never boil it down to people taking you seriously. The Cramps are on the cover of Melody Maker every other week. Do people take them seriously? Yeah ... I guess they do.
Miki: I’m just glad to put out records. We should have had a record out (every) year from ’77 on, and we didn’t. This is the first Fast record since 1978, and at the rate we’re progressing, we hope to have something out every three or four months. In a lot of places we play at, we’re not The Fast from ’76, we’re just a New York band they’re happy to see and that’s the neat thing about it. A lot of people heard “Boys Will Be Boys” and know us because of that. A lot of feedback came to us from Europe. We may go there in September to do a tour with Jayne County, and the promoters all know us from “Boys Will Be Boys,” and they said it will be great. A lot of groups got their names known from just one song. It should be out on an album and it possibly will be. We’ll make the 1980 version of “Boys Will Be Boys.”

FFanzeen: Every fifth record will be “Boys Will Be Boys.”
Miki: Ha, different ways.
Paul: Electronic.
Miki: Ha, that’s a good idea.
Paul: A cappella, country-western ... reggae.

FFanzeen: Did you ever think of working with video?
Miki: We did a video for our last single, “It’s Like Love.” Full-color, animated, it looked like something from “Wonderama.” It looked like the ultimate cartoon-pop group.
Paul: It’s way before anyone did any sort of comical video – way before Devo or anyone. If you would see the old Fast one, you’d flip. It never got released, though.
Miki: We’re going to put it on cassette and have it shown at places like Max’s.
Paul: It will flip people out because it was at the peak of the wildest looking Fast you could imagine.
Miki: It’s wild. I’m wearing yellow rain-boots up to here, big double neck guitar, and my hair is green and there were no amplifiers.
Paul: It was done in a large TV studio and each member was on a big block platform with no microphones, all lip-synched. And there’s acting in it, cutaways to people riding horses. Donna Destri’s in it. We like to use our associates. She sings on “Cars Crash,” too. [Note: Video is at the bottom of the blog – Ed., 2022]

FFanzeen: Since you’ve been through so many changes, how, if at all, do you think your music will change in the future?
Miki: Whatever I do in the future I want to do in this format – guitars, bass, drum and vocals.
Paul: When people listen to “Cars Crash,” they’ll say it’s not us. The tapes we did with Ric Ocasek are great; he caught whatever we were live and put it down and polished it up. We didn’t go into the studio for five months to arrange every little piece.
Miki: He said we sound like the early Stooges if they knew how to play.
Paul: He had a lot of tricks up his sleeve in the studio, but we never got away from guitar, bass, drums and vocals, so you’ll hear weird sounds – but mostly done with guitar and bass. We used feedback and backwards playing, too. We did all the vocals live. He made us set up together like a real band because he was turned on to us live. He made us do the songs an amazing amount of times just to get the energy up there and we got a real adrenaline going.
Miki: I think if I produced the stuff Ric produced, I would have made it sound pop, but I’m glad to have someone look at our sound another way.
Paul: It’s good to have someone who believes in you and not getting paid to believe in you ... it’s different when someone is coming after you and saying they really want to do it and they really want to play with you. He was just as excited as we were and that was really special.
Miki: Want to know our favorite colors?

FFanzeen: No.
Miki: Shoe size?

FFanzeen: Nah, ha-ha. Where’d you get your tattoos?
Miki: Rick Martin. She did Johnny Blitz’s skull, she did Helen Wheels. The tattooer of the stars!

The album that came out was The Fast For Sale, whose name and cover were reminiscent of the Who’s Sell Out. Most of the record, put out as a joint venture by Recca Records (Miki’s label) and Sounds Interesting Records, is just what you’d picture some leather boys to be producing, but there were some fine moments, like the remake of “Kids Just Wanna Dance” and “Love Me Like A Locomotive.”

The next year, 1981, they released the album Leather Boys From the Asphalt Jungle, also put out by Recca/Sounds Interesting. A couple of notable differences include that the group were no longer The Fast, but just Fast. They were also down to just Miki and Paul, with other musicians listed under the category “Special Thanks to” (including Armand, back for one cut). With the exception of a cover of the Stones’ “Paint It Black” and Ian North’s “Girls in Gangs,” all the songs were new and by Miki. The cover had photos taken by Cathy Miller (who was one of FFanzeen’s photographers). While they are wearing lots of leather and chains, they are also looking like they stepped out a techno sci-fi experimentation. The next stage for Miki and Paul was an electronic dance band, Man 2 Man, which had some international hits.

The end was the death of both Miki (d. 1986) and Mandy (d. 1993) to AIDS. Paul moved out to California to start a new life focusing on his amazing photography, putting out an excellent collection in the book, Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground, and has released a compilation of their releases on CD called The Best of the Fast 1976-1984.