The
Deviators
The following article originally appeared in NFH
#22 in the winter of 1992
Last issue I
interviewed Pete Ciccone from the Vacant Lot and he told me about one of his favorite NYC
area bands, the Deviators. Shortly after that the Deviators sent me a 4 song demo tape,
which after Pete's praise I anxiously popped into the cassette deck. Out blasted their
brilliant "Century 21", now out on a single. What a killer song! It reminds me
in different places of the Clash doing "Complete Control", then of the Ramones
doing "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" and finally of Sham 69 doing "Borstal
Breakout". It's a great rough house anthemic song full of ringing guitar chords and
woah-oh backing vocals. And then there's three more tracks, all similar stuff.
"Hiding" has a fantastic guitar lick at the end of each verse line that'll
totally rope you in. And "In A Crowd" reminds me of a Marshall-powered Jam doing
"Billy Hunt". But it's with "Century 21" that these guys make their
finest statement.
The Deviators will
acknowledge their late 70s punk roots, but don't push too hard about it. Says guitarist
and singer Tom: "We want to make it clear that we're definitely very influenced by
the 77 punk thing but at the same time we don't want to be pigeon-holed as a sort of
revivalist thing. Because we're very much into trying to come up with something new as
well. I mean, it's definitely been a starting point and a large influence for us, but
that's not where it ends. We don't want to be known as that band that's just like Sham 69
or just like the 70s, because it's the 90s and we're very well aware of that."
Pablo, who also plays
guitar, agrees with the assessment. "We're just as influenced by a lot of bands that
are around now, like Pegboy or Naked Raygun."
They will say though
they are really into that late 70s British punk sound, and also a lot of the early 80s Oi
bands. Names like the Jam, Chelsea, Partisans, Misfits, DOA, and Bad Religion float up in
conversation. It sounds like a big mix, and that has a lot to do with the Deviators'
sound; there are a lot of elements from all these kinds of bands to be heard. Yet as Tom
says it isn't a retrospective sound; the Deviators also fit in with some of their favorite
New York area bands. They particularly go for the Vacant Lot, the Devil Dogs, Radix, Dog
Tired, or Opposition.
The Deviators started
in the fall of 1988. Tom had played in a hardcore band called Zombie Squaw, and bassist Al
had been in Dog Tired, but the others hadn't played in bands that had actually gigged
before. The band was originally called Common Ground, but soon after they changed the name
to Nobody's Heroes, obviously from the Stiff Little Finger's song. Says Tom: "The
story behind that was that I had a friend who had always wanted to start a band called
Nobody's Heroes, and we needed a name so I told my friend Mike, Hey, now there is a
Nobody's Heroes."
As Nobody's Heroes
they put out a demo tape that got reviewed in Maximum Rock'n'Roll and gained them a fair
number of fans around the country and overseas. But then they changed the name again to
the Deviators and restarted building a following. They put out a single with "Century
21", "Let It Go" and "Hiding" on the Minneapolis label Skene, and
though it's done all right they lament the fact that all the mail that results from the
single seems to go to their label instead of to them. These guys want to be in touch with
their fans!
By the time you read
this the Deviators should have completed a west coast tour that should also include a few
mid-west dates. It'll be the first time really getting away from New York for them.
They've been to Boston once, to North Carolina, and they often play New Jersey and even
out into Pennsylvania, but the single has opened things up enough so that they could put a
tour together. But it's still going to be a grind...they're driving all the way and
staying with friends and fans everywhere.
Hopefully they'll get
received better than they were in Bethelehem, Pennsylvania this past year. They opened for
the Original Sins, and as they played a guy heckled them non-stop and kept moving the
mikes while they were trying to sing. After they finished, he continued to hassle them,
and then started hassling their girlfriends.
Tom picks up the
story: "So our drummer Chris says "What the hell are you doing, this isn't
funny. Leave them alone." So the guy gets angry and he's holding a beer bottle out in
Chris' face and threatening him. This is where it got really funny, 'cos Chris is getting
really tense, so he grabs the beer bottle out of the guy's hands really fast and shakes it
up and sprays it in the guy's face and says: Now what are you going to do? At which point
our bass player grabs him from behind and his girlfriend starts kicking him and then all
hell breaks loose and they're all flying all over the place. We never court violence or
anything like that...we don't ever get into fights; we don't like to get involved in that.
But this was one of those situations where the guy just wasn't about to leave us alone.
And he was threatening our drummer with the beer bottle and he just lost it. Even the club
owner was on our side...he said the guy starts trouble with everybody. But for some reason
they wouldn't kick him out."
"Supposedly he
owned some big alternative record store, so he's like the big man on campus", Pablo
interjects.
"So then the
whole night he was dodging us and eventually he slipped out the back", continues Tom.
"But nobody was hurt and it wasn't anything serious...it was more ridiculous than
anything else."
More often the shows
don't have this kind of weirdness going on, though. They've played to anywhere from 5 to
2,000 people at clubs like the Strip, the Marquee, CBGB's, Lucky 13, the Limelight and the
Ritz plus dozens of others around the city and across the river. They used to play about 3
times a month, but lately they've slowed down to concentrate on recording for an album.
This is going slowly but steadily, mostly limited by the amount of money they have to work
with. Tom and Pablo are both nearly done with college, where they are both working on
graphic arts degrees, and like all college students they are perpetually broke. Chris
currently works as a graphic designer. So the big fight no doubt will be over who gets to
design the album art.
Meanwhile, as of this
writing they've recorded all the instruments but have only done vocals on four tracks and
still have mixing to go. They're hoping to find a label to put up the money, but if that
doesn't work, they'll save their gig money for it. They sent me rough mixes of the four
tracks with vocals, and from the sounds of it if you liked the single, you won't be
disappointed.
I mentioned that it
was good for them to be getting such an early start with the band, since a lot of people
are in bands just starting out in their late 20s or early 30s these days. By contrast all
the Deviators are in their early 20s. Pablo just turned 22. But he feels time is racing
past: "A lot of times people say that, but we think of ourselves like, God, I'm
already going to be 22 and we still haven't gone on the road. We haven't gone
overseas...we really haven't done as much as we'd like."
"Yeah",
says Tom, "I've been playing bands since I was 15 and I still haven't done any real
touring or anything and I feel like I'm really behind. But it's encouraging to hear people
say that we're getting an early start. I started playing guitar when I was 13, which I
thought was pretty old, because a lot of people that I looked up to said they started
playing when they were 7!"
Of course, a lot of
the people who say that really mean that they owned a guitar when they were seven and they
were hitting it with a hammer or something. Pablo got less of a jump...he's only been
playing 3 and a half years. But Tom vouches for his learning speed, and there's lots of
time still. If they stay at it, these guys have the potential to leave a strong mark of
their own.
