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By the time the 1980s struck, New Math was way out there. After cementing an underground rock scene at the now-extinct club Scorgie's in the ruins of Rochester, New York, the band became more captivated with the occult, channeling more doom-laden post-punk than what was highlighted on their past power pop singles, "Die Trying" and "The Restless Kind." In 1981, New Math released their debut EP They Walk Among You on 415 Records, a pioneering San Francisco-based label that saw releases from The Nuns, Romeo Void, and Roky Erickson And The Aliens. Uniquely enough, New Math had no ties to the Bay Area, but thanks to their producer and friend Howard Thompson, who had worked with 415 label head Howie Klein, they were given their first real and proper record deal. Working within the contours of horror punk romanticism through the EP's gothy anthemic title track and the sinister onslaught of "Invocation," New Math sounded more appropriate to bill alongside The Psychedelic Furs or The Gun Club than say Eddie and the Hot Rods or local contemporaries The Clichés.
In Bill Kopp's Hozac-released book, Disturbing The Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave, frontman Kevin Patrick discussed the stylistic change and said, "I think we just were like lots of kids. You just tried to mimic your favorite band at the time, or your favorite sort of moment in music." One of the unforgettable highlights of this era was one that the band's right-hand man Duane Sherwood recalled. "They did a show in Washington D.C., shortly after the assassination attempt on President Reagan. During the drum and bass breakdown in the middle of 'American Survival', they mixed in an audio tape of the first news reports from the shooting scene, complete with the sirens of police mayhem. Jaws dropped as the locals immediately recognized what they were hearing."
Now over 40 years later, the once long out of print EP has been repackaged by the folks at Propeller Sound Recordings (The dB's, Love Tractor, Dex Romweber) with its five original songs and some bonus material, offering up poetic tales of madness, metamorphosis, and the band at the height of their powers. Before you try to dig further, here's a track-by-track guide with each member of New Math that makes up the striking precision of They Walk Among You.
"They Walk Among You"
Gary Trainer (bass): This one's pretty self-explanatory. It's sort of based on the whole Invasion of The Body Snatchers scenario where the person next to you turns out to be one of the pod people. Then they turn you in and you're the only one left all of a sudden. I also remember being really inspired by Roky Erikson's The Evil One.
Kevin Patrick (vocals): This worked perfectly for what we were trying to do. Any time Gary decided to write in a certain style, he would always come up with a strong song. For me, this was our best track. I recall it getting some attention in France so it wasn't a big surprise when Air borrowed from it for "Sexy Boy."
Roy Stein (drums): This is my favorite song from that era and Gary's songwriting was really powerful at that point in time. I love playing it as a drummer because it was very simple so I'd just play the groove and watch the audience be blown away.
Chris Yockel (guitar): This was a turning point for me as I had joined the band in late 1980. I had to quickly learn all the previous pop songs then next thing I know the direction changed within like three months and we're playing this. Gary and Kevin definitely took us to a fork in the road and decided on a new direction.
"Garden of Delight"
GT: This is based on the writings of William S. Burroughs, who I studied under in 1988. I later gave him our records because if you think about it, he pretty much wrote them [laughs]. The opening lyrics include the words "jet black berries I do ingest" which was where I got the idea for us to change our name to Jet Black Berries in 1984. I was also inspired by The Yardbirds when writing the music for it, particularly when the tempo shifts to double time. There's some backwards messages in there too.
Mark Schwarz (keyboards): You probably can't tell, but I took inspiration for the keyboard solo from Duncan Kilburn's sax playing on The Psychedelic Furs' "Dumb Waiters."
RS: Another one that was a blast to play live. It has a bit of regal introduction that feels a bit psychedelic, which was definitely something we were tapping more into at the time. The song is a bit of a journey which makes sense given the lyrics, but was a bit atypical of us.
KP: Gary and I were into British psychedelia around this time. Can you tell?
"Branded"
GT: This is pretty much a song I based off the English occultist Aleister Crowley and his mark of the beast sign. He wrote a series of books around Satanism and occult mysticism that I was really into reading at the time. The lyrics were my attempt on the whole horror rock stuff like The Cramps, The Misfits, and The Gun Club. I was so into this music, we'd tell fans to wear all black when coming to our shows. We also played some bills under different names such as The Mink Witches and Wake The Dead—I'm sure there's some flyers and live recordings buried somewhere. I felt pretty liberated for what we were doing then, but some of our fans didn't understand it.
"Invocation"
KP: Gary was well read. William Burroughs, Aleister Crowley, Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, the occult, all that. I liked the dark side in this song that came as a result. I still remember Gary bringing it into rehearsal and playing it for us. His vocals were so good. If only he had sung lead when it was recorded. I regret not pushing him to do that.
RS: Another very simple song that I would attack on the drums. I always really liked the intensity that surrounded this one.
GT: Watch the Kenneth Anger film Invocation of My Demon Brother, turn off the sound and play this song over it.
"American Survival"
GT: This is like an early version of the imagery shown in the George Romero film Day of the Dead. Much of what's explored here is very vital today. I believe the last verse was actually written by Kevin—he was so great with ad-libbing and sung with a lot of conviction. I remember we did a live performance of this on WOKR's morning news show. The reporter introducing us was Wanda Miller and she didn't give a shit about our music. She was totally unprepared and introduced us as "New Wave" instead of New Math so she didn't even know our name!
MS: That performance we did on WOKR was fantastic. Luckily one of our friends taped it and I didn't know how good we sounded since you can't really hear anything on stage.
RS: In every way this song is more topical now than it was when Ronald Reagan was president. I remember it was Gary's intent to write a more political-driven song that was aimed at Western Culture. It was a blast to play live. When we played it, I'd always turn my attention to Chris to try to interact with his guitar work. It's very vicious and tribal.
CY: Even with all the horror imagery, I always felt it sounded least like the others on the EP—almost like something from the previous era of the band.
KP: A frustration of being in a small city was not having access to engineers that had a clue about the sound we wanted. I guess they didn't listen to the same music as us. As a result, a couple of songs suffered more than others. This was one of them.
"Dead of Night"
GT: This was the first song I wrote with horror imagery. I remember writing it in the late 1970s at St. John's Home, which was where I worked at the time. Not sure why it never circulated anywhere but it has a very gothic sound and certainly fits right in with the EP.
CY: I remember we played it live on WRUR at the old Record Archive on Mt. Hope. It was in our set quite a bit when I joined. Not really sure why it was never included on the original EP either.
"Two Tongues"
GT: This is another Burroughs-inspired song. I wrote this one closer to the time we were working on the Gardens EP. I'm surprised we even tracked this in the studio. It's a bit of an odd song and I've always wondered what people thought about it when we played it live.
CY: This has always been one of my favorites. I just love the back-and-forth swing of it and it's a bit hypnotic with its interlude.
MS: Kevin threw some lines in there from The Herd's "From The Underworld." This and "Break Up The Dance" get stuck in my head a lot.
"We Love You" (The Rolling Stones Cover)
KP: I remember Mark being able to replicate the Mellotron sound that Brian Jones got on the original, so that made it all happen for me.
MS: Nicky Hopkins is probably my favorite rock 'n' roll keyboardist and I think I was just messing around playing "We Love You" one day at practice and Kevin was into it.
"Gonna Make You" (The Troggs Cover / Live at Scorgie's)
RS: Obviously being the drummer, I loved playing this one. I remember nights where I couldn't wait to play it. I believe Kevin brought up the idea of covering this. His knowledge of '60s music is almost unparalleled and I recall him loving this tune at the time. It was fun to play live and it had a different feel especially with the emphasis on the tom-toms.
KP: I like anything percussive. We had Roy on drums, so we could easily pull this off. There were some percussion based '60s UK singles I loved: "Zabadak," "Save Me," and this one. I was only brave enough to try "Gonna Make You." I knew I could never pull off the other two vocally. Plus I was pretty sure Chris would be up for this because it's basically Bo Diddley.
"Second Language" (Live at Scorgie's)
GT: I wrote this pretty much alongside Kevin because it was his idea to cover The Rolling Stones' "We Love You" so I wanted to pair that with our own very psychedelic song. I remember we were listening to a lot of The Creation at the time.
MS: Kevin and I were both fans of The Herd's single "From The Underworld" and I remember we were drawing a lot from that.
"Hit Her Wid De Axe" (Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band Cover / Live at Scorgie's)
KP: I used to work radio promotion for MCA, who released Willie Loco Alexander's first couple of albums with The Boom Boom Band. I would cover their shows in my territory, bringing programmers out trying to get airplay. So we got friendly. In my opinion, this is an anthem not only for him, but for anyone. Loco did a feature vocal on a Jet Black Berries track a few years later and he easily stole the show. He's a higher form of life. Search out his original version.
GT: Thanks to Kevin, we got to know Willie pretty well. We'd back him up live, including once at The Rat in Boston. This one in particular is just such a great rock 'n' roll anthem that's very Jerry Lee Lewis. Not sure what we were all on the night of this performance, but we were incredibly tight.
CY: This version with Kevin, you'd think it's Willie on vocals—it's blistering hot!
MS: I think Willie was proud of how I played the keys here especially when we played with him at The Rat. Coming from a more classical background, I'd tend to play clean, but I remember Willie telling me that it was okay to play sloppy. It makes for good rock 'n' roll.
RS: Willie was charming, incredibly talented, fun, and was just totally the real deal as far as being an authentic musician with his own vision. Sorta like Chuck Berry, he'd often have bands back him and we were given that opportunity more than once. At this point in the early 1980s, we were a hardworking and very tight band so doing his material was like second nature to us. We kept covering "Hit Her Wid De Axe" at our shows as sort of an homage to Willie and to introduce more people to his music. I thought Kevin sang the shit out of it and it matched his energy really well. Hearing it live over 40 years later still blows me away.
They Walk Among You Remastered and Expanded Edition is out August 23rd on Propeller Sound Recordings.