ALAN VEGA: LIFE AFTER SUICIDE
Once upon a time, in the early ’70s, long before currently voguish “new music” outfits like Soft Cell, Yaz and Human League, there was Suicide. Two zany bohos literally off the Lower East Side streets, one a demented, classically trained keyboardist named Martin Rev(erby), the other, his equally wacky sidekick, a chain-smoking, fast-talking Jew from Brooklyn, who took the moniker Alan Vega partly to sound Puerto Rican and partly in tribute to the Nevada mecca of glitz and gambling.
ALAN VEGA: LIFE AFTER SUICIDE
by
Roy Trakin
Once upon a time, in the early ’70s, long before currently voguish “new music” outfits like Soft Cell, Yaz and Human League, there was Suicide. Two zany bohos literally off the Lower East Side streets, one a demented, classically trained keyboardist named Martin Rev(erby), the other, his equally wacky sidekick, a chain-smoking, fast-talking Jew from Brooklyn, who took the moniker Alan Vega partly to sound Puerto Rican and partly in tribute to the Nevada mecca of glitz and gambling. The electronic duo purveyed a sound unlike anything you’d ever heard, with Rev’s earsplitting foghorn blasts of organ (ic) feedback set against a thudding rhythm machine— now a common instrument, then an anomaly used only by bar mitzvah or cha-cha bands. Fronting this maelstrom was a singular singer, dressed in leather and chains, goading the audience into confrontation by letting out a blood-curdling scream, slapping his face with a microphone or diving to the floor like one of his main inspirations, Iggy Pop. That was Suicide ’71, contemporaries of the New York Dolls, Eric Emerson and the Harlots of 42nd Street. It is now over a decade later...