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This old photo of the Styrenes is, as our contact at ROIR puts it, "Missing some people." However, it's the only one we had handy, and rather than delaying publication of this article, we opted to run with it. If you're the photographer and would like credit, or would like us to take it down, please drop us a line.
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Legendary Cleveland art punks the Styrenes seemed incongruous at Galapagos Art Space, a small, vaguely upscale club in ultra-trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They were there promoting the new ROIR compilation It's Still Artastic, which collects some of their best-known tracks alongside previously unreleased material. Before the show, bassist Al Margolis and drummer Mike Hoffman hung out on the unlit stage, passing a flask back and forth. John Morton, a wooly mammoth of a guy who from a distance resembles Pere Ubu's David Thomas back when he called himself Crocus Behemoth, hobbled over to his guitar (he recently sustained a back injury and had to sit for most of the performance). Finally, dapper, diminutive frontman Paul Marotta, dressed in all black and wearing a stud earring, took his place on stage. Together, the four of them looked about as different from the average Williamsburg band as was possible -- shopworn middle-aged musicians (with the exception of the youthful Hoffman) in a neighborhood where twentysomething Urban Outfitters customers possess the loudest artistic voice.
The working class, mid-'70s Cleveland that gave rise to the Styrenes seems like a bombed-out wasteland compared to charming, boho-boutique Williamsburg. The Cleveland punk scene, such
as it was, grew out of youthful boredom and a callow taste for experimentation inspired by bands like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges; Cleveland bands typically lived a six-pack away from subsistence level and met with reactions ranging from indifference to disgust when they played out.
Marotta and Morton got their start playing with the Electric Eels, the harsh, confrontational forebears to such rock-and-roll gadflies as the Dead Boys and Half Japanese. Marotta was also a member of VU acolytes the Mirrors. When neither band would consent to play his experimental ambient compositions, Marotta struck out on his own, forming the Styrenes with Morton, fellow Mirror Jamie Klimek and a rotating cast of guests. Although initially a vehicle for Marotta's songs, the Styrenes quickly evolved into a freewheeling experimental ensemble that played a stylistically diverse range of material and accepted creative contributions from all of its members. Always eager to adapt, the band went through numerous incarnations in Cleveland and New York City, releasing the classic album It's Artastic! (Homestead) along the way and teaming up with Pagans vocalist Mike Hudson for the equally worthwhile A Monster And The Devil LP (Tinnitus).
At Galapagos, the show was divided into halves. For the first half, the band played a relentless set of fractured rock songs that included highlights from It's Still Artastic. Marotta's affable, slightly oily stage manner sometimes gave him the air of a lounge singer; it was jarring to see him break into throat-scraping art punk anthems like "Jaguar Ride" and "Drano In Your Veins". Marotta is not a stellar vocalist, but he performs with an intensity that seizes and keeps your attention. He was especially riveting on a few spoken word songs that paired frantic rock riffing with stories that were hard to make out over the noise, but still as overpowering in their delivery as a fire-and-brimstone sermon. To Marotta's left, Margolis looked like a crazed gold prospector with his wild hair and beard; across stage, Morton seemed embarrassed to be playing incendiary punk rock while sitting down and made occasional valiant but abortive efforts to stand.
The band wrapped up their first set with "One Fanzine Reader Writes" and announced that they would return in a few minutes. When they came back, Marotta was wearing a different shirt, and the band had expanded its line-up by five -- Jimmy Lonesome on vibes, guitarist Tim Moes, Dan Joseph on electric hammer dulcimer, electric fiddle player Frank Oteri and Russ Alderson, a second bassist. Marotta sat down behind an electric piano and the band launched into a fifty-minute performance of Terry Riley's experimental composition "In C". The piece was pretty and repetitive, with Marotta guiding the band from one simple riff to another, sometimes whipping the noise into a frenzy and sometimes easing it back. Around the thirty minute mark I got bored and closed my eyes. I listened to most of the rest of the performance that way. Without visual distractions I heard a complexity and harmonic elegance in the music that I hadn't noticed before. After a while, that complexity and harmonic elegance nearly lulled me to sleep, but then the piece ended, and I jerked awake in time to avoid resting my head on the stranger next to me.
Marotta had promised free drinks after the show, courtesy of ROIR, but I had to get home. Walking back to the subway station past embarrassingly hip boutiques, a restaurant with its own waterfall and bar after bar with Yo La Tengo and Tortoise on the jukebox, I wondered if the Williamsburg scene, for all its intelligence and willingness to experiment, could produce a band as enduring and genuinely weird as the Styrenes. Style thrives where rents are high, but sometimes you need a place like Cleveland to grow real art.
Article by Scott Jacobson.
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