Went to Yale? You can be a rocker, too

By Carl Ehrhardt

Let's say you listened to punk or independent rock music in high school. Let's say you played in a band with your friends and performed at parties or school functions. Let's say you didn't wear clothing that says in big block letters:"this is where I go to school." Let's say you chose the wrong university. You might actually be alarmed that the independent music scene at Yale is dying fast.

Fortunately, there is hope. Like the hordes of Yalies who look to alumni for connections leading to lucrative investment banking positions, aspiring Yale troubadors can find good role models in a number of excellent rock musicians who have gone on to find success as well as artistic fulfillment in their music.

Sunday night (Sept. 14), Jason Morphew, CC '97, and Mia Doi Todd, BR '97, will perform their respective brands of solo guitar rock at the Berkeley College Common Room along with Franklin Bruno of the Los Angeles band Nothing Painted Blue.

According to friends, Todd lives the life of a starving artist in a storefront space somewhere in New York City. Apparently the space has no telephone access, as Todd was unable to be contacted for this article. An assortment of other alumni from Yale's rock music heydays offered colorful accounts of their memories as undergraduates.

Right now, Yale seems like the last alma mater one would expect to give birth to such interesting and varied musical styles. Tom Noerper, BK '97, former bassist for Sunday Puncher, who also played drums in Trophy Wife and Mistletoe, described the thriving music scene at Yale during the years immediately preceding 1995, the graduating year of the three founding members of Sunday Puncher. Bands such as Scorn Flakes, Wrench, Boba Fett, Holiday, Deluxe, Towers Open Fire, Iris, and Mistletoe, as well as solo performers such as Mia Doi Todd and Jason Morphew made up a collective of performers that put on shows frequently and drew sizable crowds of both Yale and non-Yale students to their shows around Yale and New Haven.

Noerper speculated as to why the number of bands and show audiences at Yale had declined so drastically. "There's a sort of cultural snobbery at Yale," he said. "People [here] don't understand rock music. They don't realize there is intelligent or sophisticated rock music. They haven't been exposed to any sort of underground influence. It's really difficult to express the ethos of our time in a singing group."

Sunday Puncher's drummer, Fritz Fordmiller, BR '95, described a time when shows happened every weekend, both on campus and at off-campus parties and local venues such as the Tune Inn. With their frequent experiences performing at Yale, Sunday Puncher was able to get shows in big name clubs in New York and Boston such as the Brownies, The Cooler, The Knitting Factory, and the Middle East.

Jason Morphew remembered an era in which bands would chip in for a keg, entertain fifty to one hundred party goers in a residential college, and then hang out with them afterwards. "It was idyllic," he said.

Unfortunately, after 1995, campus interest in live music waned. The current bassist for Sunday Puncher, Howe Lin, described the wall he ran into when first trying to start Voltron, his group while at Yale. "After Deluxe left there was no one left. I had to put up a sign in Yale Station saying these are the bands I like, I'm looking for a bassist and a drummer. I got like two responses. . . From a musician's standpoint its difficult [at Yale] to find people who are interested in playing rock music from a creative angle. It was hard to find people dedicated to something more artistic, or who want to make a statement musically."

Lin feels that it's important for bands at Yale to start early. "Deluxe started their freshman year and developed a following and a style and improved musically over the four years," he said.

Once many of the dedicated musicians graduated, Yale was left without any real backbone to support the rock scene. Nadine magazine, which once served as a forum for people interested in independent music, started producing less and less issues. In the 1996-97 school year, Nadine folded completely due to a lack of financial support, failing to produce a single issue. Plus, unlike at other colleges, Yale lacks a truly independent radio station. Over 62 per cent of WYBC's weekday programming isn't even provided by live DJ's--it's done by computer via satellite. And only five hours of the weekday program features any form of independent music. Howe Lin notes that this is not exactly a friendly environment for a rock scene. "The lack of college radio kills things. [WYBC] is not an independently run student thing. Oberlin has always had a tremendous scene because of a great radio station," Lin says.

But don't despair, would-be rockers: there's hope after graduation. Jason Morphew, Sunday Puncher, and Mia Doi Todd have all so far found success in the persuit of their musical endeavors after college. Morphew recently releaced his Transparent  CD on Ba Da Bing! Records (P.O. Box 204, Leonia, New Jersey. 07605). He also contributed a song to the soundtrack for the soon to be released movie, Niagra Niagra, which features Henry Thomas, who played Eliot in E.T., as its star. Sunday Puncher releasedThe Livid Eye CD on Turnbuckle Records (which is owned by Justin Weyerhauser, TC '95) called The Livid Eye. The band just left in a van to tour around the U.S. with Bailter Space. They plan to do show at Yale or in New Haven this semester. Mia Doi Todd's CD The Ewe and the Eye was released earlier this year on X-Mas records (1040 North Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, California, 92046).

Perhaps after hearing a sampling of Mia Doi Todd's mystic crooning and Jason Morphew's dry wit, audiences might be inspired to incite the next rock and roll uprising at Yale.

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