Q: Are we not rockers? A: We are Yale Students!

A&E traces the history of Yale rock along its long, strange trip, from punk to pop to Pearly

As self-consciously hip Yale students have been known to lament, rock gets lost amidst an onslaught of classical and a cappella music. "The predicament of New Haven in rock history," Bob Bannister, SY '82, founder of the Desperate Bellboys, one of Yale's first punk bands, said, "is that it's principally a place you end up on your way to, or from, doing something more significant elsewhere."

This statement rings especially true for Yale students who want a scene that transcends the cramped confines of the Women's Center and the Calhoun Cabaret. The four years that most students spend here is hardly enough time to build a lasting musical community, but occasionally rockers' frustration with New Haven and Yale explodes into something constructive. When it rains, it pours, and bands sprout up everywhere. When it doesn't rain, it really doesn't rain, and the only thing close to rock that can be heard on campus is the din of complaints that the scene is dead. But in the midst of a city and campus that haven't always been full of cultural offerings, Yale's intermittent love affair with rock 'n' roll has never completely died.

Blowin' minds and takin' names

At first, rock was slow to catch on at Yale. Richard Meltzer, regarded as the nation's first legitimate rock critic, was a philosophy graduate student in 1966-67 before being expelled. "I'd invite [my fellow students] up to my room," he wrote recently in The Web Directory [7/2/99], "offer them pot (they'd decline) and put on some sides. Though I had everything by the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds, Love, most of the Kinks, the first Doors... all they would sit for was `I Feel Like Homemade Shit,' on the Fugs' first album. Those who had heard it before would tell newcomers, `Listen!—here—he's saying shit!'"

Things soon picked up, though. Jon Tiven grew up in the New Haven area and attended Yale for two years before leaving to produce an album for Alex Chilton. According to Tiven, between 1967 and 1971, WYBC was "the most interesting radio station that I had ever heard"—in fact, it was the best outlet for then-underground acts such as the Jefferson Airplane. A few Yale bands, like Randy Burns and the Skydog Band, a Neil Young/Byrds hybrid, even managed to get local support.

However, by 1972, when Tiven entered Yale, things had changed. "There was a time period," he said, "when things other than the top 40 were important to people, but then it started to shift back the other way. By the time I got to Yale, it was as un-rock as it could possibly be, and WYBC was starting to lean in the commercial direction."

Fortunately, Yale's music scene perked up in the late '70s and early '80s. "Just before I arrived," Bannister remembered, "there was a Yale band called Nobodaddy who was [so] significantly accomplished that they had taken a year off to tour." The rock crowd also included Chicken Licken, a country rock band featuring Billy Conway, CC '79, later the drummer for Morphine. Bannister himself was in an Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead cover band called the Wolverines that played at campus keg parties. Even some faculty members helped out. "Bill Ferris, at the time a Calhoun Fellow," Jeremy Epstein, CC '82, said, "was instrumental in getting noted rock critic Robert Palmer to teach a seminar on the Roots of Rock...I suspect the honorary degree bestowed upon [B.B.] King was Ferris' doing."

As the music scene grew, bands embraced more radical styles like punk and ska. The first band to push the envelope were the Germanies, who "emphasized the three-chord DIY spirit of punk—they were loud and obnoxious," Epstein said. Bannister's Desperate Bellboys were made up of members of the Wolverines and played original songs alongside Brian Eno and Television covers. Other bands like the dub-inflected Skunkadelique followed suit. Since there was no venue on campus at which these groups could perform, they had to play at Ron's Place, a local bar. "It was basically sort of a biker bar that had bands—it seemed really scary at the time," Bannister recalled. As the interest in punk grew, so did the drive to produce even more experimental music. "Everyone was in this loose-limbed experimental orchestra called Sheep's Clothing...the Bang on a Can series pretty much grew out of [that]."

Golden oldies

Once the punk and experimental explosion fizzled, students began to turn their attention to the world beyond Yale. Nadine, "the magazine that wishes it were a band," was founded in 1984 as an "outlet for passionate discussion of lowbrow, gritty stuff," according to Adrienne Fricke, MC '95, a former editor. Throughout its ten-plus-year existence, Nadine ran events like Nadine Fest, an annual Yale band festival, and Empty Sockets, a biannual acoustic show at Berkeley College. It was an important meeting ground for musicians, many of whom wrote for the magazine.

Despite the presence of Nadine, "the late '80s sucked," Jason Pellerin, ES '94, said. "There was no scene. There were no bands. Nadine was cool, but it was all about stuff that was happening outside." Tim Holahan, JE '92, said that his band, Monobraü, "was the only original band on campus for most of that time." However, Monobraü was a solid presence—they opened for Blur at Toad's in 1992.

As the members of Monobraü reached their senior year, the golden age of Yale rock set in. "Imagine my surprise," Pellerin said, "when I came back after two years away, and the first night back saw half a dozen good student bands play on Old Campus." During Geoff Boyd's, TC '95, sophomore year, "there were rock 'n' roll shows probably two nights a week on average—usually in the little boiler rooms and cafes in the basements of the residential colleges. These shows were free and well-attended." Jason Morphew, TC '95 added, "bands had to provide a keg. It was an important tradition."

Boyd's alterna-country band The Magnolia Rifles, funk-rockers Drastic Yellow Plastic, the bizarre Islamic-influenced Radeesh, Morphew, described by Alec Bemis, BK '98 as "Dylan in the backwoods, way backwoods," and indie-poppers Holiday, one of the more popular bands in Yale's history, were all active in the music scene. These groups were known for their over-the-top shows as well as for their music. "Leon [of Radeesh] would toss radishes at the audience, play stinging solos, then throw his guitar about carelessly and encourage audience members to mock-crucify him. During [a show by punk/metal band Boba Fett]," Boyd recounted, "there were some raw calf hearts thrown about, and one of them landed in a woman's cleavage, causing quite a bit of commotion." WYBC regularly played Yale bands, and often had live performances. Many of the mu-sicians from this era went on to pursue careers in music—Holiday has released three albums, and Chris Colthart, BK '94, of Boba Fett is now a member of Papas Fritas.

Dying and reviving

Darby Saxbe, TC '99, remembered her freshman year as the end of this golden age. "Everyone was complaining that the rock scene was in its death throes." After the big wave of bands from the early '90s moved on, Voltron, a tongue-in-cheek heavy metal band, Geek Love, an indie-country group, Wide Load, a funk/metal hybrid, and the Helium-esque floorpilers filled the gap. Darby put together the Polio Kids, a Pixies-esque group. "I got to Yale and I was kind of into indie rock," she said. "I formed a band, we practiced twice, and all of a sudden we were playing shows. It was very exciting."

Adam Swire, CC '96, conceived Six Feet Under in 1995 as a small Calhoun showcase for his jazz band. But Saxbe and Noah Enelow, CC '99, commandeered it halfway through the year, advertised throughout New Haven, and invited local bands to perform. After Saxbe's freshman year, however, "the scene started to seem really small and incestuous," she said. "I was in five different bands, and I remember playing at Naples for five hours and thinking, `this is kind of ridiculous.'" Nadine ceased publication in 1996 and Six Feet Under dwindled later that year.

But early on in this year, Jill Ruch-ala, SM '02, and Bidisha Banerjee, MC '02, revived Six Feet Under with a renewed emphasis on poetry, though musicians continued to perform.

The show's rebirth followed the founding of the Performing Musicians' Co-operative and Garbage Czar Records, a student-run label that has released four CDs, including one by the now-defunct student band Pinstripe. Tom Noerper, BK '97, formed the Co-operative as a collection of musicians trying to organize support for independent music at Yale. Now, bands like Arcaro and Pearly Sweets and the Platonics draw crowds, and rap-metal group Six Pack Annie was last year's runner-up in the Late Night with Conan O'Brien's College Band Search.

Although the Yale rock scene seems low-key, David Slade, TC '01, co-founder of Garbage Czar, maintains his faith. "[We have] the best scene that anyone can hope for," he said, "people who give a shit regardless of whether or not the institution is behind them."

Graphic courtesy Nadine, compiled by Shawn Cheng.

Back to A&E...