Reesa & the Rooters .............. .......................Suburban Wives Club (Philly & South Jersey 1979-83)

[pronounced: rootahs] When the 70s and the 80s collided in mid-air.  Reesa and the Rooters came walking out of the wreckage in primary colors.

In 1978, my younger brother, Larry Laskey, and I would often jam on acoustic guitars to create moody songs with lyrics inspired by the news. When friends Bob Jay and Donny Buckley joined on electric guitar and bass, I booked us in a South Jersey tavern as Reesa and the Rooters, a blues-pop, semi-acoustic group.

We added a drummer and continued to gig around Philadelphia and Jersey. I hand-lettered and cut and pasted graphics on all our literature, as well as putting up hundreds of posters and sending out mailing list postcards.

After Larry switched to electric guitar and I started playing a Farfisa organ, the local media dubbed me “the queen of the new wave scene.” Cherie Rumbol, a cohort who played in South Jersey club bands, came in to replace the original bass player and to add another voice to the mix.

The band and its music fit perfectly into the blossoming new wave scene in 1979. Except for some suburban clubs where people just didn’t get it, our audiences dressed up with skinny ties or spiked hair and came ready to pogo or slam dance.

In October 1980, a new version of the mythological jerk appeared on the Rooters’ first and only record release, Ultraman in Surf Villa,

backed by the punk-rock anthem TMI. I was always a natural on stage, but it was my natural knack for promoting that helped push the single into a college radio hit.... You make me cold like TMI... Melt my heart like TMI....

[I was 10-years old when TMI had its little accident and our moms packed my cousins and us in the car and headed for the hills. We stayed in a cabin in the Poconos and picked blueberries that week. 30 years later it's great to find a love song based on a TMI simile!]

My performances were a reflection of my hippie past that included running offstage into the crowd, as well as tumbling around while singing and playing organ or guitar, or checking my makeup in a compact mirror.

Cherie exuded a quieter, more demure sexiness as she sang lead on such songs as “Ultraman in Surf Villa” and “Pierre.” The latter was Larry's vision of Marie Curie, whose husband discovered radium.

After nearly three years with the Rooters, and frequent artistic differences between me and my brother, I started writing songs on my own. “Guru Eye,” based on an article about Mao Tse-tung’s wife, was the first original tune we performed that had been written sans Larry.

That summer, Cherie and I jammed in Philly with drummer Ann Frances at an outdoor concert. We clicked immediately, and decided to put together Suburban Wives Club as a Rooter side project. But almost as quickly, the Rooters broke up.

SWC performed some of the Rooters songs, although in a more minimalist fashion. I set aside the Farfisa and concentrated on guitar to record Guru Eye as our quick-and-dirty single, b/w Casual Cat at a Laundromat.  Since we were a trio, I couldn't go out into the crowd much but I still did crazy stage routines, even getting Cherie involved in musical calisthenics during "Fat Thighs."  -from Reesa Marchetti's website.

Reesa and the Rooters put out a brand new 4-song CD in 2008 and is recording a new release.  Look for live performances and more info at the Reesa and the Rooters website and Reesa's Relive the 80s Philly band website.

Thanks to Billy Synth for telling me about The Rooters!  

Billy Synth............ Mama Don't Allow No Technopop Playin' Around Here..... (Harrisburg 1970s, 80s and beyond)

Billy Synth calls for a new Tapewrecks category: "Beat of His/Her Own Drum."  Critics might turn their nose up at technical skills or unorthodox style, but the band plays on, either oblivious or not giving a shit, with a small number of devoted friends and fans who appreciate what they do.  The rest of us only catch on much later.

Billy has his own original style embracing the synthesizer as an implement of mayhem in Harrisburg a few years before the great proliferation of PA punk began around 1980 and most other synthesizer bands were playing crappy MTV pop. Mama don't allow no technopop playin' around here. Nooo way.

Billy has established his garage punk cred as the creator of the Psychedelic Unknowns series of 60s garage compilations, and the mysterious force behind Frog and Rabbit Records and the Pennsylvania Rock Archives, so his own bizarre sounds come from the deepest recesses of mid-state vinyl junkiedom.

I hadn't heard from Billy Synth for years until a few months ago, while sifting through the Frog and Rabbit catalog, I was jolted once more by that unmistakable voice. Some vocalists sing from the throat and others from the chest.  But Billy seems to sing from the large intestine.  I knew this had to be the same fellow.  Sure enough.  He was 16 when Billy and the Starjets recorded You Changed in the early 70s.

Then he changed. What came over Billy?

...when I bought my Arp Odyssey synthesizer. We first had a group called Blue Ice... we began as an early '70s "classic" rock band, because we were hippies and that's what we grew up with....

Blue Ice (1977)
Power Play

...Then, when "new wave" came along, I liked it and left Blue Ice to form a more punk-like band, the Janitors....  I hooked up with Bernie, the original "punk rock janitor" (yes, he was in another punk group AND a janitor!)....  That didn't last long, really, even though we did release a few EPs... After a year or so, I got back together with Blue Ice (with new drummer Joe Gear). They had already "gone punk" themselves and changed their name to the Turn Ups, so it was all-cool again. When we recorded our first LP, it was like Stevinyl-guitar, Billy-synth, etc., and that's how I got the name....

Billy might have started one of central PA's first punk rock bands around 1978 with The Janitors. They released a couple of EPs around 1978 but I haven't been able to find any of the tracks. [Update: Billy sent me the Rock & Roll Casualty EP. Check out the Billy Synth & the Janitors post here.]

...There were actually quite a few "new wave/punk"-type bands around here then.  We played shows with groups such as the Sharks, the Late Teens, Reesa & the Rooters (Philly) and the Slickee Boys (DC).  There were a few nice venues to play, such as the Metron, Rumpelstiltskins, the Landing...  Also, an annual pig roast! ...I can't remember how we first connected, but Bernie & I from the Janitors went down to see Half Japanese with our instruments, and when we got there, we just started playing.  I mean, it was 1, 2, 3, 4, and we all started playing ANYTHING.  No rehearsal, no NOTHING! That's how it came out.  Sooo strange!

The Janitors and Half Japanese Hartzdale Drive Destruction

I first heard The TurnUps on Bona Fide Records Train To Disaster comp, and then I found Billy Synth & the Turnups Disorderly Conduct (1983) at a record swap in York County.

I'm So Sick of It
Music Is Forever
Madison Shuffle
Pushin' Too Hard

Billy's later bands included the Traces of Thyme (early 90s)
Oh Jane
and the Windowpaynes
Sweet Pea/Hooray for Hazel
And finally, Billy Starboy and The Tyme Machine's homage to the beat of different drum entirely - a cover of Lancaster's Joey Welz doozy: Rockin' In America

More from Billy Synth & Many Friends!

And even more: Alien X 117 Good stuff!  Stay tuned for more wreckage!

The Turnups on The Deadly Spawn Compilation

The Red Roosters ..... (Lancaster 1987)

At the DeLux Diner...Chrysler Imperial courtesy of Bill and Carl, Web of Sound Records

The Red Roosters were Lancaster's rockabilly revampers featuring saxophonist Lars Espensen who went from the US Marine Corps, to the Roosters, to playing with the fabulous A-Bones.  He's the only Rooster I knew, but he wasn't the main singer, and I remember the bulk of their songs being pretty clean-cut rockabilly with some Johnny Cash here and there. They were the opening act for the historic Hasil Adkins show at the Moose Lodge right after he was rediscovered by Norton Records et al. The two songs I have on tape are from the Punk's Not Dead show on WFNM.  Lars and and local punk goofballs Jack Lord's Hair were in the studio offending the morals of a few Lancastrians that evening. Unfortunately, that's all I have on The Red Roosters, so if you have any wreckage to share, please chicken-walk it over our way!

John Augustine with Lars, March 1987:
Mr. Moto / Psycho Macho / interview

Steve Patton-Drums
John Harlan-Bass
Phil Risser-Guitar
Lars Espensen-Sax



Thanks to Sophy DiPinto for her photos!

Lars went on to playing honky tonk in Brooklyn with The Gowanus Canal Boys and is currently in Tuscaloosa with The Original Snake Charmers.

La Música Callejera Pt. 7 ... Oaxaca

Street Music of Mexico and Central America
July-October 1995

Read the series introduction here.

Dedicated to street musicians making a living peso a peso.

OAXACA
...Oaxaca was a special part of this trip to say the least.  People, culture, food, music, landscape and all were wonderful of course, but I missed this girl in San Francisco that I left on uncertain terms. After two-months corresponding via fax machine and finding letters waiting for me lista de correos in every town I stopped, we reunited at the Oaxaca airport and spent two weeks together that left me all starry-eyed.  ...23) El año se la va by a guitarist in a restaurant on the zocalo in the capital. 24) Two guitarists outside a museum. 25) Trumpet and drum players in the market. 26) A Catholic funeral procession outside the Zapotec ruins in Mitla. 27) Back in the capital, mariachis in full charro regalia play a song for and me and my girl....

...A year and a half later, we had our wedding in SF....  and Solamente una vez was our song.

La Música Callejera - Oaxaca

Próxima estación: Guatemala