Space Rock Time Bomb

Crash Street Kids head back to the '70s, with just the beer lights to guide them

A A A Comments (0) By Ed Masley Thursday, Feb 22 2007
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Bruce even stayed at Adams' place. "There's nothing cooler than writing music with a guy you idolized, whose posters you had hanging on your wall," Adams says. "You sit down working on a new song and, all of the sudden, he does this chord change and you're, like, 'That was off Killer. And it's really kick-ass!'"

Adams says this like a 12-year-old who can't believe he got to meet his hero in an alley out behind the venue. "He's a legend, and here he is crashing at my house for six months."

Bassist Ryan "Deuce" Gregory
Giulio Sciorio
Bassist Ryan "Deuce" Gregory
Drummer A.D. Adams
Giulio Sciorio
Drummer A.D. Adams

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Scheduled to perform on Saturday, February 24
The Sets in Tempe

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In 2005, three years after parting ways with Bruce, McKay and Adams started hooking up on Tuesdays, playing stacks of classic records while comparing notes on favorite bands and, on occasion, arguing for hours over acts like Sparks and Jethro Tull.

"Sparks is good, " Adams says, with a gleam in his eye that says he lives to argue shit like this.

Implicit in the band's enthusiasm for the music of the glam-rock era — even Sparks, in Adams' case — is a rejection of contemporary rock 'n' roll.

But McKay's not sure he'd go that far. "To me, it comes down to the songs," he says. "Style doesn't matter as much as the song. And these days? I don't hear a lot of great songs, really. Or at least not songs that speak to me."

Does he actually listen to new stuff? "I don't know . . . do Slade reissues count?" he jokes, before admitting that there are some newer bands he's into, like Wolfmother, one of his favorites. "But they sound like old bands. If you take those types of bands out of the equation, then the answer would be no."

It was after impressing himself with the thought that he'd actually written one of those great songs, "The Kids on Dope," that a conscious decision was made to take this from a Tuesday-night recording project to a real band. So McKay and Adams looked around the practice space and added Ryan "Deuce" Gregory on bass and Ricky Serrano, a kid they knew from session work at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, on lead guitar.

"Ricky would be in on some of those sessions," Adams says. "And he was what, like, 6 years old, still using sippy cups, but he could play his ass off on guitar. When it came time to make this thing a band, it was an easy call, a no-brainer."

Serrano was actually closer to 20 than 6 at the time. He's 21 now, just like Gregory, who got the bass gig despite having never played bass. He just happened to be hanging out in the studio, like Serrano, getting drunk and listening to glam rock every Tuesday. "I think Ryan handed him a bass and told him, 'You'll be playing bass,"' Adams recalls. "But unlike most guitarists, he plays bass like a bass player. He digs into the old Dennis Dunaway stuff or Jimmy Lea from Slade. He listens to all that stuff."

With Serrano and Gregory fleshing out the lineup, things were sounding great. And they already had a name picked out, the title of a Mott the Hoople song. But with the way Let´s Rock and Roll Tonite was shaping up, they knew they couldn't very well just pick up their instruments and play. They'd need a proper rock show, with cheerleaders, ramps, and explosives, maybe some giant balloons filled with "Crash Street Kids money."

"Because of what we're doing, it only made sense to have a big show," explains Adams, who designs and builds the band's sets. "And the more we talked about it, the bigger it got in our heads. I'd start drawing stick figures on stages, just like I did on my notebooks at school, saying, 'We could have ramps, we could have explosions, we could have cheerleaders.' And we're all laughing, lighting up another joint, and saying, 'Wouldn't this be great?' Then Ryan comes up with this song, and the opening line on the very first album is, 'Hello, hello, come dig the supersonic star show.' At that point in time, we had no choice. It had to be a show."

McKay, of course, was all about the show. He is a front man who listens to Bowie. "We couldn't just stand on a stage with our amps and play these big theatrical kind of songs about some big rock star," he says. "It needed some sort of big production element to make it seem right."

These guys put a lot of work into their live shows, turning up for gigs at noon with their ramps and their risers. "We wanted to give the people something that nobody else was doing anymore, especially on a local or regional level," Adams says. "We don't care about the money. We lose money doing this. It's expensive as fuck. But it's so worth it."

The only show they've ever done without the big production was their first appearance ever outside Shabby Road — a three-song miniset at Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding show in 2005. "He loved our band, from what I'm told," McKay says.

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PSYCHO GYPSY
PSYCHO GYPSY

SINCE OUR REFORMATION, PSYCHO GYPSY HAS PLAYED IN COLORADO, TEMPE ARIZONA AND HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA. AT EACH SHOW THE WELCOME WE GOT WAS BEYOND EXPECTATIONS. WE THANK EVERYONE SINCERELY FOR ALL THE SUPPORT. IN ORDER TO MOVE FORWARD HOWEVER FOR 2008, WE HAVE TO RAISE THE BAR SO TO SPEAK. FOR THE REUNION LAST YEAR WE DECIDED TO GIVE SEVERAL FORMER GYPSY MEMBERS TIME ON THE GYPSY STAGE ONCE AGAIN. FOR EDDIE AND TIMM, SHARING TIME WITH OUR OLD FRIENDS BOTH ON AND OFF THE STAGE WAS TIME WE ENJOYED EVERY MINUTE OF. ESPECIALLY TO ERIK AND JOEY WE THANK YOU. THE DRAWBACK HOWEVER WAS THAT EACH SHOW WE PLAYED LAST YEAR HAD A DIFFERENT LINEUP WHICH MADE THE VIBE DIFFERENT AT EACH SHOW. THE COLORADO SHOW FEATURED EDDIE ELECTRA, TIMM TANTRUM, JASON DOCKTER AND A GREAT FRIEND OF TANTRUM'S JOSH DRAVEN WHO CURRENTLY DOES ARTWORK FOR GYPSY. THE PHOENIX ARIZONA LINEUP CONSISTED OF AGAIN EDDIE, TIMM AND JASON AND ORIGINAL GYPSY LEAD GUITARIST AND ARIZONA'S GUITAR GOD/VIRTUOSO JOEY CARTER (NOW OF ARIZONA FAVORITES RIZON) AT THE END OF THE SHOW ERIK "BD" ST. ERICKSON JOINED GYPSY FOR A FEW SONGS. PSYCHO GYPSY THEN MADE THEIR WAY TO HOLLYWOOD. ERIK WAS CHOSEN TO PERFORM AT THE HOLLYWOOD SHOW HOWEVER JASON GOT KNOCKED OUT OF THE LINEUP FOR THAT NIGHT DUE TO AN EXTREME INFECTION IN HIS ARM MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO PLAY THE DRUMS. IT WAS DECIDED THAT TANTRUM WOULD STEP BEHIND THE DRUM KIT FOR THAT ONE NIGHT. NOW THAT GYPSY HAS CELEBRATED IT'S PAST WE NEED TO LOOK INTO THE FUTURE WHICH REQUIRES THAT WE NOW HIRE A PERMANENT LINEUP. BACK IN 2000 ERIK WAS UNABLE TO PERFORM 2 BACK TO BACK SHOWS IN ARIZONA DUE TO ILLNESS. THE GUITAR PLAYER FROM THE OPENING BAND WAS BROUGHT IN AND PLAYED BOTH SHOWS NOT ONLY WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS BUT WITHOUT ANY REHEARSAL EITHER. THAT GUITAR PLAYER WAS JERRY VAYNE OF FOXY ROXX.NOT ONLY DOES THIS MEAN JERRY WILL NOW PLAY WITH GYPSY. BUT IT ALSO MEANS THE SOUNDS OF TWO GREAT BANDS WILL BE BROUGHT TOGETHER TO MAKE ONE INCREDIBLE SOUND. JERRY AND TIMM HAVE ALREADY COLLABORATED ON TWO GREAT SONGS FOR LAST HALLOWEEN AND CHRISTMAS WHICH WERE PLAYED IN ROTATION ON ROTTING FLESH RADIO REALDISNEY.COM METAL EXPRESS RADIO BRAINGEL RADIO AND SEVERAL OTHERS. THE SUCCESS OF THESE SONGS MADE HIRING JERRY A NO BRAINER. SO HERE IS THE LINE UP FOLKS.

JERRY VAYNE

TIMM TANTRUM

AND EDDIE ELECTRA

WE ARE ALSO ANNOUNCING THE RE-RELEASE OF OUR DEBUT ALBUM FEATURING NEW PACKAGING, NEW ARTWORK BY JOSH DRAVEN, LYRICS AND A TRIBUTE PAGE IN THE BOOKLET FOR OUR LATE DRUMMER MYKEL.(RIP) THE ALBUM WILL SOON ALSO BE AVAILABLE ON SEVERAL MAJOR MUSIC SITES FOR MP3 DOWNLOAD AS WELL AS AVAILABLE FROM THE MYSPACE PAGES. OUR NEW ALBUM (WHICH WAS PUT ON HOLD IN ORDER TO PLAY THE LIVE SHOWS WILL BE DONE THIS SUMMER FEATURING GUITAR WORK FROM JERRY VAYNE) MORE DATES FOR LIVE APPEARANCES WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON. SHOW &035;1 WILL BE IN COLORADO SPRINGS COLORADO. THE DATE FOR THAT SHOW WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON. ANOTHER PROJECT THAT MAY BE AVAILABLE TO GYPSY FANS, IS A METAL SOLO PROJECT FEATURING TIMM TANTRUM AND ERIK "BD" ST. ERICKSON. EDDIE ELECTRA HAS ALSO BEEN WORKING ON SOLO WORK FOR FUTURE RELEASE SO STAY TUNED FOR THAT. AS YOU CAN TELL WE HAVE NOT BEEN SITTING ON OUR ASSES AS OF LATE. THIS WILL INDEED BE THE YEAR OF THE GYPSY!!!!!!!!!!KEEP IT LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
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