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The Living Guitars were a direct hybrid of a late 1980s music scene in New York City which emerged as an offshoot of William Berger's Lo-Fi radio program on WFMU in New Jersey spotlighting home recording artists. Formed by two regular contributors to the program whom Berger himself introduced to each other, the duo became highly regarded within their creative circle. Despite only being together for 14 months, they became so revered by their fans and peers that even years after their demise, both former members could not exist in the same room without hearing repeated taunts of "Living Guitars reunion!"
For an all-too-brief period at the end of the eighties, Mark "Jet Screamer" DeAngelis and myself, Ray (Brazen) Zinnbrann, were a dream team by all accounts, not least of all my own. I'd been doing dual-guitar multi-tracked instrumentals under the name on my own for a few years, not distributing most of them, never thinking I'd be taking the idea to the stage someday. But when I met Jet, he seemed like the perfect choice to be an actual second Living Guitar. We'd observed various similarities in each other's styles with interest in the months leading up to the day Jet finally expressed a desire to collaborate with me. From there the initial concept took on a life of its own, Jet's influence and the chemistry we developed pushing the music in directions we could never have predicted.
Fans and friends marveled at our ability to keep a steady beat and play in perfect synchronization despite the fact that we had no rhythm section and had the treble cranked as high as human ears could withstand. Initially, we each brought our own numbers into the mix and made a combined set list, but as Jet and I settled in, our rehearsals became long jam sessions out of which collaborations such as "The Zen of Driving" or (our "big hit") "Friday Evenings" would arise. There seemed no end to our creativity, and as recently as days before our very untimely breakup, we were going over some very big plans for the future.
Then it all came crashing down without rhyme or reason. I've never been the same since.
The Living Guitars existed in New York City and northeast New Jersey from October 30, 1988 to January 31, 1990. Ray (Brazen) Zinnbrann was from Elmwood Park, New Jersey. Jet Screamer was from Astoria, Queens. We played our first gig at a Turkish-style bath house and our last gig at an old funeral home, at which I smashed a guitar during the final number. (We didn't know at the time it would be our last show.) We performed at CBGB, ABC No Rio, the Lizard's Tail (a great space in pre-gentrification Williamsburg, Brooklyn), the Gas Station, McGovern's, Downtown Beirut 2, Penn Place Pub, and three times live in the studio on WFMU. We appeared on television on the Manhattan Cable public access show Young, Gifted and Broke in June 1989.
We released one track, "Friday Evenings," on a very obscure and long-out-of-print vinyl release in 1990 called The Phoaming Edison Tapes. There's three never-before-heard songs from the sessions for that track, and it is these recordings which you are hearing on this page for the first time in their entirety. There also exist several hours' worth of demos, rehearsals, and live tracks, all of it on old cassettes. Perhaps it shall eventually all get heard someday. Perhaps those who hear us now will hear how much it all meant to us and to those lucky enough to have been in the right time and place to witness it. (And maybe I'll tell some stories about those days as well, if anyone actually expresses interest in reading them.)
Ray was later a member of the Thundering Lizards and Thai Raid (with Malcolm Tent). Jet was later a member of My Sick Friends and Lancaster County Prison.
It should be noted that "Friday Evenings" and all the other songs heard on this space were recorded at Toxic Shock Studios in New York City in August 1989, with James Kavoussi and Jet engineering. This studio recorded all the bands that congregated in our creative circle during the time of our existence, including Fly Ashtray, Uncle Wiggly, Smack Dab, Gamma Rays, Jolly Ramey, and the Modern Day Carpetbaggers (all of whom also appeared on The Phoaming Edison Tapes -- seek out this album NOW, collectors!).
This space is dedicated to the memory of Terence Karl Folger a.k.a. T.K.F. a.k.a. Van Gelder, arguably our single biggest supporter, who hosted most of our WFMU appearances and who once wrote and sang "Ray Zinnbrann and Jet" to the tune of "Bennie and the Jets." Please spend time at his Myspace tribute page, I beg of you. And thanks for reading this.
Love, Ray Zinnbrann a/k/a Ray Brazen, January 2007
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