It was 1988 when I went to the Trade Winds to hang out with some friends. It was a nice club, very neat and clean. I never saw any bands there, but I can imagine how that must have been. But I was a WHTG fan, so I did hear the Bongos. I liked them a lot and still do.
Richard Barone was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.
Andrea Weiss: For those who don’t know you, can you give a short history of the band?
Richard Barone: The Bongos were formed by three guys who loved music at the cusp of the 1980s, as the new decade began, and as the alternative, college rock movement was just beginning. There was no network yet for indie rock, just a handful of new bands in a few pockets around the country. Athens, Georgia, was one of the first, and The Bongos, and the music scene we helped create around our home venue of Maxwell’s, was another. Through making music videos and being signed to British label Fetish Records, we were able to tour, soon joining the B-52s on the road for their first (and our first) major U.S. tour. Signing with RCA Records gave us wider recognition here in the States and bigger tours. By the time MTV put our videos and our peers’ videos in rotation, what had started as an underground movement became practically mainstream. But, from the beginning, our roots were in indie rock and the DIY ethos.
AW: Who’s in the band?
RB: The Bongos were founded by me [Richard Barone; guitar, vocals], drummer Frank Giannini, and bassist Rob Norris. After our first album, we added James Mastro on second guitar.
AW: Who were your influences?
RB: Our influences are many, and each of us in the band has his own. For instance, the music we grew up with, like the Beatles and the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, T. Rex, Buddy Holly, Donovan -- the music that came later like Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Ramones, Patti Smith, Television -- and whatever was happening at the moment with our friends like The Feelies, the Bush Tetras, many more. The Bongos are also music fans and record collectors, so we are influenced by a lot of different artists.
AW: Could you tell us more about the concert here -- what club, the date, and so on?
RB: The Shroud of Touring: Live in 1985 was recorded during a 300-show tour in 1985, following the release of our second RCA album, Beat Hotel. The shows were sounding good, and wild, and we thought it would be a good idea to record one. Steve Scales, percussionist with the Talking Heads, had joined us on the tour, making our sound even more percussive than it already was. We had a day off on May 24, 1985, which was Memorial Day weekend, and we decided to add a show at the Trade Winds in Seabright, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, for the express purpose of recording a live album. We knew the audience would be psyched for the concert as Memorial Day was the unofficial start of summer. At the time, the Shore was an area of great support for The Bongos and home of alternative radio station WHTG, which presented the show. Because we had just released the Beat Hotel album, and then went directly into the studio after the tour to make our "final" album Phantom Train, Shroud was not released and stayed in the RCA vaults for forty years. The songs here have a lot of wonderful energy.
AW: Were you known for upbeat shows?
RB: The Bongos were always a highly energetic live band, and the studio albums could never replicate what we did in front of an audience. So, this album has always been the missing link in our catalog. It completes the story and shows a little more of who we are.
AW: Do you hope this album stirs up interest in the band?
RB: We're always happy when people discover The Bongos and find something they like in our music. With The Shroud of Touring, people are given the opportunity to step into a snapshot -- a moment in time -- and experience a live Bongos performance in the middle of a decade that spawned a new kind of pop culture. The Bongos were always a unique band, walking our own path -- a fine line between almost Beatlesque pop song structures and tight harmonies and the total, wild abandon of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and this album captures us walking that tightrope, without a net, in front of an audience that was more than ready to catch us if we fell.
