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Mandy Zone & Ozone live at Max’s Kansas City, 1981
01.31.2020
03:45 am
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Cover of the “Broken Toy” single on the Max’s Kansas City record label, 1981

The Fast were a glammy NYC-based punk/power pop band formed in NYC in the mid-70s by brothers Miki and Mandy Zone, with bassist Tommie Moonie and drummer Peter Hoffman. A third Zone brother, Paul, joined in 1975 and the group became a core part of the Max’s Kansas City/CBGB punk scene, with Blondie and the Ramones. They had two songs on the famous Max’s Kansas City 1976 album along with acts like Jayne County & The Backstreet Boys, Suicide, Pere Ubu and others. In 1978, Mandy Zone peeled off from The Fast and started his own band, Ozone. They released one single, but the trail goes pretty cold after that.

After becoming obsessed with Ozone’s music and thinking it deserved a wider audience, Weasel Walter has put out Mandy Zone & Ozone Live at Max’s Kansas City, 1981 on his ugEXPLODE label.

Weasel Walter writes:

“My discovery of Ozone’s devastatingly great music came in the most roundabout way possible. In the mid-2000s, when Netflix would send you DVDs in the mail, I checked out a seedy reissue of a 1976 Carter Stevens porn flick called Punk Rock, ostensibly a cheap quickie trying pathetically to capitalize on the then-nascent NYC punk club scene. Being a rock trivia geek, the main draw was the grimy footage of the obscure bands tacked on to the unwatchable sex and dopey “private detective” plotline. The main event turned out to be two songs performed quite raucously by the seminal power pop group The Fast, a combo featuring TWO sets of brothers, most notably the Zones - Paul, Miki and Armand. The maniacal low-budget genius of the group displayed in these film clips (shot at the legendary rock dive Max’s Kansas City, where they used to sit down at tables and watch the show!) blew my mind, particularly the weird, shrieking falsetto of the iron cross-laden, proto-goth keyboardist, Armand (or Mandy, for short). Inspired moments of genius like these, especially when they are excavated from obscurity out of the rubbish bin of the past, tend to etch themselves into my psyche permanently.

Forward to 2012: I am in Los Angeles, newly deputized as Lydia Lunch’s guitarist and bandleader in Retrovirus and, somehow, my predilection for these little clips of The Fast come up in discussion. Turns out that back in the day, the teenaged Lydia used to run in a pack with Paul Zone—the only remaining brother of the three, and bearer of the torch—so she introduces us. Paul is very happy to hear about my rabid enthusiasm, especially my ravings about his brother’s unique talents, and I am glad to make a connection with somebody I believe is an important historical figure. Paul and I kept in touch. Around 2015, Paul sent me a copy of a live set by his brothers’ band he had dug up, just for fun. I was immediately floored and played it on an endless loop. My life was pretty frickin’ complicated at that point, but after listening to it a few more million times over the following three years, I realized I should ask Paul if I could release it. Paul was happy to say yes, so the long process of editing and remastering began as well as sifting through the visual artifacts. So, here it is a labor of love and a tribute to Mandy Zone and his able cohorts.”

Buy Mandy Zone & Ozone Live at Max’s Kansas City, 1981 via ugEXPLODE
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.31.2020
03:45 am
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‘Punk Rock’: Porno and New York City punk collide in this gritty 1977 X-rated crime drama
12.15.2015
04:02 pm
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Poster Art for Punk Rock
 
Mixing a 1940’s style noir detective film with the grittiness of mid 1970’s New York City is the peanut butter firmly engulfed in the sleaziest of chocolate. Throw in the then still-fresh punk movement and you will have the bittersweet treat of Carter Stevens’ 1977 film Punk Rock. Wade Nichols aka Dennis Parker, whom would go on to both disco cult fame with his 1979 song “Like an Eagle” (courtesy of Neil Bogart’s Casablanca Records) and for appearing on the soap opera The Edge of Night for a number of years, stars as ex-cop and current gumshoe Jimmy Dillinger. His most recent case involves finding Jenny (Susaye London), whose rich family have been looking high and low for her. Jimmy has found her—oh, has he found her, six ways to Sunday—but as soon as his back is turned, she is kidnapped yet again. With the friendly dame on his conscience and her wealthy daddy still footing the bill, he has got to find her again and soon.
 
Wade Nichols is gumshoe Jimmy Dillinger
 
Someone is clearly really wanting Jenny back and this second time around puts the hard-bitten with a heart of semi-precious gold Dillinger on a trail brimming with forced prostitution, junk, punk rock music and the oldest trick in the world—-the unforeseen double cross. Don’t worry. In this age of fast-food information and meme-blips, I refuse to spoil the ending of this impactive film. Shouldn’t your eyes be pure for something in this age of “if it bleeds, it leads?” Our souls might be a lost cause, but at least your peepers can be clean for this. It’s one hell of a surprise ending.
 
Elda Stiletto in Punk Rock
 
Punk Rock works on two different but very key levels. The first one is the fact that it succeeds as an unlikely but tight retro-noir-punk-rock hybrid. It has all the right crime elements, even involving a girl-sex-ring led by a whip-wielding musician/pimp played by none other than Elda Gentile aka Elda Stiletto from Elda & the Stilettos! (A group that is probably better known now for once featuring a pre-Blondie Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. According to director Stevens, Harry was initially considered for the part, but took a pass.) There are truly grimy-looking drug pushers, suave pseudo-old-world-mobsters and one really fantastic underworld figure named Igor, played fabulously by Bobby Astyr. Talk about used-car-dealer meets pimp-goombah-sleazeball charm, Astyr is all of this and more.
 

 
At the center is Wade Nichols, whose old school matinee idol good looks and acting chops made him a perfect private detective fit for the 1940s meets 1970s. Nichols innate charisma and strong masculinity without being too macho, were traits that fit him into this role like a glove. Robert Kerman, billed here as Richard Bolla, is also good as the wise-ass police inspector foil to Nichols’ Dillinger.
 
Dillingers confronts a pusher at Max's Kansas City
 
The second level is a fascinating historical peek into a New York City pre-gentrification, pre-Guiliani and pre-gummed up TGIFridays/Disney Store neon hell. Grime, trash and dirty melting piles of snow line the streets and even the legit storefronts look grungy. 42nd Street is shown in all of its electric candy store of sordid delights glory and thrumming with pure mutherfucking vice. Even better is you get an inside peek of one of the birth places of New York punk, Max’s Kansas City, a club so great that Jayne County once wrote a song about it!
 
Welcome to Vice
 
In fact, it’s the scenes set in Max’s that are the most historically important, especially for a music fan. In Punk Rock, we get to see three different bands play. The first two acts, The Squirrels (no relation, from what I can tell, to the Seattle novelty band of the same name), The Spicy Bits (a super obscure band from the scene that did at least warrant a name check in Dead Boys’ guitarist Cheetah Chrome‘s autobiography) and most importantly, The Fast. Every movement has its stars that should have and could have made it huge, but yet, never quite did. The Fast not being household names then or now is still a smear of injustice on the music industry. (And trust me, that’s a structure that has more stains on it than a port-o-potty on the last day of Sturges.) Formed by brothers Armand aka Mandy and Miki Zone and later on joined by their younger brother Paul, The Fast were a power-pop band with a punk/hard rock edge whose energy, stage presence and bizarro rock image set them apart from anyone else on the scene. Need proof? Watch their renditions of “Kids Just Wanna Dance” and “Boys Will Be Boys” in Punk Rock. (Plus, the latter features the most rock & roll use of Cheerios, ever.)
 
The Fast with Miki, Paul & Mandy Zone.
 
Interesting note about Punk Rock is that there is an X-rated cut where instead of the musical sequences, you get explicit sex scenes. Not to underrate the joie de vivre of things like visual insertion, I would still take The Fast over that any day. Though that said, this film is proof that directors and actors from the X-rated world could act and make a pretty great little film if they wanted to. It’s not all pizza delivery boys and horny housewives.
 
Watch the scene from ‘Punk Rock’ with The Fast, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Heather Drain
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12.15.2015
04:02 pm
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‘Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground’: The best book yet on the dawn of punk rock

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Early band shot of Blondie

In the now long line of endless punk rock history cash-in books being pumped out from every corner of the world it’s shocking to find the one book that’s not like the others. Paul Zone’s Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground published by Glitterati Inc. is a coffee table book brimming with amazing, unseen photos and the life story of Paul and his brothers Miki Zone and Mandy Zone and their bands The Fast and later, Man 2 Man. What makes this book different is its author and the time frame it takes place in.

There was a short moment when everything was happening at once, no one knew or cared and the only band that had an audience or a record deal was the New York Dolls. As early as 1974 Patti Smith was playing, as was Television, Wayne County, Suicide and Blondie. The Ramones were starting to play at CBGB (opening for a drag show that starred Tomata du Plenty later of Screamers fame), KISS was pretty much in this same scene playing to about five people with many bands like The Planets And Paul’s brothers The Fast were playing alongside of them. At one point, sub-culturally speaking, all the cards were thrown up in the air and no one knew where they were going to land. It was a very small group of friends almost all of whom would, in a few short years, become icons of pop culture,
 
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Johnny Thunders, early 70’s

At the time, Paul Zone was very young. Too young to be in a band, but not too young to see a band or be snuck into the back room at Max’s Kansas City. And not too young to document this exciting time in his life by photographing everything. There are very few photos of this period when punk rock was actually occurring in the midst of the glitter rock scene. When the up and down escalators of rock ‘n’ roll infinity met and EVERYONE was hungry on the way up AND on the way down. There was change in the air, excitement and confusion.

Seeing Alan Vega of Suicide performing in a loft in 1973 with a huge blonde wig and a gold painted face is unbelievable. The years the photos in the book span are 1971 to 1978. Most are snapshots of friends hanging out when everyone was still on the starting line. The Fast were one of the more popular of these bands who let their new friends Blondie and The Ramones open for them in small New York clubs.

Early photos of The Fast show them amazingly in full glitter regalia with KISS-like make up (Miki Zone has a heart painted over one eye, etc.) but this was before KISS! There are a few photos of icons of the time like Alice Cooper (watching cartoons in his hotel room), Marc Bolan, The Stooges, etc. (a good one of KISS with about three people in the audience, as mentioned above). Most are of friends just hanging out, having a ball, not knowing or caring about the future and without that dividing line in music history called “punk rock.” It is truly a treasure to see something this rare, and even better, 99% of these photos have never been seen before.
 
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Wayne County long before becoming Jayne County

By 1976 Paul Zone was old enough to join his brothers and became the lead singer of the version of The Fast that made records. Sadly due to poor management decisions The Fast got left behind that first punk wave and watched as almost all of their buddies become some of the most famous faces in music history. How amazing that all of these people were friends just hanging out, broke and creative going to see each other play, talking shit and influencing each other in ways they didn’t even realize?
 
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Joey Ramone eating dessert at Paul Zone’s parents house at 5 am

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Linda Ramone, future design icon Anna Sui, Nick Berlin and me, Howie Pyro (The Blessed) at Coney Island 1978

After a few years of struggling, The Fast trimmed down to just brothers Miki and Paul Zone and some early electronic equipment. They finally let go of the name The Fast and became Man to Man, one of the first Hi-NRG electro dance music groups, recording with the likes of Bobby Orlando and Man Parrish. They had huge hits worldwide and here in dance clubs like “Male Stripper” and “Energy Is Eurobeat,”
 
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Suicide’s Alan Vega, early 70’s

This book is three quarters a photo book and one quarter autobiography, cutting to the point and perfect for this modern, short attention span world. It is packed with so much amazing first hand information in such a short amount of text that no one will be disappointed. Playground was co-written by Jake Austen of Roctober Magazine, with a foreword by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie. The book is available here
 
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If you are in the Los Angeles area this Saturday, June 28th, there will be a book release party and photo exhibit (with many of these photos printed HUGE) at Lethal Amounts Gallery at 8 pm.
 

Posted by Howie Pyro
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06.27.2014
10:55 am
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