I'm fairly certain I have at least a few Garden Variety shows in my collection....but since this is the first - this is the one that gets the story.
Garden Variety is a big band for me. Although my ground-zero year for discovering punk/hardcore/underground music was 1986, I did not start going to shows until late-1991. Garden Variety were the first band from the local scene that I really gravitated towards and was able to watch grow from playing clubs on Long Island in front of five people late on a Thursday night (like this show I have for you today) to gaining much deserved national attention a few short years later.
My introduction to Garden Variety involves some personal history...so it's a nice excuse to share. Aaron Pagdon and I met our freshman year of college - Hofstra University on Long Island in the fall of 1991. Aaron was from Pittsburgh and I was from Merrick - about ten minutes south of Hofstra. I met him during freshman orientation - he was wearing a Black Flag "Police Story" shirt (you know the one) and I couldn't resist introducing myself. We became friendly - saying hello to each other here & there when we would bump into each other on campus. After getting kicked out of "The Freshman Center", a failed Hofstra experiment (for reasons that should be obvious), and after not being too happy being paired up with a frat-football-jock, he took an opportunity to be my roommate after some difficulties I had with my first roommate ended with him moving out. It also didn't hurt that I lived a few floors above his girlfriend at the time.
As we became closer friends and began discussing and listening to music more, and as we were both musicians (he had played in hardcore bands in high school such as Upper Hand, Direct Action and Ten Feet Tall....I had only played in cover bands through high school - such as Elektra, A Touch of Class, Infinity and V.O.I.D. (Visions of Infinite Delirium)), we decided to start a band.
Aaron and I have been in bands together ever since....it won't be too long before this relationship - one of both friendship and musicianship - will be 30 years old. We are primarily known as a rhythm section (I'm the bassist, he's the drummer), having rooted more obscure bands such as Humstinger and Quarters, and somewhat better known bands such as The Judas Iscariot and Hudson Falcons (for one album/tour cycle and occasional gigs to this day), although in Two Man Advantage, our best known band, I play guitar and he plays drums.
But in the beginning, he wanted to play guitar and I wanted to play drums. He knew a guy named Ron who went to Hofstra who played bass, and now we just needed a singer.
One night we were flipping through our local, free, weekly music paper, The Island Ear, and came across a classified ad - something like - "singer looking for band, into Bad Religion, Government Issue and Circle Jerks" - or something like that. I insisted we call....Aaron was resistant at first, thinking whoever it was had probably "been around the block a few times" and wouldn't want anything to do with us. But I said we had nothing to lose and there was no downside to calling him....so we did.
We both spoke to him that night....on the other end was Vinny Segarra from Howard Beach - owner of the most baritone of voices. We all hit it off pretty well over the phone. He told us that his band, Situated Chaos, had just broken up and he was looking for a new one. He just wanted to play straight-ahead three-chord hardcore....which at that moment, is also what we wanted to do - so it sounded like a possible match. He also mentioned that he ran a record label - Mint Tone - who had put out a few records to that point (Situated Chaos, Functional Idiots, Disemboweled Corpse, and The Thing). His next record was going to be the first 7" by this band Garden Variety, based out of Valley Stream, and why don't we meet up with him at their next show the following week, at The Spiral opening up for Bad Trip. We said "sure" - but how would we know who he was? He simply said, "don't worry - you'll know".
The next week, we headed to The Spiral which I remember being pretty packed, and we instantly figured out who Vinny was....he was the biggest dude in the room....by far! I would be lying if I said I remember all that much about Garden Variety or Bad Trip that night - because I was just too excited about having just met the singer in my new band and my punk rock circle of friends widening - something that was severely lacking in my high school days where most of my punk rock discoveries were made in solitude, or with the one friend I had who was open to the punk rock journey - Lloyd Zare (another super close friend to this day) who, unfortunately, lived several towns away and I could only see on weekends.
Vinny joined the band - and that was the first of three versions of my first, "real", original band - Humstinger. Although Humstinger may not have gone onto fame and fortune - Vinny remains a very close friend to this day.
After that, I would become a loyal Garden Variety fan. I was at the show when Vinny opened up the boxes of the 'Hedge' 7" (recorded at Inner Ear with Don Zientara!) - it was at a little bar in Island Park I think (or was it Oceanside?...Long Beach?) - and man - I brought that home and listened to it for days. It was just three incredibly catchy songs in the Jawbreaker/Superchunk/Squirrel Bait mold - one could say post-hardcore or the harder-edged version of emo that was emerging at that time...but with a definite original spin and superior musicianship by all three members: vocalist/bassist Anthony Roman, guitarist Anthony Rizzo, and drummer Joe Gorelick.
For quite a time, they were Long Island's secret - they played a ton and I saw them almost every time, even befriending them to a certain extent. It was through Garden Variety that, after some Humstinger line-up changes, we met Kevin McManus who would be our guitarist through the second and third versions of that band (Kevin would slowly drift away from Humstinger to focus on Farckus Affair before turning up in the final line-up of Dahlia Seed). Anthony Roman also offered up some advice after hearing our initial try at a demo, that convinced us we should go back and give it a second try (he was right - and we did).
Eventually, after much hard work and endless playing, and continuing their evolution as songwriters, the band, as it inevitably had to, breached the barriers of Long Island. They released their first, self-titled record in 1993 on Gern Blandsten, and their second, and final, full-length on Headhunter in 1995 titled 'Knocking The Skill Level', along with split 7"'s with Dahlia Seed (Mint Tone - '94), Chune (Headhunger/Cargo - '94), Hell No (Reservoir - '95), and Jejune (Montalban Hotel - '97), not to mention contributing to a variety of comps. In 2019, Arctic Rodeo Recordings put out the long overdue 'Complete Discography 1991-1996' boxset (although I don't think it's actually "complete" as it's missing the demo and I think a few of the split/comp tracks (I have to double-check that one), and certainly not any of the live recordings in my collection that I plan to share with y'all).
But as all good things do - Garden Variety ended. By that point, they had long outgrown the small, Long Island clubs and were regularly either headlining shows or securing main-support slots on big shows and touring the country to national recognition. I think the last time I saw them was at CBGB opening for Jawbox - probably around '95 or '96. But man - I saw them a zillion times in their earlier days - circa '92-'94 - and have a few of those shows on tape.
Garden Variety was certainly a huge influence on the Long Island scene as it emerged in the late-'90s and early-'00s, and, even though the band has never played a reunion show, all three members have continued to play music to the present day, Anthony Roman most notably in Radio 4, Anthony Rizzo with Vic Thrill (and many others - including bands well outside the indie rock orbit), and Joe Gorelick in Big Collapse, The Fifty Two X, Retisonic, Red Hare, Bluetip and Marah.
This show was from the Right Track Inn in Freeport. Tons of stories could be told about that place. RTI opened in 1973 and closed it's doors about 25 years later. I almost played my first show there when I was in high school, but I was too young (but I did end up playing there a couple of times a few years later - including with Humstinger with Aaron and Vinny....and, a bit later, my band Jody Crutch opened for Garden Variety there). The RTI had regular hardcore shows there through the '80s - Crumbsuckers, Leeway, and Ludichrist were all regulars over there. Even some bigger names - like Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and Dream Theater (in their super early days) graced that stage.
This show is from Thursday, June 3, 1993. Anthony Roman's opening banter reveals that My Favorite and Down Patrick opened this one up (and that they would also be playing RTI only one week later - which demonstrates just how much GV gigged the local scene at that time). The setlist features one demo track ("Puzzled" - the stand-out track on that demo), two tracks from the 'Hedge' 7", and the rest filled out with songs that would be released later that year on the self-titled Gern Blandsten LP (some of the songs didn't even have titles at the time). When that album did come out, I already knew every song on it. That album, for me, wasn't so much the presentation of new material, but rather a compilation of material that I had been seeing them play live for a year.
Another personal tidbit is that the "Justin" in the song "Rode (For Justin)" was Justin Nortillo. Justin was the singer/bassist in a New Jersey-based band called State Speed. I first met those guys at a house show that Garden Variety played out in Montclair, NJ (I think maybe some of the Leo brothers lived there - not sure). Their drummer fucked up one too many times for their guitarist (Chris Infante, an original member of Chisel), who stormed off the stage mid-set. I ended up becoming State Speed's drummer for the rest of their existence - about another year or so. It was a good band, and after a pretty good show at Brownie's (opening up for Garden Variety) - I never heard from those guys again....which was weird...but - whatever...
More Garden Variety shows to come in the future, I'm sure. It'll be less talk, more rock going forward as my story has now been told.
There is some tape noise that rears its ugly head here & there....apologies for that....but - you know - this tape is now over 27 years old - so gimme a break!
SETLIST:
Hat Head (0:00)
Fall In (5:09)
Binder (9:41)
Puzzled (14:23)
Hedge (18:00)
Turnout (20:40)
Rode (For Justin) (24:10)
Closet (29:40)
Pretty Mouth (35:40)
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