Jan. 19, 1979 Gusto music feature: The Vores

 

Here’s a soundtrack to accompany the Love Canal documentary that’s airing on PBS this week.

Jan. 19, 1979 

The Vores

         The Vores seem quite at home in the stark, studied essence of this white-walled showroom in the CEPA Gallery on Essex Street. The focus is uncluttered. Nothing is extraneous. Art is all.

         “This is where we started to play, this very room,” says Biff the guitarist. “Then the neighbors started to complain across the street. Now we practice in a warehouse in Riverside. They still complain across the street over there.”

         Next to Biff, behind their respective Foster Grants, are Raoul the guitarist and singer, Alfredo the bassist and Mike the drummer. Biff has a master’s degree in photography. Raoul teaches photography as a grad student at UB. Alfredo’s a student. Mike builds houses.

         The Vores have their artistic priorities. Biff, who comes from Erie, Pa., is a refugee from blues bands. Raoul sat in front of Crack the Sky’s bass player in high school in Steubenville, Ohio. Alfredo hails from Toronto. Mike’s from Lewiston, went to college in South Carolina, auditioned for Bruce Springsteen’s group and spent the last couple years in lounge bands. Their influences: The Yardbirds and the Minneapolis New Wave rock band The Suicide Commandos.

         For The Vores, identities are important. Names are not. It’s important that names are not important. Alfredo says that no one can causally determine his name, even from the sleeve of their debut record, where all the other names are revealed.

         The Vores do not have a sound system, but they do have a 33 1/3 rpm extended-play seven-inch record on limited-edition black vinyl with a pink picture sleeve.

         “It’s cheaper to put a record out,” Biff says. “The four songs took us seven hours including the mix-down. Everything came out to about $1,000. We had 1,000 of them printed. It sold out in New York. The cover sells it, but the people who listened to it bought it for the sound.”

         “The only point in having a band is to do your own music,” Raoul adds. “We had ideas of the stuff we wanted to play and this is the only kind of thing that didn’t make us sick. We have low vomit thresholds.”

         The songs were written shortly after the group formed last summer and they’re as bare-walls as the gallery. A thump of Alfredo’s bass. The elemental drone of the guitars. The crisp punctuation of Mike’s clear orange drum kit. The unadorned vocals of Raoul and Biff, halfway between singing and exhortation. The lyrics are as desolate as post-industrial landscapes:

         My brother’s got no eyeballs

         And my sister’s got no ears.

         The kid down the street

         Can’t get out of his chair.

         My father’s in the back yard

         Up to his knees in the mud.

         The grass used to grow here,

         Now all we got is sludge …”

         That’s the first verse of “Love Canal,” The Vores’ greatest hit and one of the four cuts on their EP. They have the singular distinction of having recorded the only song to date about the chemical catastrophe in Niagara Falls.

         “I’ve seen records on Legionnaire’s Disease and Rev. Jimmy Jones,” Biff says, “but nobody else has done anything on the Love Canal. We’re talking to a woman artist in New York who wants to do a film on the Love Canal. She wants us to do the soundtrack for it.”

         The Vores seem to have their priorities straight. The record has given them far more notoriety than a sound system would. They’ve got a reputation in Manhattan, while the most recent of their live performances a few weeks ago drew only sporadic appreciation from a crowd that was out to hear more familiar forms of rock ‘n roll on new talent night at Harvey and Corky’s State One. 

        Their next outing, however, will be a double-barreled one. They’ll play in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for the Feb. 5 opening of the In Western New York show. When they aren’t taking in the band directly, first-night visitors can find their work on the walls. The exhibit will include photo art by both Biff and Raoul.

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IN THE PHOTO: The Vores in 1979. Biff and Mike, front; Alfredo and Raoul, back. Buffalo News photo by Robert Metz.

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FOOTNOTE: The Vores achieved a bit of underground admiration nationwide and have popped up on several punk-rock compilation albums. The contemporary version of the band still performs in various instrumental and vocal configurations for occasional dates at Mohawk Place and other garage-rock friendly venues. Meanwhile, a 50-year retrospective of Biff Henrich photographs is coming soon to Hallwalls in Asbury Hall here in Buffalo. There’s an opening reception and an artist’s talk on May 10.