I moved back to Rochester In the mid seventies. Peggi and I had been going to school in Indiana and I was playing in a working country band there, real country, like Merle Haggard, George Jones, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Country rock was getting big here at the time, a whole other animal. Bands like Old Salt were popular. I wasn’t buying it. I placed an ad on the bulletin board at Record Archive, then located next door to Village Green Bookstore on Monroe Avenue. I was looking for something different and I found it. Kevin and Gary called and we started a band. I lasted a few years and left after we released the first single, “Die Trying.” Howard Thompson produced it at PCI Studio.
DIE TRYING VIDEO BY NEW MATH
A couple of years ago Gary Trainer dropped off a cd of old New Math tracks, something labeled April 1977. It was recorded in our rehearsal space above the adult bookstore in the Cox Building, just a block from Scorgies but before he opened his doors. And I knew I had some old Super 8 footage that Peggi shot of the band from back then, dark, live footage from the Orange Monkey without sound, Kevin, Gary and I in front of the first Record Archive store on Monroe Avenue and then some goofy stuff from Mount Hope Cemetery. I put it all together with some crossfades. Duane Sherwood wasn’t doing lights yet so we’re pretty much in the dark.
There weren’t many places to play before Scorgies, the Penny Arcade up at the lake, Electric Circus on Dewey, Big Daddy’s, some place along the river that Howie from Six String Sales booked and the Orange Monkey on Henrietta Town Line Road, down the road from the Red Creek Inn. Pierre ran the Orange Monkey. It was a glam rock palace. Cheap Trick was playing downtown one night when were playing the Monkey and Rick Nielsen joined us on stage after their gig. We did Gloria and something else. He was wearing the hat.
I quit New Math shortly after the first single was released and Peggi and I formed the Hi-Techs. Our first gig was opening for New Math at Scorgies.
