Peppermint Lounge

And we'd play all these big clubs, you know, had a very showbiz kind of audience.

You know, we'd play the Peppermint Lounge and Bonds and big clubs.

You know, it was always a lot of fun.

Showbiz crowd, a lot of, you know, like Andy Warhol type people.

When you got to New York, did you get very excited with the music scene at CBGB's and Max's and Danceteria and Tier 3?

I mean, for sure, because, you know, my boyfriend was working with this band, and then he got a job as a busboy at the Peppermint Lounge, and then That's how I got involved with Three Teens Kill Four and met a lot of other musicians and started playing music.

Yes.

So how did the band form then, Three Teens Kill Four?

Um, there were some bus boys who worked at the peppermint lounge and they were having a night called the staff infection show where the staff, um, was people from the staff were performing.

So these, um, four guys just got together and put this, this show together and three of them are queer and, um, So they had done this show and then their drummer didn't want to continue playing with them.

They decided after doing this one show that they did want to continue.

Yeah, we played all the usual places.

And we did a bunch in New apartment.

We did some in the cab and we went to a nightclub called the Peppermint Lounge.

And I was always trying to feel like I was enough and like I was cool.

And, you know, all the things that young women are kind of, what do you, you know, obsessed with or they were always trying to be, you pretty and fun and interesting and all these things.

It's by Joey D and the Starlighters.

They were the house band at the Peppermint Lounge, which was a celebrity hotspot in New York run by the Genovese crime family.

Any relation to Kitty Genovese, the victim? Nobody cared.

Nobody called.

started on the West Side.

Barbers, Peppermint Lounge, MGM Grand.

From there, it just exploded.

Before steppin' became steppin', it was known as bopping.

Yeah.

And the venue that they're playing at or whatever, the Peppermint Lounge.

Exactly.

I listened to it last or like after I listened to all the studio albums, I was like, I'll go back and check out some of the live stuff.

And so David Bregatti, he was in Joey Deena's Starlighters when that was an international act.

The Peppermint Lounge in New York City... where they did the Peppermint Twist, I mean, like, that was the place to go because I did hear a story from Joey D that he said they were playing in Stockholm, the Starlighters, and the Beatles were opening for them.

This was a long, long time ago.

I guess it must have been 63.

And he thought, oh, okay, great.

He wasn't sure they really would.

But when the Beatles showed up at the Peppermint Lounge...

Where, of course, Jacqueline Kennedy used to go.

Signed to Virgin, later to Cherry Red, toured the US, toured Europe multiple times.

Went to New York in 1982, which was a massive eye-opener, Danceteria, Peppermint Lounge, After Hours Clubs, went to the Roxy.

discovered ecstasy pretty early for a British lad.

And that just blew my mind in New York in 1982, as you can probably imagine.

Well, there was a, there was a group called, a band called Young Aborigines, which was, um, Michael Diamond on drums, who later became Mike D, um, and this guy Jeremy Shatan on bass, uh, Kate Schellenbach on percussion, who became the drummer of Beastie Boys, and, uh, John Berry on guitar.

And so Beastie Boys is really just, um, Adam Yauch, who became MCA later, Adam Yauch hanging out with these people and deciding, "I wanna do a side project band that's like a hardcore band," 'cause they s- just saw Black Flag perform, um, at- Can't remember if it was Peppermint Lounge or Irving Plaza, but there's a flyer for it in, in the book that Ian Mackaye actually, uh, sent me, 'cause he was at that show, as was Henry Garfield, later to be the fourth singer of Black Flag.

And so they just...

Adam Yauch's like, "Wouldn't that be cool if there was a New York hardcore band?" It's almost, like, ironic, like, 'cause hardcore was so associated with the West Coast, and I think that sort of people forget that because now it's so associated with New York.

And you take care.

From the Jet Land Circuit to the Peppermint Lounge.

Been run off more than once for going underground.

Where I met an old blues man with a walking cane.