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When The Steves' two extremely limited (maybe 100-200 of each??) EPs were released back in 1980 and '81 respectively, the squares around Harvard's newsroom were aghast at the audacity of this group. Having the stones to release such crudely-rhythmic, near mechanical and downright terse tunes in the day's often long winded prog rockin' ballad heavy radio reality that were too robotic to be “punk” and too unruly to be anything but was, to say the least, a bold move. Sure to cause an uproar in the halls, protests in the classroom and uninvited dancing in the streets!
In the annals of New England's rock journalism, there is not a mountain of coverage on The Steves, certainly not as much as the Alan Parsons Project or Aerosmith, but the fact remains that they were a fully charged powder keg of raw energy and new musical direction that seemed to elude most of the world back then. Not to say they didn't get any light shone on them, they did get a fair amount of airplay on the college stations around Boston and even appeared on the cover of Boston Rock magazine.
It is Iron Lung Records' distinct pleasure to offer the modern world a new chance to discover the ever vital and effervescent music of The Steves' initial EPs along with a third EP of songs never released on vinyl until now that were recorded at the time or shortly after the initial sessions. A true synth-punk/KBD treasure. Obscurity is for suckers. Let's get shakin'!
Our take: Iron Lung Records just put out three EPs by this early 80s Boston group; they’re available individually, but work pretty well as a single body of work, so I’ll write about them as a unit here. Boston’s music scene has always seemed to be something of an island with its distinct sounds and cultures, and I think that holds true whether you’re talking about trying-make-it-big rock music or more niche underground musical flavors. Certainly the Steves were a unique band. While they were temporally of the post-punk era—the synthesizers and jittery rhythms in their songs are sonic hallmarks of that time—they don’t sound like a post-punk band. There’s something about the Steves that reminds me of Oingo Boingo; like Danny Elfman, it sounds like they have a broader range of influences than rock / new wave music, but they’re happy to adopt tropes of that era and style when it suits them. Also like Oingo Boingo, there’s something about the Steves’ music that seems auteur-driven. Rather than a democratic band where each member’s veto power inches the sound a little closer to the middle of the road, the Steves’ records are idiosyncratic. There are moments that have the symphonic grandeur of prog rock, but there are also songs like “Making Time” that evoke the Screamers in both the gnarly synth sound and the blunt and confrontational performance. While fans of early synth-punk will enjoy the Steves, I think these singles will hit for people who appreciate the out-of-time / ahead-of-their-time quality of groups like Pere Ubu, Mission of Burma, and Devo and the work of cracked-up auteurs like Dwarr and Jandek.
In the annals of New England's rock journalism, there is not a mountain of coverage on The Steves, certainly not as much as the Alan Parsons Project or Aerosmith, but the fact remains that they were a fully charged powder keg of raw energy and new musical direction that seemed to elude most of the world back then. Not to say they didn't get any light shone on them, they did get a fair amount of airplay on the college stations around Boston and even appeared on the cover of Boston Rock magazine.
It is Iron Lung Records' distinct pleasure to offer the modern world a new chance to discover the ever vital and effervescent music of The Steves' initial EPs along with a third EP of songs never released on vinyl until now that were recorded at the time or shortly after the initial sessions. A true synth-punk/KBD treasure. Obscurity is for suckers. Let's get shakin'!
Our take: Iron Lung Records just put out three EPs by this early 80s Boston group; they’re available individually, but work pretty well as a single body of work, so I’ll write about them as a unit here. Boston’s music scene has always seemed to be something of an island with its distinct sounds and cultures, and I think that holds true whether you’re talking about trying-make-it-big rock music or more niche underground musical flavors. Certainly the Steves were a unique band. While they were temporally of the post-punk era—the synthesizers and jittery rhythms in their songs are sonic hallmarks of that time—they don’t sound like a post-punk band. There’s something about the Steves that reminds me of Oingo Boingo; like Danny Elfman, it sounds like they have a broader range of influences than rock / new wave music, but they’re happy to adopt tropes of that era and style when it suits them. Also like Oingo Boingo, there’s something about the Steves’ music that seems auteur-driven. Rather than a democratic band where each member’s veto power inches the sound a little closer to the middle of the road, the Steves’ records are idiosyncratic. There are moments that have the symphonic grandeur of prog rock, but there are also songs like “Making Time” that evoke the Screamers in both the gnarly synth sound and the blunt and confrontational performance. While fans of early synth-punk will enjoy the Steves, I think these singles will hit for people who appreciate the out-of-time / ahead-of-their-time quality of groups like Pere Ubu, Mission of Burma, and Devo and the work of cracked-up auteurs like Dwarr and Jandek.