This is a song band, not a band with a sound. Poignant songs, heartbreaking songs, funny songs. Songs about growing up, about people they know, about places they’ve been. Songs about fast cars and transvestites. Songs with power and melody and emotion. Good songs.
JENIFER CONVERTIBLE: The Happy Go Luckiest Angst Band In New York
If you live in the tri-state area, you’ll probably recognize Jenifer Convertible as the name of a local manufacturer of fold-out beds – unless you’re part of that small but fortunate fraternity that has also discovered Jenifer Convertible the band.
My association with the group came as a result of my enormous respect for JenCon guitarist Jim Santo’s work as the writer behind Demorandum, the demo tape review column which used to run in Alternative Press magazine (it’s since become known as Demo Universe with a new home on the World Wide Web.) Once, a few years ago, Jim casually mentioned that he played guitar in a band and invited me to a show.
I went, checked them out, and suddenly I had two reasons to respect this guy.
Like so many New York City bands, Jenifer Convertible toils in relative obscurity, playing shitty gigs for no money in front of not enough people whenever they can. Earlier this year the quartet released its first CD, Wanna Drag? on Yum Records, only to watch the label slowly go out of business. To say they deserve better would be like saying that Michael Jordan deserves to be nominated for the NBA’s Hall of Fame someday. In fact, they deserve to be rock stars – or at the very least, earning a living from their music, instead of working mindless day jobs and pouring every spare minute and dollar into keeping the band afloat.
Why? Start with the songs. This is a song band, not a band with a sound. Poignant songs, heartbreaking songs, funny songs. Songs about growing up, about people they know, about places they’ve been. Songs about fast cars and transvestites. Songs with power and melody and emotion.
Good songs.
Lenny Zenith’s voice could melt the heart of a I.R.S. auditor. Lenny – let’s get this out of the way – used to be a woman. He is now a man. This is a fact, not a gimmick, so let’s move on, okay? Jim Santo, like many large men, is as light on his feet as a ballerina. Watching him scamper and prance around on stage, oohing backup harmonies into the mic and taking the occasional lead vocal himself, is like watching a small child running amuck into a big pile of autumn leaves. That’s something Santo shares with the rest of this band – a sense of joy in what they’re doing that translates into the music and communicates itself to the audience. But let them tell you about it themselves…
Q: Who are you, where did you come from, why are you here?
Lenny: I’m from New Orleans. And I had been playing in a lot of bands there. I came up to New York to try playing my music in a different setting, and little by little, as my nice pop bands started to disintegrate and I started to become infected with the New York noise – not the noise scene, but just the noise – I found that my music was taking on different aspects. I was starting to internalize aspects of living in New York. And so I wanted to change my approach, and I started looking for musicians who could bring out what I was hearing in my head. I was introduced to Jim by our old drummer, Andy Moore. Jim started out on bass but we figured out that he would be better on guitar, and so we got another bass player. We got hooked up with James through an ad in the Village Voice. Then our first drummer quit. Actually he was a junkie and we had to physically extricate him from the band. We cleaned him up one weekend so we could go in the studio and record, and he was swearing that he was clean, and then we found out he was on crystal meth during the session. So we got rid of him. And then our second drummer, Andy Moore, took off and moved to Maine.
James: That sounds bad. Andy did the right thing. Any one of us would have done the same thing given that opportunity.
Jim: Facing criminal charges. He needed to get out of state. (everybody laughs)
Lenny: So anyway, Andy left but fortunately for us, Eddie lived in Jim’s building and knew him. And I saw him play in another band and was mesmerized by his forcefulness and his animalistic ap- proach to music. Little did we know that he lived in Jim’s building and so we asked him if he could help us with a few shows until we found a drummer, and the next thing we knew, he had quit his other band and he moved in. And we’ve kept him ever since. And we’ve just built our approach together from there, and it’s become more of a collaborative effort than I ever imagined it could be.
Q: Every time I interview a New York band, I wind up talking about how much it sucks to be a band in New York. There are too many bands here, the clubs won’t pay you, the local newspapers and weeklies won’t write about you. And the kind of music you play isn’t particularly trendy at the moment. You seem to be surviving all that, why don’t you talk a little about it?
Lenny: We were actually discussing this at our last rehearsal. Just about the time our first single came out, what we were doing was very cool and very popular. But because it took us two years to get our first album out, by that time boy guitar rock had started to fade for the fifth time in 25 years, so we were thinking of changing to a drums and bass, ambient kind of thing. But then we realized we weren’t very good at that, so we decided to stick with what we do.
James: We have no rhythm.
Lenny: We have no rhythm or ambiance. So we can’t be an ambient band. But it is hard, because what we do is just play power pop songs, which goes in & out of fashion every three or five years. So we figure we’re (to James,) what did you say we were again? We’re so out we’re in again,
James: We’re in again. We’re underground. Again.
Jim: One thing that has made this much more pleasant is that we do have a patron in Rob at the Luna Lounge. He’s one of our biggest fans and he’s hugely supportive, and he gives us regular gigs on the weekends whenever we ask. And it’s great, because when we play the Luna, we pack the joint and it’s filled with people who appreciate what we do. And it’s really allowed us to develop as a band in the public eye and let us develop a following.
James: What article was it that said there were at least 4200 bands for every borough in New York City? We just read that. So that’s what we’re up against.
Jim: Yes, but the vast majority of those other bands suck, whereas we are one of the few who are truly a great band. And I’m not even being arrogant, I’m just being fair to myself.
Lenny: It doesn’t help that we’re not as thin or as young or as drug-addicted as many of the bands in New York. But we’re working on it. We’re all trying to turn back the clock, and we’ve all joined gyms recently. But we just love what we do. And we’re so committed to it that we rehearse quite a bit during the week, and we really believe in the songs that we do, and we’re not going to change anything. Because we think it’s good, and we know there are people out there who appreciate our songs.