Cynthia Sley - Bush Tetras
When and where were you born? Are you originally from New York? What was growing up like for you? Do you have any siblings? What initially fascinated you about music? When did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a musician and participated in bands?
I was born in Lorain, Ohio, a small town near Cleveland, in 1957. It was one of those no-down-payment post war housing developments that drew a lot of service people in the early 1950s. I have two older sisters who turned me onto a lot of great rock music. My dad was deeply into music, too. He played classical, jazz, show tune, big band albums constantly on our big old stereo. Plus, there was my transistor radio which played all the Motown hits from Detroit. I was a visual artist from a young age and didn’t see myself as a musician at all. I did sing in church choir with my sisters which made me really appreciate harmonizing and singing. But at the age of 15, I saw David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars and lost my mind. It was transformative. It made things hopeful for a weirdo like me.
Cynthia with her two older sister and father circa: April of ‘58.
Where would you go to see bands perform and who were some of the very first groups you saw? Did you participate in any groups prior to Bush Tetras? What initially led to the decision to put the band together in ‘79? How did you initially meet your bandmates? How did you guys come up with the name for the group? Was there an overall vision, or kind of goal you guys had in mind for the music/band?
I was in Cleveland going to CIA (Cleveland Institute of Art) in the mid to late 70s. Cleveland was a kind of hub for rock music. They had great radio and this venue called Pirates Cove where I saw local bands Devo, Rubber City Rebels, Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Destroy All Monsters, to name a few. That changed my world. (I danced non-stop through art school!) When I visited NYC I 1978 I got to see the Contortions play downtown and it was one step wilder than anything I’d seen before. I loved them! I moved to NYC in the summer of 1979 and went out nightly. I saw bands like DNA, Teenage Jesus, and Mars who made it possible for a little art student like me to play in a band. I thought, hey, if they can do it, I could do it! The seed was planted. I had made friends with Pat because she was going out with Laura Kennedy, whom I had gone to school with.
1976 graduation photo.
Bush Tetras circa: 1980.
When Pat quit the Contortions, she formed a new band with Laura and Dee. They asked me to join them after it didn’t work out with Adele Bertei singing. Although I was stage shy, I managed to forge ahead and get up there after rehearsing for a few months. We had 6 songs written by the first gig at Tier 3 in February 1980. They came together magically. We knew right away we had some chemistry between us. Back then there was no goal, like ‘make it to the top of the pops’. It just seemed like everyone was doing something creative... It was the norm. The music, art, dance, film just overlapped and filtered into one big boom of creativity back then. Our name came from Dee’s Bush Babies (some jazz record reference) and Pat and Laura’s love of neon tetras.
Bush Tetras by Joe Stevens circa: 1980 NYC. Lee Penn's sidecar.
Where would the band rehearse? When and where was the band’s first gig and what was that experience like for you? Tell me about writing and recording the band's debut 7" EP, "Too Many Creeps", that was released in ‘80. How did the deal with 99 Records come about for that release?
When we first rehearsed, we had a wacky time slot at Georgio Gromelski’s studio. We rehearsed from 11-2am a few nights a week. There was no toilet (a bucket), or heat in that basement so we didn’t stay more than a few months. We started making some money after a few gigs so we moved into a rehearsal space on 1st Street and 1st Avenue. I lived there (slept on a few mattresses stacked together) and we started rehearsing 5 days a week. The idea for the lyrics of “Too Many Creeps” came from Pat. She and Laura were working at Bleecker Street Cinema at the time and lots of people were bugging her, asking questions and complaining, so she came up with the first verse.
Boston circa: 1980.
We worked together on the second verse. The music is hard to explain. We jammed a lot and these guitar and bass lines would just flow out, meld together in that weird way, ultimately without any pretense. Ed Bahlman, from 99 Records, had come to out early gigs. He already had ESG and Liquid Liquid and thought we fit in well with his roster. The band's follow-up release of "Things That Go Boom in the Night", was released in ‘81 on Fetish Records.
Session for the Too Many Creeps sleeve art by Brian Randall.
What did you guys want to express, or achieve on this record that differed from the previous release? You guys would go on to record one more record for Fetish entitled, “The Rituals”. What was the chemistry of the band like at this point once you guys had a few releases under your belts?
Early in 1981 we went to London to play with other NYC bands at the Rainbow Theater. Rod Pearce saw us and the Bongos, and asked us to record on his label in Surrey before we headed back to the States. George Scott, bassist in the Contortions, had just died the end of 1980, so I wrote those words about losing him. The other side of the record was “Das Ah Riot” and that was our attempt at reggae, which Dee and I loved so much. We recorded in an ancient haunted sheep barn, so it all seemed perfect to us. In 1982 we recorded “Rituals” with Topper Headon, from the Clash, at Electric Lady Studio. That was an amazing experience. He was so fun to work with. So creative and got our best performances. We, at that point, were at our peak, but getting burnt out from all the touring and partying.
Mudd Club circa: 1981.
Tell me about writing as well as recording ‘Wild Things’ in ‘83. How did the deal with ROIR come about for that release? You guys had been a band for quite some time at this point. Where were you both personally as well as musically during this time? That was only on tape in the beginning, correct? What was the first order of business once you guys put that? Were there a series of shows, or a tour to support the music? Had you been in a studio prior to that? What led to the band’s unfortunate breakup around this time? Did you continue to play music on any other projects? What was it like to put the band back together for ‘97’s release of “Beauty Lies”?
“Wild Things” came from live performances circa 1980-1983. Roir was a cassette label that solely put out live recordings. Neil Cooper was such a great guy. We ended up staying with them when his son, Lucas, took over the label in the late ‘90s. By 1983, Laura and Dee had both left the band. Pat and I played briefly with Don Christensen and Bob Albertson, but disbanded by the end of 1984. We took a long break but reformed with the original members in 1993, putting out “Beauty Lies” in 1997 on Tim Kerr Records. We did a deal with Polygram after they picked up that record, to record a second LP “Happy”. Laura had left the band again in 1998 and we recorded with Julia Murphy on bass, for that record. Don Fleming produced. We toured with the Fall and played out pretty regularly. Things seemed to be going well, when the label dropped us in 1999, shelving “Happy” which caused us to disband again.
Bush Tetras circa: 1995.
Had you been in contact with some of your old bandmates leading up to that? What has changed about you as well as the music since you guys last played together? Not to skim past the multiple releases the band would go on to create, but what have you been up to in more recent years? What other projects/groups have participated in since then? Are you currently working on anything in, or outside of music?
We didn’t release that record until 2012! It was pretty heartbreaking. In those breaks I played with Ivan Julian’s band “Lovelies” and Pat played with Maggie Estep. I also played with Pat Irwin in the 2000s in a band called “Command V”. In 2016 we reformed again with Val Opielski and recorded the EP “Take the Fall” on Wharf Cat Records. We toured fairly regularly and recorded another single on Thirdman Records in 2019. When Covid hit, we had to take an unscheduled break. Val left the band and Dee didn’t fair well developing health issues leading to his untimely death in October 2021 the night before our boxset release party. Somehow our new bassist, RB Korbet, Pat and I worked remotely on a slew of new songs. Steve Shelley came into the fold this year really helping the songs take shape. We now have 11 new songs... Enough for an album! We plan to record these songs in the late fall of this year, tour the West Coast in September, and tour in Europe in the spring. The horizon looks much more promising than it did a year ago!
The band’s first ever gig with the mighty Steve Shelley!
