Paul Venier - Stark Naked
Stark Naked.
I was born and raised in Levittown, Long Island, NY. I started playing music at 9 yrs. old on the accordion. Then The Beatles came out and that changed everything for me. I started writing my own songs and sneak down to the theater in school and began teaching myself piano and then guitar. Every instrument seemed easy to me after learning piano. Piano teaches independent action, so I quickly learned drums, bass guitar, organ, harmonica and a variety of instruments but I concentrate mostly on piano and guitar in my shows. I was in a few very successful bands: Stark Naked and Salty Dog, but I went solo in 1979 and comedy slowly took over. Buy 1984 I was comedy full time with music mixed in. I perform 2 ½ hour shows and an agent nicknamed me The Comedy Tornado and it stuck because my show is high energy, musical, visual and very interactive. No two shows are alike.
In music my influences definitely The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, but I love kinds of music and write all styles too. In comedy my influences are The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Jerry Lewis and Victor Borge. I love over the top comedians like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Otto & George. My mother was a singer/actress onstage and my father was a very funny man, who was the hit at every party situation. So, I got a lot of both in me. I have a sister, not in the business, but a great sick sense of humor and had fantastic childhoods. Very close family, with our cousins and aunts and uncles. And are still very close. We get together as much as we can. Stark Naked was a band of basically friends. Richard Belsky, Jimmy Monahan, John Fragos and I grew up together and played baseball all through our youth together. Tom Rubino and Lynne Bunn were in the band before I joined. It was a very tight group and we had ball touring together all over the country.
We were a show group with fire and pyrotechnics before other groups, such as Kiss and Alice Cooper. We were very young groundbreakers, ahead of our time. We got a record deal within 6 months and recorded at RCA studios in NYC and the album quickly climbed to number 6 on the Billboard charts. We had no vision, per se, we just wrote and played what we liked. But as quickly as the fame came, it fell apart because while were touring, our manager took off with all of our money. RCA and our publishers, MCA, didn’t want to be involved in any lawsuits so they wrote us off as tax write-off. We broke up because we couldn’t handle disappointment of the business in general. We were just too young at that time in our lives. All in all, I wouldn’t trade those fun times for anything. We were living the high life and we were best friends. We were on top of the world and how many people could say that? After that I joined the band, Salty Dog. They were a terrific band with a lot of talent and recorded an album but it was never released because we broke up.
Salty Dog.
The band didn’t have the closeness as Stark Naked and it fell apart because of one member in the band, who is very divisive. I couldn’t stand it any longer so went out on my own, and haven’t regretted it at all. I’m acting, producing, directing and still writing music always. I’m in a comedy movie that will be coming soon called The Gilbert Diaries and a Sci-Fi movie called Shadow Society and I wrote the theme songs for and score. I’m also recording an album of my music called, “Back Again”. I’m still performing live 2 ½ hour Comedy/Music shows at comedy clubs, theaters, fundraisers, corporate events and private parties. My life is great, I have no complaints and my family is truly wonderful. So I’m not done by a long shot. I will continue to do the things I love, and that’s anything creative. People always ask me if going to retire someday and I tell them, “Yes, when I’m dead. I guess I’ll have to retire then.”
Dakota Brown
