THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Romeo Void, a breakout band of the San Francisco new wave scene of the early 1980s, have just dropped their first authorized concert release: Live From Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980, an official Record Store Day selection.
Romeo Void were formed in 1979. Drawing inspiration from the local underground music scene, the band’s founding members were San Francisco Art Institute students Debora Iyall (lead vocalist, lyricist) and Frank Zincavage (bass guitar), alongside local musicians Peter Woods (guitar) and Jay Derrah (drums). They soon added saxophonist Benjamin Bossi. According to Iyall, the name Romeo Void referred to “a lack of romance.”
Live from Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980, was captured during the same period that Romeo Void were recording their critically acclaimed debut album for 415 Records, It’s A Condition. Derrah was still drumming with the band at this live show, but was replaced by John “Stench” Haines by the time the sessions for It’s A Condition were underway. Live From Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980, features one of three Romeo Void live sets captured that year at the famed punk club by DJ Terry Hammer, who would broadcast portions of his recordings on the UC-Berkeley radio station KALX.
Eight of the 11 songs on Live From Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980, would eventually appear on It’s A Condition. The opening track Guards would surface in 1981 as the B-side of the band’s national breakout single Never Say Never. Fine Line is an original that has never been released in any format. The album’s closing number, Double Shot Of My Baby’s Love, is a cover of The Swingin’ Medallions’ 1966 hit, which was the first 45 single Iyall owned.
“There were all of these young people hungry for new sounds,” she recalls of the period. “Punk rock had recently broken through and the rulebook was being rewritten by bands as diverse as X-Ray Spex, Television and Suicide. In San Francisco, we all started buying 45’s again, a format I had abandoned a decade earlier. Our goal was to make art. The thought of becoming rock stars was not on our radar.”
Romeo Void soon came to national prominence in 1982 when the fledgling MTV Network picked up on the band’s Never Say Never video and put it in heavy rotation. Two years later, the group’s biggest chart hit, A Girl In Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing), from the album Instincts, reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100. Benjamin Bossi, the saxophonist who appeared on all the band’s recorded works, died on Dec. 13, 2022, of complications from early-onset Alzheimer’s. “Through his deep love of jazz, Benjamin had a knowledge of musical structure, keys and chords, that we didn’t have,” remembered Iyall. “His wanting to play with Frank, Peter and I was a huge vote of confidence at the start of Romeo Void. If he hadn’t developed tinnitus in the late 1980s, the world would have heard a lot more incredible music from him.”
Go HERE to watch my interview with Debora Iyall.
