N.Y. LOOSE

N.Y. LOOSE Year of the rat 1996 Hollywood Records 320 kbps

Pretty suicide / Rip me up / Broken / Apathy is golden / Dragonfly / Sunday morning / Detonator / Songs for Margo / Kiss my wheels / Hide /Trash the given chance /Spit .

Produced by J. Raymond & P. Kaffel

N.Y. Loose 1996 : B. West : vocals, guitar / D. Nordahl : bass / M. Diamond : guitar / P. Lloyd :

guitar

The New York Loose was formed in the NYC bedroom of Brijitte West somewhere during the dawn of the 1990’s. West has already cut her rock n’ roll teeth with the raucous fuzzfest Viva La Wattage, but had a brand new vision to pursue. Brijitte was out to form the perfect New York rock n’ roll band, one that mixed sleazy rock guitars and glammy pop hooks and cranked it all up really, really high. The first NY Loose single, “Bitch” (1994), was punky and lo-fi and distributed by Brijitte herself, but the band starting picking up steam anyway, thanks in no small part to their frontwoman’s stunning looks and penchant for writing tough, chewy rock n’ roll songs. New York City, knowing authentic rock n’ roll when it sees it, embraced the band, and they became ground zero for a sleaze rock scene that exploded all around ‘em, and included legends like Gunfire Dance, Princess Pang, Cycle Sluts from Hell, and D-Generation. Flipside Magazine, the bible of punk rock cool back then, loved them, and released an EP in 1995 called “Loosen Up”, known as much for it’s slithery songs as it’s cover shot, featuring the iconic Brijitte on the stage floor, legs up in the air, deep in the throes of rock n’ roll ecstasy.
After the Flipside EP, everybody who knew rock n’ roll knew the NY Loose. Even people who DIDN’T know rock n’ roll, like Madonna and a handful of fat-fingered major label scouts, knew the NY Loose. Eventually the band signed to Hollywood records, a subsidiary of Disney (!), who released their sole full-length album, “Year of the Rat”, in 1996. The album was an under-rated gem, one of the best albums of the 1990’s, a powerhouse of scorching, cynical rock n’ roll full of shoulda-been hits like “Pretty Suicide” and “Rip Me Up” that were as angry and brooding as they were poppy and hook-heavy. Proving how on-the-ball the genius club at Disney was, they put the sleazy little New York motorpunk band on tour with industrial freakshow creeps Marilyn Manson and tossed their second worst song, “Spit”, on the soundtrack for the doomed-from-the-get-go “Crow: City of Angels” soundtrack. The band spent 1996 battling Manson’s Satanic army and wondering if they were selling any records.
They were, but not enough for the Big Machine. Disillusioned over the whole ugly mess, the band split soon after. And the 90’s pretty much sucked after that. Brijitte West was the ultimate rock n’ roll pin-up, a big-eyed charmer in eye-liner and tight jeans who could rock harder than half the boys. She was like the blonde Joan Jett. The girl had balls. And Disney lopped them off.

The NY Loose had all moved to Los Angeles at that point, and formed different bands. Guitarist Marc Diamond and bass player, ex-Throbs man Danny Nordahl, went on to form sleaze metal brawlers Motochrist. Brijitte West briefly put together a band called Diamond Star Halo and played with ex-White Zombie bass player Sean Yseult in all-girl masked surf trio Famous Monsters. Later on, Brijitte moved to London, got married, and formed the short-lived San Dusky, a band closer to alt-country than punk rock. And that’s really where the trail ended.

Sleazegrinder

PS: The newly-revived NY Loose will soon be playing UK dates to support the release of "Born To Loose". Check out their Myspace and http://www.nyloose.com/ for more info.

and about "Born to Loose" :

Ten years later, a 24-track cd collecting rare and unreleased tracks from one of the best bands to come out of the mid-90's NYC rock scene that also spawned bands like D Generation. This CD collects all of the bands 7-inch singles, the RAFR "Loosen Up" EP, rare tracks and a wealth of unreleased gems .