In the burgeoning late 1970s punk scene in New York, there were dozens of bands, maybe even a hundred, as the decade moved towards its close. Some music magazines helped spread the word, though not always those most allied with mainstream music, and the British flavor of punk had not yet really arrived or been embraced. Instead, a homegrown scene had sprung up featuring bands like The New York Dolls, The Ramones, The Miamis, Blondie, and many more. Among them were the Rousers, a band that had started out as a group of high school friends in the suburbs outside New York. Back then, their big break recording with Warner Bros. subdivision Sire Records, tracked live by Ed Stasium (The Ramones, The Talking Heads), was never released. It captured them in their heyday, honed by live performances and a serious musicianship that made them welcome at CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City.
Now, that record is being released by Left for Dead Records as Rousers 1979 Sire Sessions. It arrives on both black and translucent white vinyl, as well as a CD set with bonus tracks. It will also be released digitally in 2026. Today, Glide is excited to offer an exclusive early listen to the release.
The Rousers were part of the eclectic mix that made up the punk scene in Manhattan, drawing from many musical genres. Aside from their punk peers, their biggest influences were from the 1950s, including guitarist Duane Eddy. To those influences, they brought signature speed, style, and precision.
I spoke with original Rousers drummer Jerid O’Connell, who later pursued a career in commercial photography, and currently supports charities for underprivileged youth and for preserving wild spaces, about his time in the punk scene and what hearing these live tracks again means to him.
Sorry if I’m a few minutes late coming to talk with you.
You don’t have to apologize to the Rousers! It took us 45 years to get the record out! It’s cool.
I saw that you have a visual arts background, right?
Yes. I’m retired now, so it’s definitely a “background.” I went to the School of Visual Arts (SVA in New York), and I got into photography. I loved photography. I got into a certain type of printing known as dye transfer, and then when retouching came along, before Photoshop or anything like that, I was one of the first people ever to get into that. Then, eventually, in 2001, I started my own company called Fuel Digital, which was a crazy retouching studio that was way punk rock, it was out of control. [Laughs]
The creative industries that are nevertheless commercial, like photography, can be just as unstable as the music industry, right? There are no guarantees of work.
Yes, sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you want to do and take the hits along the way, then bounce back. Luckily, it worked out. I had a wonderful career and worked with great, top-notch brands. We just banged it out. Then, eventually, I sold the business and retired. I loved photography, but in New York City, it was very competitive.
I’ve listened to this record and, honestly, it’s really amazing work. It far exceeded my expectations in performance from you guys, and in audio quality. Let me just say that your drums sound fantastic and so precise.
Thank you. You’re one of the first people to hear the record. It’s so weird, it’s like being in a time machine, to go back to that time. We would practice five or six days a week, and we’d play about 15 times a month. Back in 1975, there was nothing to do. The reason that I went to SVA was because of The New York Dolls. Because The New York Dolls had gone there, I chose it as my college, obviously. We used to sneak in from high school and go to Club 82. We were the Rousers, a high school band. We’d sneak out of suburbia and into New York City to go to Club 82.
We’d say we were going to someone’s house, then take the train, which was only an hour and eight minutes, and go to Club 82. Most nights it was a lesbian bar, run by a woman named Butch, but we’d go see The New York Dolls, and our mind would be blown. We’d come back to high school, and they’d be talking about basketball, and we’d be like, “Dude, you have no idea.” Then, there were other bands that were connected to the Dolls, like Blondie, The Miamis, all these other bands. That’s how I ended up at SVA.
But it’s so funny to talk to people about this album, because I have no idea how they are going to react. Someone might say, “There’s a song on here that’s my favorite.” And I say, “Oh, it was a throwaway, we only played it twice.”
Of course, right. This is just a random sample, in a way.
But as for my drumming, the record company said, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to get a night at Bowery Electric and we’re going to get the band back together, and have a release party.” I laughed and said, “Do you know how long it’s been since those little arms swung around on “Bumblebee Rock”? [Laughs] Oh boy!
But the thing is, there was a CBGBs reunion thing a few years ago, and the band had kept playing as the Rousers. It wasn’t really the Rousers, but it was three guys. They asked me to get up on stage and do “Party Boy” with them. I said, “I gotta learn it with you guys. I gotta play the drums before I get up there. It’s been like 30 years!”
And then, I got stuck doing some retouching work, and I asked, “What time is sound check?” They said, “Jerid, nobody does sound check anymore.” I thought, “Oh shit.” But somehow it happened, and somewhere on the internet is a video of my slamming it. It all came back! Man, I was hitting hard, like Jerry Nolan of The Dolls. I was crashing it, and I looked mean and mad, like I was going to kick your ass. Where did that boy come from?
I’m so glad that it all came back for you in that way. When I hear about a release from the 70s or 80s that hasn’t been widely heard, I expect something rough in many ways, but this album is so “on.” You guys knew everything that you were doing. It also feels alive, though. There’s no way that you could have played like that unless you’d done it a lot. That must have been from live playing a lot.
In 1975, there was a small scene, but nobody knew about it, and it was based around a handful of bands. It was Television, and Patti Smith had gotten her record out, so she wasn’t really hanging out, but Television was there. There was Blondie. There were remnants of The Dolls, The Heartbreakers, and my favorite, The Miamis. It was very small. In 1977, the first records came out from those bands. The Ramones got their album in 1976, and when all those records came out, they sold nothing.
In 1977, it was the same year as Saturday Night Fever, who sold 40 million units of that record. The Ramones sold six thousand. It took 38 years for The Ramones to go gold. But by 1977, Rolling Stone was still talking about Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, but all the magazines that we read, like Rock Scene, started spreading out through the country talking about this scene. So in 1977, every friggin’ crazy Punk, and by that I don’t mean English Punk, I mean every disruptive, cynical, like-minded soul, showed up in New York City. That was because in New York City, you could rent an apartment for 160 bucks. Even working in a bagel shop, I could afford an apartment. There were so many bands, and we all played. You had to compete.
You’d go to Max’s one night, and The B-52s would be coming up for an audition night! You’d think, “Dude, I’m in trouble!” Then, there’d be The Dead Boys, in from Ohio. I friggin’ loved The Dead Boys! Then there was The Cramps, the greatest band of all time! [Laughs] This was your competition. In 1977, there must have been a hundred bands. This was before the whole English thing, though they were coming out. I was totally not into the English movement, which was so angry, and saying, “You’re all wankers! You’re posers!”
Was there a commonality among American Punks, or was it more faction-based?
If you walked into CBGBs, Max’s, or a dozen other clubs back in ’77, and you felt like you and your five friends were the only ones who thought like this, you’d look around and the whole place would be people who thought like you. Everyone hated Dark Side of the Moon and bought The New York Dolls’ record. You’d think, “Everyone is like me in here.” And you could afford it.
The Rousers’ house was on 4 St. Marks Place, over Trash and Vaudeville. The Rousers’ clubhouse was the full top floor. I didn’t live there because I would not live with those insane people! But the top floor was two hundred dollars, and four of the guys lived there, paying 80 bucks a piece. You can imagine. You’d just sit down on the stoop, and there was nothing to do. There were no computers. There was nothing on TV those days, and I didn’t have a TV, because if it was in my apartment, it would’ve gotten stolen. So you’d go out every friggin’ night, and at Max’s and CBGBs, there would be three bands. We hit the best times. I wish everyone could have experienced it, because it was amazing.
Was it kind of similar that all of these bands made no money anyway, so everyone just did it because they loved it, and assumed it wouldn’t last long?
The publishing, for a lot of these bigger bands, eventually made money, but in those days, there was no money in touring. The Ramones would get $150 a week, when they signed to Sire. These bands would go on tour because the record company would credit them, and then they’d go more into debt. I was very much aware of that. I think I was probably the only person who cared about that in the whole scene. The rest of the Rousers, after they kicked two of us out, kept going as a threesome, on and on. The only reason the Rousers stopped is that the drummer who replaced me, Sal Capozucca, got Covid after playing a gig at the Bowery Electric, and it killed him, like instantly.
Wow, that’s terrible.
I know, what the hell? The Rousers would still be going otherwise. Back then, since I loved photography, I was always working on a backup plan. We’d made a deal that all of us got a certain percentage of the publishing, but for The Ramones, no matter who wrote it, they each got equal, which was very generous. I still got a cut. Blondie came out and made money on Parallel Lines, and Mike Chapman said they were the most “unprofessional band in the world.” That was right. [Laughs]
He said that he spent most of the time trying to fix the mistakes of the band. But when that record came out, they sold millions. All of a sudden, they were showing up in matching suits, and they’d all come in from a limo. We were thinking, “What the hell, Blondie??” Because they were always the opening band that no one watched. They were terrible! They opened for the Miamis, and I’d always come late, so I didn’t have to see Blondie!
I’ve always heard that “their sound”, the sound that we hear on their records, was really created in the studio and had nothing to do with their previous identity or live performance abilities.
That’s the incredible thing. It’s like being photogenic. You see some people, and they photograph beautifully. In the studio, you never know what’s going to happen. When I went to Television, those guys looked very awkward, and they played these clever things. But then you’d hear Television’s record, and you’d go, “Holy Shit! Who got that out of them?” So, with Blondie, it was a bunch of people who would be plugged into their amps, and could barely play, and she seemed a little old for the scene. That sounds ridiculous now, but that’s how it was back then, because she was in her 30s.
When someone’s ten years older, you think, “Maybe I better not curse around Debbie.” [Laughs] She’d sing these little ditty songs, and the only reason that band was always around was because they were friends with all the other bands. I used to have arguments with people about whether The Ramones would ever get signed. I didn’t think they’d get signed, and then they got signed. I never even had arguments with people about whether Blondie would get signed. Because I thought, “Nobody is that crazy.” If I had been an A&R guy, I would’ve totally failed making that call!
What do you think the prognosis is for the survival of Punk music?
It’s been replaced by a lot of things. Back then, there was nothing else going on. You didn’t get fragmented in the same way. It was so important. Rock ‘n Roll was your religion. If Bowie said something, that’s how you felt. It was your art, because it was so creative, and it was your drug, because of the dopamine fix you’d get. The problem is, now it’s big seat arenas. Will it go away? Will we ever really find cool bands? I wonder about that. I can’t explain to my kids how important Rock ‘n Roll has been in my life. With this record coming out, with the picture on the cover, they ask, “Which one are you? You did what?”
