Vivabeat

Vivabeat's is the uncanny story of a band that helped define the sound of an era; a band that experienced remarkable strokes of good fortune and tragic twists of fate. They left behind a hit dance single, an album on Charisma Records, an impossibly rare European EP, two videos (which you can see on YouTube), and a clutch of unreleased tracks. A collection of their best work, ironically titled "The Good Life: 1979-1986" was released in Spring 2001 on Permanent Press Records.
The roots of the band are in late-70's Boston. Mick Muhlfriedel, who was to become Vivabeat's bassist and main songwriter, played in Human Sexual Response with future Vivabeat guitarist Alec Murphy. Mick met Consuelo de Silva in an electronic music class at Boston University. He asked her to play in a band with him and Alec, who would soon leave for Los Angeles.
In L.A., Marina del Rey, who had started out playing keyboards in one of L.A.'s first girl punk bands, Backstage Pass, and participating in the creation of the legendary Masque Club, formed Audio-Vidiot with guitarist Alec and singer/songwriter Robert (Garman) Windfield. Alec in turn contacted Mick and Connie in Boston and asked them to join Audio-Vidiot. They and drummer Doug Orilio traveled west.
Mick had immediate creative differences with Audio-Vidiot and after just a couple of rehearsals decided to pack it in and return to Boston. Marina offered to also quit if he would stay and form a new band. Doug, Connie and Alec soon followed.
After six months of writing, rehearsing, auditioning lead singers the band recruited a flamboyant actor/singer named Terrance Robay, fresh from the London stage playing James Dean. With Terrance on board, Vivabeat began recording its first four song demo.
Around that time Marina met Peter Gabriel through her day job at 'Teen Magazine. "It was at a fancy record company dinner at Le Dome," recalls Marina. "We bonded over being vegetarians and I confided in him that being a journalist was only my day job and that my first love, at the time, was playing music. He came over the next evening to hear what the band and I were working on and encouraged us to hone in on the sound a bit more. He said to call him if I ever came to England, which I did right after we'd finished the first Vivabeat demo.
Peter used to host wonderful, late night/full moon croquet matches, and invited me to one. I brought him a copy of our tape, not really expecting anything to come of it. Then about a month or so later, the phone rang early one morning with a call from Charisma Record's Tony Stratton Smith in England. Peter Gabriel had passed Vivabeat's demo tape along to his record label and the staff, according to Tony, was singing and whistling along to a track called 'Man from China.'"
After one Los Angeles showcase (their fourth live show ever), Charisma signed Vivabeat, their first American band to a five record deal. Mick and Marina got married around this time, and Alec and Connie also became romantically involved.
However, making the album proved extremely difficult. Charisma wanted the band to use one of the hot British producers of the time, but the band insisted on Jeffrey Lesser, an L.A. producer who had worked with Sparks and Kool and the Gang. Lesser gave the record a rough, hard-rocking edge that was somewhat at odds with the band's modern, sophisticated vision.
There were magical moments though, such as the recording of the stand-out track "I Know Your Room," penned by Mick, for which Terrance recorded his vocal laying languidly on his back and smoking, with the microphone hanging nearby inside a trash can. The track also contains Alec's most memorable guitar solo; it actually has a mistake in it, but when he tried to rerecord it he couldn't capture the same intensity. The overlapping vocal tracks give the track a unique sense of yearning and confusion. Yet the band almost cut the song from the album, and Mick had to threaten to quit to keep it in.
Charisma was dissatisfied with the album as it was first delivered, and sent the band back into the studio, where they proceeded to record two of the album's strongest tracks, the techno-reggae "Working for William," written by Marina about a Machiavellian power-behind-the-throne, and the swirling, Roxy-esque "From the Bop", Mick's vision of a delirious, futuristic party.
The bandmembers were given generous stipends by Charisma but told not to play live until the record came out. The idle time fueled the addictive tendencies of Alec, a brilliant guitarist, but also a dark and troubled character. "There was a notorious junkie punk thing happening in L.A. at that time," recalls Mick, "and Connie and Alec both got totally caught up in it. It's tough to talk about it now because we all watched it happen and basically did nothing. We felt desperately powerless."Alec, in particular, embraced the scene, producing hardcore punk bands like The Castration Squad and Rik L. Rik. He would later be immortalized as the dealer who sold legendary Germs singer Darby Crash his fatal dose of heroin in the Black Randy & The Metro Squad song, "I Don't Wanna Die Like That Darby Guy." Nevertheless, in 1979 the debut album, "Party In The War Zone," was released.
"What a nightmare." recalls Marina. "The week our album came out, was the week of a huge Polygram merger and their whole distribution mechanism broke down. We had Program Directors and DJ's all over the country saying they liked the record and would add it to their rotations, but nobody could buy it because most of the copies were sitting in a warehouse in Oklahoma. It didn't last long on the playlists. Our management at the time was embarrassingly weak and we were terribly frustrated."
Yet "Man From China" -- ironically, a song about a heroin dealer -- became a dance club hit in England, Hong Kong and France, eventually crossing the ocean to similar success in America's gay dance scene. It would later gain even more notoriety when Peter Gabriel told New Musical Express that the song's whistling hook inspired him to compose his classic "Games Without Frontiers."
Vivabeat's ambitions were further thwarted on the eve of their American tour to promote "Party in the War Zone," when Mick dropped a huge amp on his foot, shattering his toe,. The tour had to be canceled. The band eventually played an extended series of shows around California. "It wasn't easy. Alec and Connie would either hock their instruments between shows or turn up too high to play," recalls Mick. Vivabeat was in shambles, polarized creatively and personally by drug addiction. In the middle of it all, with no explanation needed, Charisma dropped the band.
There was a terrible scene and lingering bad feelings when Vivabeat finally had to fire their long-time friends Connie and Alec.Vivabeat began working with guitarist Steve Lynch, and studio wizard (and former Sparks member) Earl Mankey (a great cover of the Rolling Stones' "2,000 Light Years From Home" came from those sessions). Not long after that, the band suffered another terrible blow: after leaving Mick and Marina's house one night on his motorcycle, Doug was involved in a head-on collision that left him paralyzed.
But soon there was another turn of fate when the band recruited a new guitarist, Rob Dean, formerly of Japan, and drummer, Chris Schendel from Toni Childs' band.In 1982 the group hooked up with a new manager, Gary Bookasta, an L.A. music entrepreneur who owned the ground-breaking new wave radio station KROQ, and once ran the Sunset Strip's Hullabaloo club. Bookasta , a slick Hollywood character who wore sunglasses day and night. had big plans for the band. He scored them a deal with PolyGram, and as they began recording the second album with a strong, committed lineup and some great new songs it looked like all the pieces were again falling into place. But, after two weeks of recording, the producer, Joe Chicarelli (of Oingo Boingo fame), took Mick aside and said: "You know, your manager hasn't paid me or the studio yet." The band called Bookasta repeatedly in disbelief but couldn't get a hold of him. Eventually they realized that Bookasta had quietly sold KROQ and disappeared with their advance, and there was no money to finish the album. He hasn't been seen by the band since.
PolyGram washed their hands of the affair after that, but the staff at the recording studio helped to smuggle out some of what had already been recorded. Earl Mankey returned to help out his friends, and a limited edition, self-titled Vivabeat EP was released in Europe, primarily for dance clubs. Vivabeat recorded its second single, "The House Is Burning (but There's No One Home)," co-written by Mick and Marina and with Marina sharing vocals with Terrance. The song and the band would later turn up as a video in Brian DePalma's film, "Body Double". The video, helmed by celebrated Hong Kong director, Derek Wen-Khan Chang won an early MTV award for best video by a"new" group.
Finally working with a strong manager (Joanna Spock Dean), the band got a chance to tour, supporting major 80's bands like Depeche Mode, Gang of Four, Human League, The B-52's, The Thompson Twins and R.E.M. During that period, Dean left to join Gary Numan's band and was replaced by San Francisco guitarist Jeff Gilbert.
Shortly thereafter, Terrance left for Germany to star with Dennis Hopper in the film "Whitestar", effectively ending Vivabeat. Mick and Marina were rejoined by Rob Dean, and with the addition of two new female vocalists, Peggy Max and Cindy Hope, began recording as See Jane Run. The group was basically a studio band -- some of their output rounds out the Vivabeat compilation -- and they ended up with songs in several films, including "Heavenly Kid" .
AIDS eventually claimed the lives of Alec Murphy in 1986, Connie de Silva in 1991, and Terrance Robay in 1994. "AIDS decimated this band in a way we couldn't have seen coming," says Marina. "That whole circle of people, so many who were close to us -- are dead. The tragic thing is that by the time they died, Connie and Alec had cleaned up and were finally getting their lives back together."
In retrospect, it seems that Vivabeat may have been just a little ahead of its time. When they were signed, the L.A. scene was dominated by guys in either skinny ties or safety pins playing stripped down punk and pop. One month after Vivabeat's first album was released, the L.A. Times did a feature story on local bands that had secured record deals and didn't include Vivabeat. Marina -- was an acquaintance of Times Music Editor, Robert Hilburn -- called and asked him why they had been excluded. Hilburn responded: 'Oh! We thought Vivabeat was a English band.'
Just as Vivabeat's history came to a close, a generation of glamor and electronica bands, such as The Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, bubbled to the surface and skyrocketed to stardom. In early 2001, Permanent Press released a critically acclaimed compilation of the band's work, The Good Life: 1979-1986. The 14 tracks include cuts culled from their debut LP and the limited edition European EP, as well as seven previously unreleased tracks.Soon though, in true Vivabeat fashion, Permanent Press when bankrupt and halted operations eight months after the release of the album.
The band's experiences in writing songs for movies, led Mick to becoming a composer of music for films, TV, commercials and documentaries. He has a new band project, Buff Roshi, which will be releasing a CD in summer. Marina meanwhile, works as a writer/producer in film and TV. They are both liiving in Los Angeles and raising their son there. Doug returned to Utica, New York where lives to this day. Rob settled in the Costa Rican Cloud Forest where he works as a naturalist painter and leads bird-watching tours.
-- Paul Sbrizzi