We are gay. We are older than dirt. We were around during the Civil War. We've been an openly gay couple forever, since the early gay rights movement was in it's infancy, and we want to be afforded the same basic rights and protections of heterosexual married couples. Is that asking for too much? We are dog people, but we like cats too. We are musicians / artists. We are very modest and humble and always surprised and delighted that anyone would want to listen to our music....well, not exactly....as we are music gods with enormous creative egos. We are very easy-going, kind and thoughtful people....well, not exactly....as we can sometimes be very self-absorbed as we are music gods and all musicians are self-absorbed. It just comes with the territory. In the late 1970's we founded the L.A. punk rock band Hey Taxi!. Spider played guitar and I was the singer. George Hurley (later of The Minutemen) was our drummer. All of our songs were only one or two minutes long. We were quite outrageous on stage. We would pack 'em into the Hong Kong Cafe every other Saturday night. I would sing songs about serial killers, gay vampires, cannibalism, and riding on public busses. We released one vinyl single on Mystic Records (A side - "I Hate Dogs", B side - "War Is Hell" / "Queen Bee"). "War Is Hell" is now available on the Mystic Records compliation CD "It Ain't My War." In the early 1980's we founded L.A.'s first openly gay post-punk alternative rock band Red Wedding (although we never used the fact that we were gay as a shock device or a promotional gimmick). Red Wedding was the house band at the Brave Dog and helped launch the very first Theoretical party. Our music was an offbeat mix of vintage 1960's psychedelic rock, early 1970's glam rock with elements of punk rock, dark art rock and hardcore 1980's dance rock along with over-the-top stage antics. We released two vinyl EPs in 1982 and in 1984. We shared stages and dressing rooms with Killing Joke, X, Romeo Void, 45 Grave, Wild Kingdom, Bow Wow Wow, Psi Com (an early incarnation of Jane's Addiction), The Gun Club, Super Heroines, Nina Hagen, Specimen, Ju Ju Hounds, The Bangs (an early incarnation of The Bangles), The Sparks, Suburban Lawns, Kommunity FK, Hesitations, Mnemonic Devices, Party Boys, Dream Syndicate, Necropolis of Love, Swinging Madisons, Fibonaccis and many, many other bands. We were convinced from the very beginning that we would never get signed to a major label because of the "gay thing." In 2007 a collection of 19 Red Wedding recordings (songs from both of our EPs, early demos and unreleased songs) was released on Aural Fixation Records. In the late 1980's we founded the alternative rock band Glass, but Glass didn't last too long. I no longer wanted to perform live. In 1994, Spider and I left music and L.A. behind and moved to Tucson, Arizona to lead a quite life. We didn't even tell our new Tucson friends that we had been in bands. Then in 2003 we returned to music, composing soundscapes (surreal and avant-garde film score music) as Smoke & Mirrors. Spider plays guitar and bass and I play the keyboards (I rarely sing these days). Between 2003 and 2005 we released three CDs inspired by the beautiful Sonoran Desert, Hindu deities and Alice in Wonderland on Aural Fixation Records. All three of these CDs are now being re-released as "Michael and Spider" on Lavender Records (
[email protected]). In 2008 we released Iridescent Garden, a CD based on vintage exotica, but with our own modern alternative sensibilities. The official Michael and Spider site (including reviews and an interview): www.michaelandspider.com. To view Red Wedding performing live on New Wave Theatre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF-ZRdVakTw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoetp702gTc or simply go to the Red Wedding MySpace.
