Thalia Zedek Talks Via

The late ‘80s was a halcyon time for underground rock, especially in the Boston area.

And now thanks to our friends at Dromedary Records, one of the great lost bands of the era is being remembered with the reissue of the sole, self-titled EP from the group Via.

“We were talking about bands from the Boston underground rock scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and Chris [Brokaw] mentioned Via,” explains Dromedary head Al Crisafulli. “He said, ‘Maybe Thalia’s best band. Jerry’s, too.’ That’s a pretty big statement. Of course, I’d never heard of them. But soon after, I had a folder of rough mixes emailed to me. And not long after that, I was sitting with Thalia and Jerry, again in Catskill, discussing releasing this music together.”

Comprised of Thalia Zedek (Come, Live Skull, Uzi), Jerry di Rienzo (Cell, Nuclear Theater), James Apt (Six Finger Satellite), Adam Gaynor (Nuclear Theater) and Phil Milstein (Uzi), Via only played two shows before calling it quits as Zedek was spending more time in New York to play with Live Skull. Thankfully, however, the group cut a handful of 8-track recordings along and someone had the wherewithal to tape one of the two concerts they performed.

“Listening to it was like opening a time capsule, a group of 8-track recordings from 1987, before Come, before Cell, when these amazing musicians were just discovering themselves,” explains Crisafulli. “The music was loud, aggressive, and actually ferocious in spots, these two brilliant guitar players coming into their own, with a rhythm section of James Apt and Adam Gaynor of the band Nuclear Theater and Phil Milstein of Uzi providing tape loops. I could instantly hear what Chris described to me months before.”

Chris Brokaw, who is Thalia’s bandmate in Come and wrote the liner notes to this reissue, says, “The music bears some cosmetic resemblances to Sonic Youth, but the songs are way more raw, primal, seething, coiled — inexorable. I still can’t get over it.”

Rock & Roll Globe caught up with Thalia to ask her about Via and the role they played in a pivotal moment for the Boston underground.

Pick up the Via EP on Bandcamp.

 

Can you take me back to the Boston scene when you all first started out. What was the underground youth culture like in the area?

The Boston scene was really active during that time, with lots of clubs and a ton of bands that were kind of in separate scenes (garage, goth, metal, “college rock”) but at the same time all friends and cross pollinating. Boston has always had excellent college radio stations and they were very focused on and supportive of the local scene.

 

What albums or artists informed the sound you all created as Via initially?

I was a huge fan of Nuclear Theater, the band that Adam, James and Jerry had been in previously, and they were huge fans of Uzi, my previous band, so I think we were all just really into each others creativity and songs and aesthetic and weren’t really looking outside of that for a band sound. Phil Milstein, who did amazing stuff with tapes in Uzi, joined us a bit later and played the first show with us as well as the recording.

Was there anything happening commercially in 1987 that piqued your interest at all back then? Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation, GNR’s Appetite for Destruction and whatnot.

Not that I remember. I was definitely (and still am) rarely excited by commercial music.

 

How did these six songs initially come about?

Pretty gradually. I was in the process of writing “Dusted” with Live Skull and going to NYC to jam with them as well as working full time so I was pretty busy. We initially just did a lot of jamming together which was really fun, but at a certain point I think we got tired of that and decided that maybe we should try and write some songs.

 

What was it like recording down in Jerry’s basement?

He and Adam had basically moved into this house in Somerville mainly because it had a basement that could easily be used for recording. Jerry was already experimenting a lot with 4 track recordings in Nuclear Theater, and somehow he got an 8 track reel to real and was eager to try it out. So he was the engineer and I was just basically singing and playing guitar.

Almost everything was recorded completely live though I think Jerry tinkered and added guitar parts after the fact. But all of my parts with the exception of a few of the vocals were recorded live.

The recording was super fun and low pressure, we were working in Jerry’s basement and didn’t have a label or anyone waiting on results, we just did it for ourselves.

 

Via split up after getting to play only two shows. What do you remember about those two shows? Were they both recorded?

And the two shows were over a year apart, haha! Our first show was Easter Sunday 1988 opening up for These Immortal Souls at a club called Green St. Station which is long gone. There is a live cassette recording of that one, which was pretty raw, raucous and out of tune!

A few days after that show I moved to NYC to do Live Skull but eventually convinced Jerry, Adam and James to follow me there. They came a few months later I believe but I was touring a lot then with Live Skull, James was in school in NYC and Jerry and Adam were both dealing with finding jobs and apartments so we didn’t rehearse a ton, though we did work on new songs and we did one show at the Pyramid that was well received but unfortunately not recorded.

 

I love the song “Cell” and how you all just lock in. What informed that song and the interplay between you all?

From the lyrics I can tell that I was influenced by a writer that I was really into at the time, but whose name completely eludes me now. The paperback had a picture of a “bright blue swimming pool” on it.

The arrangements were really a team effort, Adam and Jerry had been playing together for awhile and Adam had a really distinctive way of playing the drums. I think that I wrote the opening riff, but the beginning sounds very “Nuclear Theater-y” to me.

We definitely enjoyed working on arrangements, we didn’t write a lot of songs but we enjoyed working on them together and trying different things.

 

VIDEO: Live Skull at CBGB 1986

What was your take on the New York underground in the late ’80s?

It was just a fantastic time to be living in NYC. I lived in the East Village and my rent was super cheap, I could support myself with my job bussing tables at a trendy West Village restaurant. There were tons of super cheap Ukrainian restaurants on 2nd Ave. where I could eat and rub shoulders with Diamanda Galas and the Bush Tetras and tons of cheap Polish bars to drink and play pool in.

I was within walking distance from CBGB’s, the Pyramid Club, Irving Plaza, Kid Tut’s ….

At the same time NYC was totally rife with cheap heroin and crack and a lot of musicians (myself included) got embroiled in it and the AIDS epidemic was just starting to really consume the gay community.

 

What’s it like to revisit this material after nearly 40 years? How much did your time in Via inform your next moves in rock ‘n’ roll?

I was so psyched to hear these recordings because I had only heard a cassette that Jerry had made for Chris with two songs on it secondhand. I had no idea that Jerry had all of the tapes still, I’m not sure he did either until he really started digging.

I remember doing the recordings in ’87, but Jerry was still tinkering with them when I moved to NYC so I don’t think I ever heard mixes. It was a thrill to hear them again and I was pretty floored at how good they sounded.

As far as next moves go, Via was huge for me because it was through Via that I started playing with Chris Brokaw, who I would later form Come with and who I still see and perform with to this day.

 

Are there any talks of Via maybe reconvening in the future? How much is everyone in touch?

There has been some talk but I can’t say much beyond that. Me and Phil had had an experimental project called tK which ended in 2020, so we had been in touch already. Phil and James both still live in the Boston area and I see them occasionally, and I would see Jerry when I was in LA on rare occasions. Even though I hadn’t seen or talked to Adam in a long time he wasn’t that hard to find. During the process of getting the EP out we all consulted and everyone was involved as much as they wanted to be in the musical and artwork decisions which was great. I’m so happy that they are all still around and doing well, I love those guys and what we created together!