Rabbling Up The Rousers

Left For Dead Records has been doing an incredible job breathing new life into the works of lost punk acts of a bygone era.

And the latest discovery from the scrappy catalog imprint is the lost recordings of New York City’s the Rousers, one of the great unsung groups of the CBGB/Max’s Kansas City era.

However, mismanagement at the time led the band — a punked up spin on the ’50s rockabilly revival popularized by such acts at the time as The Blasters, Robert Gordon and The Cramps — to a series of bungled major label deals. The only proof of life from the original band these past five decades has been a super rare single produced by Brother Wayne Kramer from 1981 on Jimboco Records: “Party Boy” b/w “Don’t Let The Band Stop Playing.”

However, a great discovery was uncovered when a full Rousers album was found in the Sire Records vault at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The collection was produced by the great Ed Stasium, hot off the heels of his work with the Ramones and Talking Heads, and recorded in Sire’s basement studio back in 1979. 

The 1979 Sire Session is out now on numbered black or translucent white 12” LP and as a 2-CD set with bonus tracks, with the full set coming to streaming services in 2026.

In the meantime, we caught up with original Rousers guitarist Tom Millmore to find out a little more about this mitzvah from the New York City punk rock gods.

 

How were these demos discovered?

At one point we were told about cassettes of live performances in the vaults of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They offered a service of transferring them to digital. When looking through the listing we discovered they also had the masters for this demo we did at Sire….so we were off to the races!

These sessions were recorded in Sire’s basement studio. What was it like down there? 

The eight-track Sire demo studio was tiny. It was the basement of their brownstone that at that time was their headquarters. When we came back the next day to finish up the mixing the studio was full of jukeboxes! Seymour Stein had bought them at an auction to give as gifts to some lucky recording artists!

 

What was the reasoning behind Seymour Stein ultimately not signing the Rousers to Sire?

We are not sure. Memories are not perfect after 45 years but either they passed or we did. Sire spoke about releasing a single on the UK Sire label but we may have turned that down because we thought we could do better.

 

I’d love to hear about the audition night at CBGB where you were discovered by Peter Crowley.

Rhe audition was very exciting! We had been going there to see bands and it was great to finally play ourselves. There was a fight at the other end of the club…Hells Angels were regulars back then, and when we started playing the fight stopped! It was almost an Altamont moment….at our first gig!

 

What was your relationship with Peter Crowley like? How did he help guide your career?

Peter Crowley was the best friend we had back then. He really helped us a lot because he actually saw the promise of the band and helped development by having us open up for big headliners, like Robert Gordon and the Dead Boys, until we had a following. and then we became headliners ourselves! As new clubs, like Hurrah, opened up they would see who was “big” at the other clubs and snatch them up. We always played CBGB as well but it was Peter at Max’s who gave us weekend gigs that we would prefer over a weeknight show that CBGB would book, so naturally we were all in with Max’s.

 

The presence of ’50s rockabilly is so prevalent in the sound of the Rousers as well as other bands in that scene, be it East Coast with The Cramps or West Coast via The Blasters. What do you think it was about the early days of rock that inspired the punks to speed up the sound and make it louder?

That’s a tough one. “Rockabilly wasn’t even a known word when we started! We just liked ’50s and ’60s music as well as all the other influences. Although some of our material (especially the covers) were in that twangy category. We didn’t really like being called Rockabilly at the time because our songs were much more diverse and the genre seemed more about fashion for many of the bands hopping that bandwagon. We didn’t even like being called Punk either back then! But I think the purity of early rock and roll was a flame that has burned brightly for most rockers

 

What was your favorite club to play in the city outside of CB and Max’s and why? Would love to hear a story about a show there.

Max’s was hard to beat for stories but Hurrah was a definate favorite as well. It was much bigger and modern and they had a crowd regardless of who was playing. When we first started there they would give us a saturday night…one set…$1000 flat fee! Unheard of in those days. But it was max’s where our best memories live. The 3rd floor dressing rooms were like a scene in themselves. We met Sid Viscous up there as well as Glen Buxton and Chris Spedding who both sat in with us….and of course our last show there we had an unknown opening act named Madonna!

What was the punk scene like in Connecticut back in the early days of the movement?

There was no “punk”scene in Connecticut at all….sometimes bands like the Ramones would play bars there but people would throw stuff at them. The Rousers, despite heralding from the Nutmeg state, never played our home state until we played a high school reunion a few years back!

 

The influence of Duane Eddy certainly factors into the Rousers’ sound. What was it about his music that compelled you to create music?

TWANG…something about the right amount of reverb and tremelo lights a certain flame that is hard to put out…like a high school band playing at a dance in the gym with the sound going crazy bouncing around. We got our start in those gyms !

 

New York City has changed so much since the Rousers cut this demo in 1979. What do you miss most about the NYC of old and why? Is there anything still around that reminds you of the old days?

I do miss the cheaper cost of living and how you could have a crappy low paying job  yet still survive. There are still little dive bars and clubs around where us oldtimers are made welcome and given a stage and a whole little social scene so I don’t really miss the “old NY”…Many will disagree with me but I actually think (despite the cost of living) that NYC is a better place now. You can still walk around the lower east side and see homeless folks and drug addicts lying in the street if you miss it that much but overall I prefer it now, despite the old dirty NYC being “cooler!” The mists of time are rose colored for most!