Here's Dave's excruciatingly detailed first-person account...

Here's the story of the Malefactors as I lived it. After all these years, I can't recall all the details or the exact chronological order of some events, but I'm pretty sure I got most of it right. Recent conversations with my former bandmates have helped to fill in the gaps. Tim, for example, interviewed several people and was able to reconstruct the details of our breakup, which most of us couldn't remember due to being in an alcoholic stupor for much of the late '80s. Surnames have been withheld to protect the privacy of those who may be living under respectable identities by now.

MY LIFE AS A MALEFACTOR

In 1981, I was an unpopular and curmudgeonly student at Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, NY. My misanthropy needed an outlet, so I bought an electric guitar and learned some barre chords and a pentatonic scale from my school bus driver. I badgered my friend Robbie C. into buying a bass, and together we learned a few Black Sabbath riffs and maybe a Devo tune or two.

In '82, I wrote one of my first complete songs, "Wheaties and Ovaltine", during one of many afternoons spent in after-school detention. Robbie and I connected with fellow social pariahs and punk rock kids at school, including Tim B. and his younger brother, Andy. Tim wanted to sing and Andy owned an old Gretsch drum kit, so we dragged our guitars and amps over to Tim's house and made a terrible noise in his room on weekday afternoons after school.

We took our next small steps from oblivion to obscurity in 1983. I remember playing at a couple of parties that spring and summer in a loose amalgamation that sometimes included other friends from school. But our first real public appearance didn't come until the spring of 1984. That was at Mike M.'s graduation party, an event so memorably raucous that it became a local legend. We called ourselves The Offended, and our set that night consisted of covers of "India" by the Psychedelic Furs, "Goddamn Motherfucker Son of a Bitch" by Bad Posture, and--with guest appearances by Mike on keyboards and our friend Dan B. on vocals--a pathetic attempt at a Genesis song (!). We also played a few of our own songs. The partygoers' reaction was underwhelming; everyone was too busy getting drunk or laid or tearing up the lawn or urinating on things to pay much attention to us. Anyway, this was the debut of the band that became the Malefactors.

Not long afterward, we saw an ad in Maximum Rock 'n Roll magazine for a record by a Texas band called "The Offenders", so we renamed ourselves Rogue Cheddar, after the title of a Monty Python skit. This turned out to be a poor choice: I wish I had a dollar for every time we ended up being billed mistakenly as "ROUGE Cheddar!" At some point, we changed our name to Circus of Death. This name, like that of the Malefactors, would be used years later by another band unrelated to us.

Later in '84, we appeared at the semi-legendary "Oopi Shoopi" on South Grand Ave., Poughkeepsie's first--and probably so far only--venue dedicated to hardcore punk. We also did a big show in Mahopac with a substitute drummer. (Shortly before the day of the show, Andy's father had ordered him to quit the band). I remember this gig because there were some would-be tough guys in the front row who were pissed off because I had long hair and the audacity to play guitar leads over hardcore songs. They grabbed my ankles and tried to pull me off the stage, but they were no match for Tim, who had taken hold of me under my arms and restrained me against their efforts while we continued to play as if nothing extraordinary was happening.

To amuse ourselves when hanging out after school, Tim and I started a little comedy act called the Sons, which at times included other friends such as Dan B. and neighborhood guitar whiz Ron S. I mention this "project" because it produced the song "Rich Cowboy", which was later to haunt us as the most-requested song at Malefactors shows. Other Sons numbers like "Tutankhamen's Skull", "Batman, I Love You" and "Fish 'n Chimps" were, however, doomed to obscurity.

1985 came and with it, our collective graduation from high school and the next and final name change. "The Malefactors" was a name I had cooked up for an imaginary Metal band that existed only in the graffiti and cartoons in the margins of my school notes. But we decided that we liked the name better than Circus of Death, so that was that. We debuted (with no drummer! What were we thinking?) as the Malefactors at a couple of graduation parties that June. This arrhythmic state of affairs was mercifully short-lived. Our friend Brian A., vocalist for Poughkeepsie hardcore heroes Abusive Action, had a drum-playing younger brother who had also served a brief stint with us at Roosevelt before transferring to Marlboro High. So, Robert A. joined on and we practiced in my parents' basement through the rest of the summer.

We suffered a setback that year when Tim underwent a tonsilectomy and was out of action for a couple of months. The rest of us spent this layoff period practicing together, sans vocals, and arranging some new songs. By the time Tim was ready to rejoin us, we were starting to sound like a band.

1986 was the year we finally got down to business. We had a repertoire built up, had been practicing hard and were ready to play some higher-profile gigs. Luckily, Tim's cousin happened to be the drummer for a well-known Philly band called the Dead Milkmen, and we landed the opening slot when they appeared with Dag Nasty at Vassar College that April. We played our asses off and were very well-received. The crowd went apeshit and hollered for an encore--from us, the lowest band on the bill! If we hadn't already played all our songs, we surely would have given it to them. Our confidence was bolstered enormously.

Ready to leave our suburban roots behind us, we moved our base of operations to Poughkeepsie that summer. More gigs followed, including another appearance with the Dead Milkmen. Tim and Robbie C. were renting an apartment in the heart of urban decay on the corner of Main and Clinton Streets. Although not official residents, Rob A. and I lived there most of the time as well. The apartment became the de facto refuge and all-purpose crash pad for various runaway punk girls and other thrill-seekers and miscreants. The household ran on ramen noodles, Knickerbocker beer and cigarettes--oftentimes handrolled, since it was cheaper that way and none of us had "real" jobs. The odd paycheck that did happen to make its way into the house was usually transformed within hours into a loaf of white bread and a pint of chopped barbecue from Joe's across the street.

The band recorded a couple of tapes and distributed copies at shows. We formed strange, heartfelt, possibly imaginary rivalries with other local bands, had the cops called on us for harboring the underaged runaways, and the Malefactors became infamous around Poughkeepsie. Weird rumors about us were invented and circulated. In other words, we were having a lot of fun. But by the end of the year, some interpersonal tensions were coming to the fore. Robbie C., who had been gradually losing interest, showing up late for gigs and blowing off rehearsals, made his last recording with the band in December and was gone by the new year.

The band's future was very much in doubt, but things took a turn for the better almost immediately. On January 11, 1987, Robert brought his Marlboro classmate Bill H. to our rehearsal, and by the end of the day we had our new bassist. Bill was a skilled and enthusiastic player, and our sound improved substantially within weeks. Soon we were gigging again, and in May we recorded and released another tape. Bill designed the graphics for and arranged the screen printing of the infamous Malefactors T-shirt, which soon became a very in-demand item--I suspect due more to the humorous artwork than to the band itself, although the publicity certainly didn't hurt us at all.

The Malefactors' gigging radius was slowly expanding beyond the confines of the Poughkeepsie area, even beyond the Hudson Valley. Although still relatively unknown outside of our region, we were making some headway. We were even offered a gig at CBGB in Manhattan, which seemed a big deal to us at the time since so many of our favorite bands had appeared there over the years. The tape and T-shirt sales were picking up, and we started setting aside money for the eventual recording (perhaps even in an real studio!) and pressing of a actual record--which, in those days, of course meant a vinyl LP or EP. The band was playing better than ever, the gigs were getting bigger, and we had good reason to be optimistic.

However, by autumn of '87, things were getting tense within the band. We were all developing our own interests and allegiances and spending less and less time together socially. There were also some disagreements regarding musical direction. All of us could see that the hardcore scene as we knew it was finished by late '87; we just couldn't agree on where to go next.

The ennui and acrimony reached critical mass immediately after our CBGB gig, and the band actually split up for a time. There was some ugliness regarding rights to songs and a conspiracy to create a new "Malefactors" with a different lineup. Eventually, everybody calmed down and got back together, but it wouldn't last for long.

In January of 1988, we convened at our friend Jeremy's house in the remote, rocky hills on the outskirts of Hyde Park to make what was to be our final recording. Our musical schizophrenia at the time is apparent in the selection of songs, which alternated between metallic moshers, Ramones-ish love songs and some old Malefactors staples like "Kate", "Citizen Kane" and "Hounds of Hell." This recording was given the working title of "Bubba vs. Mitch" but was never released.

In my mind, the event that really signaled the end of the road for the Malefactors was a show we played that winter. We trucked out to New Haven, CT in a blinding snowstorm to play a gig that turned into an unmitigated disaster. At first, things were going just fine. People liked our funny T-shirts and we sold a pile of them. But I guess no one bothered to tell them that we were a punk band, and it turned out to be a decidedly punk-hating crowd. Also, it didn't help that the house PA system was a mess and we couldn't hear ourselves or each other. The crowd rebelled, heckled us mightily, and demanded to return their T-shirts for a full refund. The guy who was manning our table refused and the situation nearly erupted into a riot. The club owner refused to pay us. When we argued, a couple of threatening-looking goons emerged from the shadows. It was an ugly situation and we got the hell out of there, disappearing into the blizzard as quietly as we had arrived. The whole experience was very bad for our morale.

After New Haven, the bottom fell out, the band imploded, and the Malefactors were no more.
A couple of weeks later, according to some accounts, we were offered a gig at the Nassau Coliseum with Anthrax, but even that wasn't enough to bring us back together. Allegedly, I'm the one who vetoed the gig, citing our lack of practice after New Haven. I can't confirm or deny this; I really don't remember.

At any rate, the breakup was followed by a year or so of animosity bordering on outright hostility. We were on speaking terms again by 1990, and our respective bands later did some shows together, but the old camaraderie never quite returned.

Bill and Tim formed the Doverboys, the lineup of which sometimes included Rob A. While enduring several personnel changes, they appeared at venues around the northeast and were active into the mid '90s. As for me, I finished out the '80s writing and recording songs in my home studio. I didn't join another band until 1992, when I teamed up with ex-Doverboy Mike R. to form Lightning P-38, which subsequently dissolved (in late '93) after a short but action-packed career.

My time with the Malefactors was an interesting one and overall, I don't have any serious regrets. But there's a couple of things I would change if I could. It would have been nice if we'd had access to the technology to make a good recording. Our two-track cassette deck and Radio Shack mixer were all we had--affordable, good-quality multitrack equipment was still years away--and the recordings we left behind don't convey the power of the sound we could produce on a good night. And I think it would have been more appropriate if our final gig had been in Poughkeepsie, playing for our friends, instead of in a far-away town in front of a hostile audience.

If there's a tragedy in the Malefactors' story, it's not that the band ended--all bands do eventually--but that it ended the way it did, and when it did. We were young, drunk, and frequently selfish, disloyal and lazy. We didn't develop the discipline or the work ethic to move beyond mere raw potential. But this insight comes fifteen years too late, and as our original bassist Robbie would often say, "Oh well, that's life!"

Incidentally, at the time of this writing (2001-2002), I am aware of at least three bands around the world who are using the name Malefactors. It should be mentioned that outside of the name, these bands are unrelated to the original New York Malefactors of the '80s.

This website is dedicated to all the members of the Malefactors and their predecessor bands, the friends and "fans" who helped and supported us in ways too numerous to mention, and to the memory of our little Poughkeepsie punk rock scene, such as it was.