Described by OUTmusic’s Jon Gilbert Leavitt as "the wackiest electronic duo since the Flying Lizards", and by Deian McBryde as "a cross between Devo and the Captain and Tenille" (!), Rubberlegs like to think of themselves as midwives in the process of birthing waveforms. Though they will always be three musically codependent friends, in many lifetimes of group therapy, Rubberlegs have reinvented themselves as performers. Coming out of the studio at last, thanks to Estrogen (Carol Kassel and Corinne Curcio) and the wonderful OUTmusic family, Gordon and Bunny dedicated their first-ever live performance, in October 2002, to their dear departed partner Bob. They were thrilled when China Too  and People Who Talk in Elevators  made it into the Top 5 on MP3.com's New Wave chart, and they hope Bob is listening as they bring these and other songs out for people to hear at last.

Quid, Jonas and The Privates (1978-1982)

Gordon had his very first band experience with Joe Bace, whom he met at the Berklee College of Music, in Boston. As Quid,  with Joe on guitar, Gordon on Fender Rhodes and Minimoog, Richie Slattery on drums and friend Dan on bass, they did a two-month stint at Salt Pond John’s in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. They had a great time playing four nights a week, doing a crazy mixture of everything from Top 40 to the jazz-rock fusion of Jeff Beck, Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham, to the progressive rock of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

In 1978 Gordon left Berklee and moved to North Bergen, N.J. to join Joe in putting together a new version of his band, Jonas.  Gordon rounded out Joe’s reunion with his childhood friends Mike Weisenstein on bass, and Anthony Maulella on drums, and they solidified as a band over two years of playing local bars and colleges. In 1980, excited to ride the New Wave, they changed their name to The Privates,  and debuted at CBGB with a new look and a streamlined set of powerful new original songs. They became the 1981 house band at East Village metalloid club Great Gildersleeves, next to CBGB, and played most Saturdays there.

People Who Talk (1983)

Meanwhile, Gordon had been trekking into Manhattan on weekends, soaking up the gayer life of New York’s West Village and looking for a lover. He met Thomas (later to be nicknamed Bunny) through new friends at The Ninth Circle, in late 1979. It was Thomas who eventually introduced him to the first love of his life, Bob, at club Berlin in early 1981. The first incarnation of what would become Rubberlegs  began near the end of 1982, after Bob and Gordon had moved into the city together and were living on Avenue B in the East Village. Bob, who fancied himself the “Yoko Ono” of the Privates, had been urging Gordon to look around and consider other musical possibilities. Finally, after four and a half fantastic years, Gordon left the Privates to do studio work with Staten Island singer/songwriter Susan Greenwood.

Bob had bought his first synth, the Memorymoog, using the insurance money from his wrecked Toyota, and was starting to make some crazy sounds of his own. The two of them collaborated with Susan for a while, under the working names Octave Doctors  and Busy Bodies.  They started writing songs together, including People Who Talk in Elevators,  and eventually left Susan to pursue their own musical connection. By that time Bunny (known then simply as Thomas) was starting to get interested, having shared their love for the B-52s, Devo, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and other electronic and new wave bands, and he started sitting in as a “sound person”, doing the mixing and playing around with the sound processing gear. We had lots of wild parties on Avenue B, featuring Thomas, as D.J., spinning his two turntables on an ironing board.

Sick Puppies (1984)

The first fruitful days of our three-way collaboration came in the summer of 1984, when Bob, Gordon and Bunny spent long weekends in their summertime Tribeca loft, writing, rehearsing and jamming together. Bunny would leave his Williamsburg apartment at 7 A.M., an unheard-of early time for him, stop at D’Aiuto to purchase a chocolate mousse cake, and bring it down to the loft. We would make a strong pot of french roast coffee, turn on the synths and sound system, and let the music begin. At that time we had one song that we could play live, Vain for Fun  (a recording of which can be found on our retrospective CD, Leg Warmers Reheated), and we rehearsed it constantly. We didn’t yet have any multi-track recording capability, but at Bunny’s insistence, everything we played was captured to stereo cassette, whether it was rehearsal, jamming or the working out of new ideas and songs. As a result, we have a priceless collection of first-generation tapes that contains all kinds of magical moments, many of which are documented on our CD. Sick of these Pegs  and Puppy-Wave Radio  are both from this period. They were created spontaneously, and they exemplify the twisted experimental spirit that animated us in those days.

China Too (1985)

Our dream of Tribeca loft living was cut short by a violent altercation between Bob and our new roommate Oscar. Though we had to move out very quickly, we were so entranced by the idea of having a large music space in our main living area that we found another loft, in record time. The new place was on W. 37th St., in a forgotten neighborhood. It was beautiful and had a great view of the Times Square area, and street girls plying their wares, but it was expensive and we had to take in two roommates to make it work. This proved to be our first disaster! It would take a few more years to learn that having roommates just wasn’t us. Meanwhile, after roommate John didn’t work out, we experienced the very first disappearance of Bunny, who skipped town in February after being out of work and broke for a couple of months. We didn’t hear from him again for almost two years.

Determined to keep life going in the loft, Bob and Gordon prevailed on another of their dear friends, Lenny from Avenue B days, who was just returning to New York after graduate school. Lenny was excited to move in, and we finally started to enjoy the place. Music played on without Bunny: we changed our word-processing hours to the evening shift, and started rehearsing on weekday mornings and afternoons. Several of our favorite jams started solidifying into actual songs, with the help of our new 8-track recorder. On two particularly inspired weekends we set up microphones, invited several of our new word-processing friends over, plied them with vast quantities of alcohol and other things, and had them pretend they were riding up and down in the office elevator. We captured several hours of this insanity to tape, and it soon provided a middle section for People Who Talk in Elevators,  a truly priceless '80s moment. To this day Bunny still thinks it could have been mixed better, and of course he's right.

When Lenny’s boyfriend Walter announced that he was moving to Beijing, to take a new job and start a real career, we wanted to give him a major send-off. Two days before his big goodbye party, we got the idea: we took one of our new jams, a little ditty called Just Like You,  which was about wanting to become somebody’s clone, and morphed it into China Too  especially for Walter, tweaking in those 40's movie score Chinese-sounding diatonic fourths, and adding quotations from “1001 Most Honourable Chinese Recipes”. It’s the first and only song that we ever wrote and recorded in a single day. China Too  premiered at Walter’s party, to a full house of teary-eyed friends. We still miss you, Wally, and we still want to go to China! (Ed. note: this finally happened, 20 years later, when Gordon took his first trip to Beijing with new husband Tim.)

Hotprint and CONDUIT (1987)

The name Rubberlegs  was chosen a couple of years later, when Bob and Gordon were living in their Avenue B apartment again. Bunny had reappeared, and together we assembled our first little MIDI recording studio in the tiny living room. We started using Dr. T software on the Commodore-64 computer to sequence our songs, and the ADAP Soundrack on the Atari ST was our first sampler. Bunny and Gordon look back at this as one of our best periods, during which we recorded both the multi-tracked song Hotprint,  and the improvised live-to-tape ambient suite Conduit  — two examples of opposite approaches that were becoming specialties of ours. We even captured a 20-minute long hybrid improv that we named Voxiferous,  in which computer sequences playing vocal samples were triggered on the computer keyboard in real-time, while Bob and Gordon moved around in a tight circle playing different synths and drums, moaning and chanting like Sufis, scraping and banging the microphone against bricks, pipes, record jackets, articles of clothing and other surfaces in the living room.

Fonewave (1988)

In 1988, Bob learned that he was HIV positive, and this sent him into an extended depression. He spent several months doing nothing but sleeping and dragging himself, zombie-like, to work and back. Gordon would not succumb to this despair, so he reacted by throwing himself even more vehemently into music. Bunny and Gordon kept busy, learning the new ADAP system by assembling our own library of custom-made samples. We dragged a microphone around the apartment and recorded everything — the toilet flushing, teeth brushing, pipes being banged on, corning casserole dishes being smacked into each other, saucers spinning, a half-full wine glass clanging, etc. We had a blast doing this, and it led to the creation of our first bathroom percussion kit. We played this kit in Water Closet Ballet,  one of a series of telephone answering machine messages that we created under the name Fonewave.  The germs of Angelic Flush  and ‘Throominations  were born during this period, as improvisations using the toilet flush, shower, electric shaver, toothbrush, sink rinse, spit and hair dryer sounds. These pieces would later resurface under Bunny and Gordon’s techno project, Whirr & Click. 

During this time, while Gordon was experimenting with new sounds and sequencing, he was also carefully indexing and cataloguing our tape library, which had grown to encompass eighteen 90-minute cassettes full of jams, rehearsals, sequenced arrangements and mixdowns. This stored body of ideas would always serve to re-inspire us and provide seemingly endless material for new songs and arrangements, and in many cases contained complete polished works that were later transferred directly to our retrospective CD.

Cocktails on the Tundra (1989)

A vacation in St. Thomas finally lifted Bob out of his depression, and Bunny and Gordon convinced him that his help was desperately needed in the studio. Hotprint  had come together rather nicely in his absence, but we were now working on one of his own songs and getting stuck in the details. Bob would scoff at this, walk over to his Kawai drum machine, tap a few pads at the appropriate moments, and easily lift our stubborn sequences to a new level. Thus, Cocktails on the Tundra  came together in a few short months, with the three of us fully involved together in its production, in a way that we had never been before. The instrumental mixdown of Tundra,  recorded directly to cassette from our elaborate Commodore-64 control sequence, stands as the best thing we ever intentionally created as a trio. Sadly, we never recorded the complete vocal version, even though the words and melodies were finished. We do have some very good vocal demos of certain sections of the song.

Earlier in the year, Bob and Gordon had bought a country house with Lenny, in upstate New York. Our musical collaborations started to dwindle as we spent more and more of our weekends up there, and there was a lot of contention with Lenny over our desire to move the music studio up there. Bunny began to blame the house for our less and less frequent sessions, and Gordon secretly agreed with him.

The Dead Years (1990-1999)

1990 began a very bleak decade for Rubberlegs. Right after New Years Day, Bunny took off suddenly on a second two-year disappearance. Bob and Gordon had one last musical shot in the arm when our wackiest improvisation, Voxiferous,  was chosen as the soundtrack for a gallery opening in Amsterdam. We flew to Paris first, and when our connecting flight was going to be delayed past the time of the show, we frantically rented a car and drove North at breakneck speed, arriving in Amsterdam in four breathtaking hours, just minutes before the opening. The show was titled "The Art-Rhythmic Show", and featured our music as backdrop for the fantastically abstract paintings of our good friend Michael Griffin, an Indiana expatriate who had been living overseas for years with his Dutch lover. The show was a great success.

Returning to New York (and getting a speeding ticket on the Taconic Parkway, at a pathetically-slow 65 miles per hour), Bob and Gordon spent more time in the trees, shaking the stresses of city life. But by 1991 we’d had a falling out with Lenny, and were barely going up to the country at all. We stayed in the city and watched a lot of Twin Peaks.  In 1992 we decided that the house was worth hanging onto, arranged to buy out Lenny’s share, and finally started spending all of our weekends up there.

Bunny resurfaced, contacting us after his release from the psych ward of the Concord, New Hampshire state hospital. He was living on welfare in an SRO hotel in Nashua, the ‘80s boomtown since gone bust, and desperately wanted to ease his way back into some kind of normal life. He asked if we would consider letting him live at our country place for a while, as a sort of halfway house to help him get himself back on his feet again, and we agreed. He lived there on our dirt road without a car, four miles from the nearest store, for a year and a half, quite dependent on our arrival each weekend. We would buy groceries and provide him with activity and social life. During this time, we finally moved the music studio up to the house, giving it a nice dry new home in the small upstairs guest bedroom. But unfortunately, the music-making concept never really gelled in the distracting country environment.

At the beginning of 1993, Bob had the unexpected good fortune to simultaneously land a great new job and a much better living space, though of course it was Gordon who had to take care of most of the details of the apartment move. We still spent weekends in the country, but our workweeks were much more pleasant in the larger, brighter, cleaner space on East 89th Street. Bob had a staff of desktop publishing professionals reporting to him at Lehman Brothers, and for the first time, had the opportunity to furnish and decorate our apartment himself. Though he worked very hard in his job, he was basically happy, and it seemed he had finally gotten all the things he’d ever truly wanted in life.

In September 1994, Bob left work after suddenly coming down with AIDS-related illnesses, and Gordon took care of him for nine months in their East 89th St. apartment. Bob finally passed away, in May 1995. Gordon, having lost his beloved partner of fourteen years, went back to spending weekends and vacation time up in the country. He ran, did Yoga, rediscovered sex, got into some crazy, inappropriate relationships and even made a little music, buying some new equipment and experimenting half-heartedly with it. In 1996, he had a brief Summer reunion and outdoor gig with Joe, Mike and Anthony of The Privates,  now calling themselves Hellbenders.  Finally, in 1999, he reached the end of his rope and sold the country house, moving everything back to the city.

Bound and Gagged (2000)

A few months later, at the beginning of 2000, Gordon reached the other end of his rope and quit his Wall Street computer-programming job. Disgusted with corporate life and the fallout from two big mergers, he took the rest of the year off, regrouping and focusing full-time on music for the first time ever. Bunny was eager to get reinvolved, so the two of them got together to assemble the newest version of our MIDI studio, using the fabulous Emagic Logic for Windows, the Kurzweil K2500 sampler, and the amazing Nord Lead II and Nord Modular virtual analog synths, and finished a song of Gordon’s from the ‘80s, Bound and Gagged.  Though B&G  had begun as a quirky look at relationship drama with Bob, the final verses retraced the incredible loss of Bob to AIDS. It was an intense experience to complete the song and record the demo “preview” mix, and to put together our first retrospective collection, the leg warmers  CD.

Significantly, just as the vocals were being completed for this mix, Gordon met his next great love, Tim (though it would take at least a year for the importance of this meeting to really sink in). The first time Tim was introduced to Bunny, and to Gordon’s East 89th St. apartment, he was also being introduced to Rubberlegs, in the form of this intensely personal song. Kudos to Tim, for not running away!

We were turned onto MP3.com by musician friend Toof,  and posted our best material to the site at mp3.com/rubberlegs. This became a wonderfully cathartic project — the process of putting together the bio, track list and song descriptions — and with the leg warmers  CD, it stood as a fitting memorial and tribute to Bob. In May 2000, we had the added thrill of seeing our electropop songs China Too  and People Who Talk in Elevators  rise to the Top 5 on MP3.com's New Wave chart. We even made a few hundred dollars from people downloading and playing the songs. We were very sad when MP3.com finally shut down, in 2003. Gordon saved the MP3 pages, and you can still get to them from the “Links” page on our site.

Whirr & Click (2001)

Bunny and Gordon started creating new sounds, and by May 2001 we had assembled a nice collection of techno instrumental sketches, when director friend Roland Tec asked if we could put together some music for an off-Broadway show he was writing. Roland loved our sketches, and we ended up developing them into 35 minutes of music for Gratuitous Nudity,  a collection of funny sexy monologues that ran all summer at the cool downtown club Barrio. This was a wonderful experience, and a fitting launch for our new project, Whirr & Click. 

Estrogen, OUTmusic and LandShark! (2002)

After Gratuitous Nudity  ended its run, and September 11th came and went, we needed something deep to immerse ourselves in. Fortunately, Gordon’s co-worker at WireImage, Carol Kassel, had invited us to see her band Estrogen perform live. We loved their show, and were so inspired that we started thinking of ways that we could perform some of our own material live. Thus began eleven months of practice, culminating in Rubberlegs’ first-ever live performance at the OUTmusic Open Mic at the C-Note, on October 7th, 2002. China Too  and People Who Talk in Elevators  were big hits with this wonderfully receptive gay audience, and we continued to work on translating our songs to live performance and to meet new people in the OUTmusic community.

Kris Landherr invited us to join him at one of his LandShark! Shows, at Hannah’s Lava Lounge. It was a night of ‘80s unplugged, called “Pretty in Pink”. We played two Depeche Mode songs, on piano and voice. Soon after, we developed these songs and other ‘80s covers into 100% live electronic performances, which helped to round out our set and give us a chance to play some songs without backing tracks. Thanks to LandShark!, we were able to steadily develop a full set of material, now mostly originals. This was an immensely fun and rewarding experience.

The Timinator, and Bunny on the Lam (2003)

We both moved at the beginning of 2003. Bunny took over the lease at East 89th Street. Gordon returned to his old haunts downtown on Avenue B, in a brand-new apartment shared with his beautiful boyfriend Tim, a.k.a. The Timinator. The studio, which we affectionately call Big Byte Sound, found a new home in Gordon and Tim’s guest bedroom. Thanks to Robert Urban and Yolanda, we performed at Meow Mix and debuted our first brand-new Rubberlegs song, The Timinator,  with lyrics set to a fleshed-out Whirr & Click sketch. We opened up for new friend *V*I*R*G*O*’s CYBURLESQUE multimedia extravaganza in September, not as Rubberlegs but as our instrumental alter ego, Whirr & Click. We feel incredibly fortunate to have met these wonderfully supportive, creative out-musicians.

Now it can finally be heard, after yet another “disappearance and resurrection” of Bunny. Bob always said that if “Bunny Lake is Missing” one more time, it will be nothing more than a tired remake. But it seems this is one theme that never gets tired of being remade! At least this was the shortest-ever disappearance (one month), and it gave Gordon the inspiration to finish the song Bunny on the Lam,  which began as a jam with Bunny in 1985 — just before the very first disappearance of Ms. B.

 PEG RUBbERLEG 

Peg Rubberleg, LandShark! Experience, Robert Urban Band, and *V*I*R*G*O* Band (2004)

Rubberlegs was finally solidified down to its most basic, distilled version, when Gordon started performing solo under new stage name Peg Rubberleg.  Peg played several warm-up sets at Hannah’s Lava Lounge, then debuted at Freddy Freeman and Yolanda’s Valentine’s Day QNITY show, at CBGB’s Lounge. For a brief period of time, Peg took our song Sick of these Pegs  as his namesic.

Meanwhile, with Bunny back and seemingly revved up to approach life with a fresh new attitude, they officially released the first publicly available version of the Rubberlegs retrospective CD, Leg Warmers Reheated.  Major thanks to Kris and his LandShark! CD Duplication and Design service, and to CDBaby.com, where the CD can now be purchased online. The retrospective is finally complete, and having laid that puppy to rest, Bunny and Gordon happily returned to their studio for their first recording sessions in four years, laying down vocals for The Timinator.  During this time, Gordon made a great new friend in Len Rogers, the founder of the Stonewall Society, who was quite fond of Rubberlegs. In April, Len aired a wonderful 90-minute interview with Gordon, on Rainbow World Radio. Soon after, Rubberlegs was nominated for the Pride 2004 Favorite Group Award, for our CD Leg Warmers Reheated.  Gordon couldn’t be more delighted with the warm support and exposure that Len and the Stonewall Society have given us.

All good things eventually come to an end. Gordon and Bunny had an argument and stopped speaking for several months. Peg’s home base, Hannah’s Lava Lounge, closed suddenly for renovations so it could “upscale” itself into a straight Irish bar. Kris Landherr started scouring the scene for gigging opportunities, and he and Peg did a fun double-bill at Uncle Joe’s bar, in Jersey City. When Kris asked Gordon if he would help him put a band together to perform some of his new songs and some ‘80s favorites, Gordon happily agreed to pitch in on synth, and got longtime friend Anthony Maulella to help out on drums. The LandShark! Experience debuted at the final Qnity at CBGB’s Lounge, appeared several times at the Lizard Lounge, and backed Kris up at the OUTmusic Awards Nominees Showcase, at Fez. Kris had been nominated for Outsong of the Year, for his beautiful song “Waiting for My Man”, and Gordon was delighted to help present this song to a very appreciative audience. Gordon and Anthony also did double-duty as members of the Robert Urban Band, at the very same Nominees Showcase. They had a great time playing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell  and the intricately challenging I’m Only Happy When I’m Free,  with its crazy fun time signature changes. Gordon loved this chance to be the progrock multi-keyboardist, all on his little red Nord Lead 3.

Not content to wait around for gigs and things to start happening for Rubberlegs, Gordon decided to join his friend *V*I*R*G*O*’s new live band. *V* had been asking him to join for months, ever since he had needed a drummer for his Qnity showcase and Gordon had hooked him up with Anthony. One night, Gordon happened to be listening in on *V*’s auditions for a new guitarist, and decided then and there that it was time to be part of the picture. This prompted *V* to stop looking for a guitarist, for the time being, and try a trio band of just synth, bass and drums. We had a couple of short months to prepare for two summertime Gay Pride festivals, the first of which required us to play for 90 minutes, so in addition to learning *V*I*R*G*O* songs, we also got to learn eleven fun synth-charged new wave songs from the ‘80s. This ‘80s set and the *V* originals went over fantastically well in Syracuse, and suddenly we were a real band. The following weekend we played to a large street crowd, on a big outdoor stage in Toronto. This was really the first time Gordon and Anthony had been in a band together since The Privates,  and they ate it up.

The Advent of ALT.TRONICA: Rubberlegs the live band (2005)

Setting the stage for a brand-new edition of Rubberlegs, in July 2004, Anthony had joined Gordon for the first time in a Rubberlegs performance, playing electronic drum pads at the monthly OUTmusic open mic. They had a great time doing People Who Talk in Elevators  completely live, without any backing tracks. A few weeks later, Bunny and Gordon had had a long-delayed reunion and decided it was time to play together again. With the addition of Anthony in October, Rubberlegs had said goodbye to tracks, sequences and other pre-recorded backing material, becoming a true 100% live band for the first time ever.

January marked the triumphant return of Kris Landherr's LandShark! series, renamed FAGAPALOOZA. Rubberlegs happily rejoined Kris's roster, performing regularly at venues around New York City and adding new songs to the live repertoire — including our newest crowd-pleaser, the ODW song Lawnchairs, which was recorded live for our next CD. In November the opportunity came up to play our first significant out-of-town show, in Austin, Texas. Arranged by our good friend Trey a.k.a. Toof, whom we'd not seen since he left New York in 2001, the gig was at the Ritz Upstairs, on the ultra-colorful 6th Street with its distinctly New Orleans-like musical flavor. We felt right at home. I called local OUTmusic member Taylor Cage beforehand, and he insisted that we come down to KOOP-FM to be interviewed on his Saturday afternoon radio show. Taylor was wonderful — we felt like we'd known him all our lives. We brought Trey with us and had an awesome time kibbitzing on the air. This was followed by our two-band show with Toof, at which we premiered our first alt.tronic punkwave mashup, Dancing Sedated. The night was a great success, and the trip proved to be just the boost we needed.

Boyfriends Vol. 1, OMA Nomination, Summer Pride, and R.U.B. (2006)

Having just minted our own brand-new genre, ALT.TRONICA, we proceeded to add more representative songs to our live set. First up was Iggy Pop's Five Foot One,  one of Bunny's favorites from the '80s. We gave it a balls-out hard-wave electronic treatment, and it worked equally well as an attention-grabber at the start of our set, or as a segue into a high-energy ending with Dancing Sedated.  Next came Hilary's Drop Your Pants,  a totally fun tongue-in-cheeks electropop ditty with clean words coming together to make a rather dirty lyric, just the way we like 'em!

With wonderfully enthusiastic permission from Scott of Our Daughter's Wedding  to cover Lawnchairs,  we released our new CD, Boyfriends, Volume 1 :: The Timinator.  Included were our newest songs Bound and Gagged  (our first recording that features Anthony on electronic drums) and The Timinator,  with alternate mixes of the two songs — another Rubberlegs first — and live recordings of Lawnchairs  and People Who Talk in Elevators.  We were shocked and exhilarated when our CD was nominated for a 2006 OUTmusic Award, for "Outstanding New Recording, Duo or Group". We had a hugely successful CD release party at NYC's amazing Crash Mansion,  debuting the colorful new Timinator t-shirts we'd had made especially for the occasion, and started off the summer at the same venue, opening up the OMA nominees showcase on OUTmusic Awards weekend. We traveled to West Virginia to take part in the first annual Pride in the Arts Festival,  an outdoor music and arts extravaganza put together by Len Rogers of the Stonewall Society. To cap this off, we returned to New York City the next day and performed onstage in Bryant Park, at the opening rally for LGBT Pride Week. This was truly a high point for the band.

Sadly, it was not going to last. Days before our Labor Day festival gig in the Catskills, Day to be Gay 6,  Bunny became ill and holed himself up in his apartment, refusing to speak to anyone. Gordon had very little time to learn all his parts and songs, but thanks to forty intense hours of creative programming on his new Nord Modular G2X synth, he and Anthony were able to cover the show as a duo. Throughout the fall and winter they beefed up the new two-man sound, and in the process became rather happy with the freedom this afforded them.

Approached by good friend Robert Urban to start an '80s cover band, Ant and Gordon jumped at the chance to learn more songs from their favorite musical decade. Together with Robert on guitar and vocals and Steven Sullivan on bass, they formed R.U.B.,  and in a few short months put together a fantastic repertoire. R.U.B. debuted at NYC's upper west side Penang Lounge to a full, enthusiastic house. Spirits were high in Penang's speakeasy-style basement bar, where music fans and casual diners alike were treated to four long sets of great '80s new wave rock and pop. Thus began a regular tenure at Penang that lasted several months, giving the band a chance to solidify their repertoire and augment it to a whopping 50 songs. For Gordon, this was the chance of a lifetime, not only to program the most important stock sounds on his G2X synth, but also to sing regularly and in different styles, sharing lead vocal duties with Robert. Since Bunny's retirement from Rubberlegs, Gordon had been missing the two-part harmonies that were such an important part of their sound. Now, with Robert, harmony returned in an even more exciting way, thanks to Robert's accomplished voice and his keen interest in helping push Gordon into new vocal territory.

Goodbye Bunny; long live the ALT.TRONIC Rubber-Duo and R.U.B. (2007)

As the new year rang in, Bunny put out multiple calls for help, and we somehow got him into the hospital to have them "fix what was wrong with him." Thus began two very difficult and intense months for everyone, as his long-term liver disease progressed beyond repair and started to cause dementia. He finally succumbed on February 25th, during the academy awards — I like to think it was during Helen Mirren's acceptance of her Oscar for "The Queen." That, coupled with the fact that Bob's viewing, in 1995, had been at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home (which is where Judy Garland was laid out in June 1969, causing grieving drag queens to spark the Stonewall Riots), adds a nice melodramatic flair to the passing of our two founding Rubberlegs brothers, that I'm certain they would have both reveled in. Though the band has been able to continue without him, it's a sad fact that we will never have another Bunny. The next world is a richer place, and a much more entertaining one, since his transition.

So many doors, closing and opening. In the nine days preceding Bunny's passing, Gordon's employer had been bought by Getty Images, Tim and Gordon had started looking for an apartment to buy together, and Rubberlegs had played the 11th Annual Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA. Anthony and Gordon met some incredible people in Harrisburg, who would offer the band several musical opportunities later in the year. We celebrated Bunny's life on three separate occasions. First, Rubberlegs played a memorial show at Fat Baby, in which we dedicated "Bunny on the Lam" to his sister Lorraine, and guest vocalist *V*I*R*G*O* sent him off with "Sweet Dreams.” In May, we had a wonderful service and reception at Greenwich Village’s famed Judson Memorial Church, attended by a large, diverse collection of friends and family members from in and out of town. Finally, in June, eleven close friends gathered in Cherry Grove, Fire Island to scatter his ashes at a moonlit ceremony in the dunes.

Anthony and Gordon continued to have a great time playing with '80s band R.U.B. Although things quieted down a bit, following Penang's closing in May, there were several high points. R.U.B. took a fantastic weekend road trip to Syracuse in June, playing for hundreds of cheering, dancing fans at the annual outdoor Central NY State Pride Festival. In August, R.U.B. hosted the OUTmusic open mic, bringing several fellow OUTmusic members up on stage to sing classic '80s pop tunes from the band's growing repertoire. 2007's remaining R.U.B. shows weren't as numerous as they'd been at Penang, but the band got tighter, the audiences went wilder, and we enjoyed ourselves like never before. At the end of December, we all agreed that the band should play all the time, and the name R.U.B. should be promoted into a household word!

During this time, Rubberlegs was becoming a friend of the FUNK. In 2006 we'd shared the stage with Cold Flavor Repair,  at The Underscore, and they'd managed to keep our friends dancing in the bar an hour longer than they'd planned. It's hard not to love the nonstop dance groove these guys lay down so effortlessly, whether it's just the organ-trio core of the band, fronted by Andy with his soulful voice, or a bigger ensemble with percussionists and horns. Between CFR and Rubberlegs, we've got the sounds of the '70s and '80s covered! We set up several fun double-bill dance parties at Fat Baby, and CFR gave us the excellent opportunity to open up for them at highly-respected NYC venue The Knitting Factory. 

Another funk band, that we'd played with in Harrisburg, had become big fans of ours: Midnight Spaghetti and the Chocolate G-Strings,  who are even more fun than their crazy name. They invited us to their annual Shenandoah Mountains festival, Spaghettifest 5,  and this turned out to be a real high point for the band. We played for a crowd of hundreds in beautiful Natural Chimeys Park, and made a bunch of new college-age friends and fans from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Our Spaghetti-host, Mickey, teaches a class in Concert Production and Promotion at JMU, as we learned when his students contacted us to help with one of their projects: an '80s night! This of course was right up our alley, and it was an excellent challenge for the two of us to learn two hours' worth of songs without guitar, bass or second vocal. The '80s night took place on a Saturday in November, at Casey's Bar in the Holiday Inn (no, Hedwig, there wasn't a salad bar) in Harrisonburg, VA. The kids really dressed the part, going crazy on the spandex and day-glow leg warmers. We played 29 tunes — every Rubberlegs song and '80s cover that we knew, including several that I normally sing with R.U.B. — and had a fantastic time. Even though Rubberlegs does not intend to become a cover band, and R.U.B. is a much richer experience along those lines anyway, it's still incredibly liberating to know that we can cut these gigs on our own.

Head-first into the Unknown! (2008)

Happy New Year 2008! May you realize your deepest dreams!

Gordon Peg Rubberleg
January 1st, 2008
sickpups@nyc.rr.com