-- by Rodrigo Perez
New York might be experiencing its biggest musical revival since the late-'70s punk rock heyday, but Longwave aren't one of the many fashionable indie rock bands or ironic electro-clash acts dominating the scene. At a time when all-the-rage downtown and Brooklyn bands are about flashy style and retro posturing, Longwave are marked primarily by their sincerity.
The quartet stands out for a much more obvious reason, too: "We're different from Anthrax and Public Enemy and the Spin Doctors," singer/guitarist Steve Schiltz said with tongue firmly in cheek. "They're from New York, right?"
It's this type of sly humor and grounded self-awareness that separates the group from the other up-and-comers from Gotham. Longwave don't look, or sound, particularly "cool," and their image is simply the clothes they put on in the morning. Rather than follow the sonic trendlet of their peers, the group's music has a distinctly British timbre that melds the spacey guitarscapes and melancholy sounds of the Cure and Radiohead with the punchy and pulsating vigor of the Pixies.
Formed in the summer of 1999, the group was created by Schiltz and bassist Dave Marchese. On their journey from upstate New York to Manhattan, the band met up with and recruited guitarist Shannon Ferguson, a studio engineer who recorded their first demo — and who knew nary a guitar lick. But camaraderie, friendship and a good vibe made up for it.
Along the way, the group's naturalness and lack of shtick was tested. At one now-infamous gig, the band's U.K. A&R person spent $3,000 so the band could smash its equipment onstage at a critical gig. "[Our] guy said, it would make a good impression if [we] smashed all this stuff," said Schiltz. "We said, 'Look, we're not gonna go up there [and] break all this stuff.' It just seemed kinda contrived."
Sticking to their guns and staying true to themselves always served the band well. Serendipity would also greatly affect its destiny. The group befriended the booker for a club while cutting its stage teeth on New York's Lower East Side bar circuit. Months later, the booking agent left his gig at the venue to manage a then-unknown group on the verge of big things called the Strokes. This fortunate affiliation and friendship would serve Longwave well in the future. But it didn't come easy.
Before their big break, the band was on the verge of imploding, feeling defeated and tired from all the effort and little payoff in return. "We spent a lot of our own money in that cycle, and the band was kind of in a really low point and it just seemed like a good time to pack it in," Schiltz said.
At the very moment when things looked their worst, the Strokes invited Longwave to open up for them on their U.K. tour. However, living up to the Strokes' hard-rocking performances night after night was a task not easily undertaken. "You're not gonna blow them off the stage," Schiltz explained. "It's their show and they are very good, but you really want to make sure you stand up for yourself every night."
And their hard work paid off, earning the respect and admiration of not only the fans, but their shaggy tourmates. "I turned around and [the Strokes] were all just standing there, cheering us on, making more noise than the crowd," Marchese recalled. "And I was like, 'All right. I think I'll stick with this for a while.' "
While Longwave might not have been upstaging their rambunctious cohorts, they were slowly building a fanbase that was growing with each show. Soon after they returned to New York, the acclaim and attention had spread and record labels came a'knocking. Yet the band wasn't about to sign on the dotted line with just anyone. Longwave's litmus test for aspiring labels? Knowing who Flaming Lips producer David Fridmann was.
"If the label knew who he was we'd be like, 'Yes, one point for you,' " Schiltz said. In the end, only RCA knew who Fridmann was, and after some brotherly advice from the Strokes (also on RCA), the group had found its label.
Fridmann eventually went on to man the boards for Longwave's upcoming RCA debut, The Strangest Things, and helped take the band's sweeping sound to new heights.
Much has been made about the strong British influences that have seeped into an American band, but Longwave say the reason is obvious. "It's the music that you grow up listening to. [We] grew up on the Smiths, the Clash and the Cure," Schiltz said. "So, listening to that kind stuff just informs what you do later on if you decide to play music."
It was Boy-era U2 that ended up having the most profound effect. "When I finally heard U2 I thought, 'This is the music that I've been looking for,' " Schiltz explained. "I had no idea it was even out there."
Regardless of where their influences came from, the group's aspirations transcend borders.
"I don't want to be known as a great American band, said Marchese. "I just want to be known [as] universally great."
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