Back in the late 1970s, Rochester, NY — yes, Rochester — was the unlikely home to a busy and fiercely creative, underground punk and New Wave scene. Among the most vitals to emerge from the Rochester scene was New Math, a band that gradually evolved from wiry, high-energy power pop to darker cinematic post-punk that saw them stand apart from their peers.
Formed in 1976, New Math’s core lineup featured Kevin Patrick (vocals), Gary Trainer (bass), Chris Yokel (guitar), Roy Stein (drums) and Mark Schwartz (keys). “Kevin (Patrick) was trading records from London,” Gary Trainer recalls. ““Stuff like Sex Pistols and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Kevin was friends with Joey Ramone and Monty, who is their road manager. When Dee Dee left, they were trying out bass players. So I flew to New York, and I tried out. I did a whole set with Joey, but I didn’t get the gig. When Kevin and I put this band together, we wanted to be in the middle of this new wave of music that was happening.”
The original lineup officially only released one song “Die Trying.”
Although local clubs, like The Penny Arcade didn’t want wild punk bands as much as Foreigner over bands, the band played some memorable shows in the area, including a 1979 show opening for John Cale and The Now. After playing a show at The Penny Arcade in which the band’s Kevin Patrick got hit in the face with a raw egg, New Math never played the room again. However, they quickly found themselves opening for Ramones, The Damned, Human Switchboard and The Cramps at some of the city’s most renowned clubs at the time — The Triangle Theatre, The Orange Monkey, and Scourgie’s, Rochester’s version of Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s. By the tail end of the 1970s. New Math lit a spark in a local scene that featured The Chesterfield Kings, Personal Effects and The Cliches.
At the start of the 1980s Patrick had become fascinated by The Cramps and The Psychedelic Furs. The band’s debut EP, 1981’s They Walk Among You saw the band’s sound shifting from power pop to primal, focused post-punk, and was part of a growing horror punk movement that included The Cramps, 45 Grave and Misfits, who would release their studio albums debut, Walk Among Us the following year. They Walk Among You EP was influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, William S. Burroughs’ Nova Express. EP track “Garden of Delight” features lyrics that the band would take their new name from, Jet Black Berries. More on the band’s name change a bit later, because I don’t want to jump ahead too far, and there’s a story here. Let’s get back to it, right?
“Roky Erickson was writing all these songs about old horror movies,” says Trainer, “and I started thinking about songwriting in this different way. His album Evil One (1980) and songs like ‘I Think of Demons’ reminded me of subversive things like [Kenneth Anger’s short film] Invocation of My Demon Brother, which all felt dangerous. They Walk Among You is symbolic of being in a fascist place where your neighbors are turning on you.”
By 1984, New Math had honed a moodier style informed by American gothic imagery surrealism and haunted psychedelia. The band’s self-produced, eight-song full-length debut, Gardens was released through Brain Eater Records, and came off the heels of a tour opening for The Psychedelic Furs. The Aleister Crowley-inspired “Love Under Will” caught enough attention to be included on The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack — under the band’s new name, Jet Black Berries. Tragically, the album never got a chance: Just as the album was about to ship, the label folded. “Steve Pross was the president of Brain Eater Records,” Trainer recalls, “but he moved to California and started working for Enigma. He was in charge of putting out the Return to the Living Dead soundtrack, and he wanted us on it. So he took ‘Love Under Will’ and stuck it on the soundtrack. He loved us, and took us with him. We were on some Enigma compilations that were pretty popular as well.”
The band rebranded as Jet Black Berries, closing the door on the New Math era, informed by their moving beyond the limits of punk rock and New Wave. They developed a darker, stranger and more ambitious sound and approach drawing from country rock, rockabilly, Western balladry, psych punk and beat-inspired storytelling. And it also helped that as Trainer jokes, “We always hated the name [New Math].” He adds, “We’d gone down to New York to record some songs, trying to get a deal with Columbia. That didn’t happen. So we came back home kinda depressed, wanting to change direction. I had the idea for Sundown on Venus by this time. We just decided to come up with another name and record Sundown, and go in a different direction.”
Recorded during a breakneck two day session in August 1984, Sundown on Venus was released by Enigma/Pink Dust. The album and the band were often categorized in cowpunk movement and was also loosely associated with the 80s Paisley Underground psych scene, but the band constantly defied easy categorization. They were much darker, heavier and more raw than many of their roots rock peers. The album creates a desert noir world of dead planets, outlaw romance and post-punk pulse. “When we recorded Sundown with money from Enigma, we weren’t in control,” says Trainer. “It was a double-record release with lots of covers.”
Their sophomore album, 1986’s Desperate Fires saw the band continuing their unique blend of cowpunk, psychobilly and Paisley Underground, eventually earning a Best Album nomination at that year’s New York Music Awards.
1988’s Animal Necessity was arguably their most polished effort, and it turned out to be the last album of the band’s initial run together. Patrick was living in New York. The band continued to live and write in Rochester, with Trainer moving to guitar and vocal duties. They recruited their friend Wayne Naylor to take up bass duties. By this time, Patrick would contribute remotely while managing all of the band’s business dealings — eventually going on to a storied career in the music industry in A&R, radio promotion and artist management. The band split up and went off in their own directions.
“The breakup wasn’t acrimonious,” Roy Stein says. ““We all stayed in touch, and we’d do reunion shows here and there. We had a New Math reunion in 2009 where Johnny Cummings fronted the band. We had so much fun, I said to Johnny, ‘Why don’t we just go into the studio and cut some New Math songs?’ Gary and I wrote a couple new songs and made this studio album,”Postmodern Ghosts.”
2010’s Postmodern Ghosts saw the band revisiting their career. The Postmodern Ghosts rendition of “Love Under Will” is their most streamed song. “It was just a quick knock off, but I loved the sound of it,” says Stein. “The whole band was just cooking on the floor of the studio on that one.”
In 2022, the band began playing reunion shows in and around Rochester with their new frontman JDS’, The Shine and The Grievants‘ Derek Sapienza. “I played through the 2000s,” Sapienza says, “,“touring a lot, playing basements, art spaces and punk houses. The pop punk and hardcore scene didn’t appeal as much to me as the early punk days. That music was more foundational for me. I first heard New Math when I was 18. Our rock station WCMF put out this homegrown compilation with ‘Hot Sounds’ on it, and it was the best song on that record. I thought Rochester had this really big punk scene back then. When mybuddy Joe Masaro told me New Math was getting back together. I had him introduce me. I tried out, and ten days later I was in. I’ve been playing with them ever since.”
2023 saw Propeller Sound Recordings re-issuing New Math material, beginning with the 11-song Die Trying & Other Hot Sounds (1979-1983), a compilation of the band’s early singles and previously unreleased material. Feeling rejuvenated, the band went into the studio in early 2024 to record new material with their new frontman that included “I Can Tell” and “When I Was Young.”
Propeller Sound Recordings will be re-issuing the band’s 1985 effort Sundown On Venus [Definitive Edition]. The original album was released with complications: Enigma Records wanted additional material included with the album. The album was packaged with a 12-inch featuring extra tracks, including songs written for The Return of the Living Dead, some ill-selected cover songs and re-recordings of early New Math material. Many of those bonus tracks were put directly into the album song sequence, moving some of the songs intended for the original album song sequence to the bonus disc.
The inclusion of the non-album material blurred and obfuscated the band’s original vision of the album with the label opting for a sales-driven gimmick, when the band was actively trying to move beyond its original reception. “When Sundown On Venus originally came out,” says Stein,“I was stunned. It wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t expect it to be a double album with all these covers. This entire record was done in a day and a half, recorded and mixed. I didn’t think that a lot of the material we recorded in one or two takes was going to be included. . . “So when Jay [Coyle of Propeller Sound Recordings] talked about re-releasing the record, Gary and I were like, let’s release the record that we had thought about back in ‘85.”
The re-issued album’s material is now in the exact order the band originally intended Primarily written by the band’s Trainer, the non-linear story features outlaws, Venusian hideouts and mind-controlling monsters, heavily influenced by William S. Burrough’s The Red Night Trilogy and the work of Aleister Crowley. Each of the album’s songs was written a bit like a movie vignette that sees its characters, the gunslinger Bill Kelly, the “Masked Astronaut,” Jim Dawson, The Mindless Gang, Captain Mission and his crew of space pirates, a bitter priest and a banker who loves the sound of gunfire interacting with each other. What once slipped through the cracks of underground rock history now stands as a missing link between cowpunk, psych revival, rockabilly, punk-rooted Americana, and cinematic sci-fi storytelling.
To celebrate the reissues, the band shares a new single “Rocketfire Sex66,” as a companion piece to Sundown On Venus [Definite Edition]. “Rocketfire Sex66” is a swaggering glam punk tune that seemingly draws from and blends elements of Marc Bolan, Primal Scream, Social Distortion and The Rolling Stones — but while rooted in the sci-fi gunslinger in outer space vibe of Sundown on Venus. The result is something that’s gritty yet cinematic, new yet sounds as though it could have been a cut track from the album’s recording sessions.
“‘I’ve loved Mark Bolan since his earliest records,” says Stein.”I wanted to do something that was a bit of an homage to him, while still doing something lyrically that was Jet Black Berries. This sci-fi gunslinger and rockets thing. I wanted it to be sexual too, but tongue-in-cheek and fun.”
The accompanying video for “Roketfire Sex66” was made by Stein’s partner Sarah Davidson. The video features studio footage of the band recording the song cut with handmade, pounded metal cutouts of animated rockets, ray guns, stars and our sci-fi gunslinger protagonist meeting his sensual match after crash landing on a new planet.
