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Jet Black Berries’ first album, “Sundown on Venus,” has been remastered and will be rereleased more than 40 years after its creation.
The Rochester-based band, whose hard-to-classify sound crossed over between genres of roots-punk and psych revival, will play a free live show of the entire album at Record Archive tomorrow.
Record label Propeller Sound Recordings wanted to create an album closer to the band’s original sonic vision. The initial 1985 release had changed the order of songs and included bonus and cover songs.
At the time, Jet Black Berries drummer Roy Stein says, the band was simply grateful to have a record deal and didn’t pay attention to the changes the record label, Enigma Records, made.
“Well, it was supposed to be a nonlinear concept album. That’s what we thought we were going to have,” Stein recalls. “But we recorded so many songs, we thought maybe (Enigma Records) would put some out of singles, do some as B-sides. But what they did, which we didn’t expect, is they issued a three-sided record. It was not the beautiful picture that I’d expected.”
Even so, Stein says, “we didn’t care much. I mean, it was such a joy to be on the label with worldwide distribution, with artists that we respected. Just at that age of the mid-20s, you’re already moving on to the next thing. You know, we’re already writing songs for the next album, ‘Desperate Fires.’ So it was like, ‘Oh well.’ The record did pretty good in terms of its reviews and (radio) play. And it sold okay. So, we were all pretty happy about it.”
However, listening to the album now, Stein was struck by how much better it flows together.
“It was just like, ‘Boom.’ I can say this without bragging because almost all the tunes were written by (guitarist and bassist Gary Trainer), I’m looking at him saying, ‘Damn, he’s a good songwriter,’” Stein says. “To have some covers thrown in and some other material that we had done, it destroyed, in some ways, the continuity of the message, which was this guy, Bill Kelly, who was a bad hombre who was traveling through outer space.”
“Sundown on Venus” is an ambitious 12-song concept album, with each song serving as a vignette in the setting of a dark space-western world. It bounces from a rockabilly swing introduction of a major character in “Masked Astronaut,” to a campy high-energy description of zombies in “Macumba Love,” to a menacing atmosphere of dangerous wormholes in “Shadow Drive.”
Besides desert-noir and science fiction, Trainer’s lyrics were inspired by the writing of William S. Burroughs and Aleister Crowley.
“(Trainer) was able to mix it all together and create this romance of space and westerns and b-movie sci-fi and the occult,” reflects Stein. “Instead of being all serious, it’s fun. There’s a camp element to it that is fun while it can also be ominous.”
Beside Trainer and Stein, the other members include lead guitarist Chris Yockel and Mark Schwartz, who plays keyboard, harmonica, and bass. Vocals were taken over from original member Kevin Patrick by Johnny Cummings in 2008 during the band’s first reunion and were then subsequently taken over by Derek Sapienza, who also plays guitar.
The original members in the 1970s first formed new wave band New Math, who opened for acts such as the Ramones, the Cramps, and Gun Club. Propeller Sound Records rereleased their album, “Die Tying” two years ago.
In the early 1980s, the group shifted to more of a “cowpunk” musical genre and changed the band’s name to Jet Black Berries. Under the new name, their track “Love Under Will” was featured on the cult classic film “The Return of the Living Dead.” They went on to release three albums in the 1980s with Enigma Records and one additional album, “Postmodern Ghosts,” after their reunion in the 2000s.
Stein says the rerelease of “Sundown on Venus” has already been widely embraced, with “Johnsonville” and its latest single, “Rocketfire Sex66” being featured on Spotify editorial playlists.
He also notes that Spain has been a popular country for their music, with the band semi-seriously considering an overseas tour. They nearly had an international tour decades ago with New Math. After they reformed as Jet Black Berries, although they had a deal with Enigma Records, they toured far less than as New Math, which lacked studio support.
“At that point in time, I was teaching at Nazareth College, full time, and other members of the band had good jobs,” Stein says. “And we were like, ‘We’re not going on the road for $12,000 a year in the back of a van.’ It just didn’t appeal to us at that time.”
Ahead of the album’s official rerelease on Sept. 25, Jet Black Berries will play “Sundown on Venus” with a free show at Record Archive’s Backroom Lounge Wednesday starting at 5 p.m.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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