The Strange Story of the LUV's
by Eric Smith
On September 2nd, 2005 the L.U.V.’s reunited for the first time since their breakup in 1999.
Providence, Rhode Island, April 28th, 1998: The L.U.V.’s were on the Met Café stage, a few weeks after winning the WBRU Rock Hunt and nearing the pinnacle of their short and frustrating career when their dancer, Roxy Lady, having just quit the band onstage in front of several hundred people with a vitriol-laden kiss-off, emptied a can of mace into guitarist Kevin Bowden’s eyes. A riot ensued and the Met’s entire audience emptied into the street. What was supposed to be a triumphant celebration of their newfound local domination had reached its dark zenith. Although the band would play on for another year or so, the descent had begun and the good times were ending.
But it wasn’t always this pretty. When the L.U.V.’s debuted at the Met a little over a year earlier, in the fall of 1996, they had big aspirations. After forming in the dorms of Rhode Island College, Miguel Souza, Kevin Bowden, Josh Kemp, and Paul Varney quickly went to work establishing not only the songs but the aesthetic: the look, the makeup, the wardrobe, and the outrageous stage show. Their early incarnation was a bastard blend of KISS, New York Dolls, Cramps, Stooges, etc., while simmering below those most obvious of influences lurked an even stranger obsession: the schticky sounds of Motley Crüe and Prince. The L.U.V.’s weren’t from the fickle Rhode Island School of Design art world or the dingy squalor of Olneyville and, worshipping Oasis, they had little patience for indie idolatry. From the very beginning, they wanted to be the biggest fucking band in the world. For a variety of reasons, both real and imagined, this never happened.
Things had been relatively quiet in Providence. The Royal Crowns had been omnipresent in the clubs for a few years and the city was enjoying its first wave of rockabilly and greasy roots rock, which still permeates the music scene here to this day. Local luminaries like Pollenate, Small Factory, and Purple Ivy Shadows had disappeared and Thee Hydrogen Terrors were in the last throes of their insurgency. Early L.U.V.’s songs even resembled the Crowns’ fractured take on hyper-Cramps psychosis, and at first they seemed to be the neon-n-lipstick little brother to the Crown’s more straightforward rockabilly assault. But there was nothing quite like the L.U.V.’s when they arrived out of nowhere to a fully packed Met Café in 1996. Local bands didn’t look like the L.U.V.’s, and until then, they dared not sound like the L.U.V.’s. They had all the elements of a great live band: tight, explosive delivery, gigantic drums, buzzsaw guitars (complete with blazing pre-irony solos), disturbingly rifftacular bass, Lydonesque vocals, and an oozing and combative sexual energy. Their live shows were perverse affairs of spit, sweat, androgynous posing, and running mascara. They also possessed, at that time, one of the best song canons in the city. The songs were instantly memorable, filled with sing-along choruses and snarling energy. Theirs was the Misfits school of songwriting: short, fast, funny, and immediately endearing. It only took a few shows to know all the lyrics, or at least the choruses, and more often than not the entire audience would be singing every word. It seemed that overnight Providence bands were wearing makeup and name-dropping the Dolls, the Heartbreakers, and Iggy Pop. But however determined they all were to follow in the L.U.V.’s glamorous wake, they just didn’t have the stuff that seemed to come so naturally to the band. The L.U.V.’s had brought trashy glam-infected punk-rock back to a city that had forgotten that it was once a hotbed for that sound in the early Eighties.
In the spring of 1997, the band won the Rhode Island College Rock Hunt, and with their modest winnings, they recorded their debut album at Reptile Studios in Providence. The resulting disc, Hate To Sleep Alone, was a decent record and it showcased their sound well enough. But since they were only playing locally and selling them wherever they could, the CDs sat in boxes for months. In the end, only a little over a thousand copies were sold.
In the fall of 1997, drummer Paul Varney, stepbrother to singer Miguel Souza, suddenly quit and was replaced by this writer, and during my year in the band (their “middle period”), the L.U.V.’s experienced—no thanks to myself—some of their greatest successes. It was during this time that they started to play outside of the city, frequenting Boston and Portland, Maine, and playing in New York City, a first for everyone. By the end of the year, the L.U.V.’s were headlining everywhere they played, and the shows were always packed solid.
In early 1998, the L.U.V.’s made it through the preliminary round of the WBRU Rock Hunt and on to the finals at Lupo’s. The band had acquired a second dancer, Jen Hayes (then-girlfriend of bassist Josh Kemp) and tensions were mounting between the two girls. Unbelievably, they beat out the pack of jam-funk and ska bands that everyone thought couldn’t lose, and decided right then that a second record was in order.
As recording got underway in the summer of 1998 at Sound Station 7, it was clear that the L.U.V.’s were growing up a bit. They had been listening to Roxy Music, late Bowie, Velvet Underground, and it was starting to show through in the songwriting. Though still very much rooted in the Dolls’ traditions of trashy and obnoxious punk, subtler textures were emerging. Songs like “Good To Be Bad” sounded less like the Stooges’ early bombast and more like Iggy’s nuanced “Lust For Life,” while the sitar-and-Hammond drenched raga-rock of “We Are The Trashmen” sounded unlike anything the L.U.V.’s had ever done. The resulting eleven songs revealed a startlingly broader character and a depth of artistic vision that was not only surprisingly good for a Providence group, but would surely draw national attention to a band already starved for it. The record would never be released.
Immediately prior to entering Sound Station 7 was the infamous mace-ing incident at the Met Café. The L.U.V.’s original dancer, Roxy Lady, was missing shows due to her daytime profession—she was a dancer at the Foxy Lady, a local strip club—and Jen Hayes had been filling in during her absences. Eventually, they both would be dancing at opposite ends of the stage, which was becoming a problem. Near the end of the show, in front of hundreds of people, Roxy stepped up to the microphone, gave her onstage resignation, and left. As the band prepared what would have been the last song of the night, she returned to the stage and emptied a half ounce can of pepper-spray into Kevin Bowden’s eyes and throat. He collapsed to the floor while pandemonium raged around him and the club emptied onto the street. Roxy Lady was out, and Hayes was now the sole L.U.V.’s dancer.
As recordings for the ill-fated Stay Pretty LP wound down, Dennis DelPrete, the next drummer in the L.U.V.’s lineage, found himself hanging around the studio getting a grip on his new situation. I’d decided to leave to focus on my own band, The Fantastics, and DelPrete, who was the original drummer for the Royal Crowns, was a natural fit. His drumming was tight and powerful, whereas describing my skills as reminiscent of a white Charlie Watts would be giving me way too much credit. His tenure in the L.U.V.’s would see them through a very dramatic year, nearly all the way to their eventual, inevitable, breakup.
In the winter of 1998, the L.U.V.’s were playing almost constantly. They had found an admirer in Jack Reich, booker at Lupo’s, who had started putting them on before larger touring bands. They were headlining the smaller clubs every month and traveling to Boston, Connecticut and New Hampshire on a regular basis. They were easily drawing hundreds of devoted fans and rapidly making gains out of town as well. In early 1999, Reich had put them on with the national act Orgy, who was touring the country on the strength of their cover version of New Order’s “Blue Monday.” This would be the biggest and most important show they would play. For the first time, they were not only playing to their own fan base of a few hundred people, but also to teenage Orgy fans from Warwick and Barrington who had rarely been in the city before, much less seen one of their own local bands. The response from the young crowd was overwhelming, instantly earning them a new world of fans, many of whom would remember them to this day. And the show would be most memorable to Kevin, who would sign his first (and last) breast.
Before being able to enjoy the sudden rise in their local profile, drummer DelPrete left the band due to personal circumstances. The L.U.V.’s auditioned drummers, including Jeff Bellucci and another drummer, Travis. The band went with Travis, who had a practice space, while Jeff would go on to form the Midnight Creeps. Just before the Orgy show, dancer Hayes left the group. Jen Hayes would become Jenny Hurricane and go on to front the Midnight Creeps. Mere weeks after the choosing a new drummer, singer Miguel Souza told his friends that he was leaving the band, ending the brief career of the L.U.V.’s. This was unfortunate timing, as weeks later Kevin Bowden received a call from Orgy’s tour manager. He was starting a label, he wanted to sign them, and he wanted to take them on the road immediately. When Kevin told him of the bands’ demise, he simply hung up.
The legacy of the L.U.V.’s is virtually forgotten in Providence—or maybe it was never noticed to begin with—but all of them went on to do time in several arguably respected bands: Jeff and Jen went on to the very popular Midnight Creeps, orchestrating their very respectable successes and making them a staple of the U.S. punk-rock touring scene. And it could be said that the success of the Creeps could have been had first by the L.U.V.’s, had they gone with Bellucci’s workhorse-like organizational talents. In a strange twist, he will be the drummer for the L.U.V.’s upcoming reunion shows and was a major motivating force in pulling the band back together. Travis now plays with Sibling Rivalry, Miguel Souza went on to join me in The Fantastics, and Kevin Bowden was in Tokyo Texas before playing in my next band, Jagolinzer. Josh Kemp went on to play in Corvette Summer, Mainman, and V. Majestic, and now represents one half of Providence darlings Mahi Mahi.
Unfortunately, The L.U.V.’s were never were able to deliver on the promise of their early potential. They are however still fondly remembered by a small but fanatic following who have been anticipating these much delayed shows for some time.
The L.U.V.’s are reuniting a shows at Jerky’s on October 14th, 2005. If you remember being there the first time around, if you’ve only heard the stories, or if you’d just like to revisit a small slice of late 90s local music nostalgia then you should most certainly be there.
