Outta Place - don't crowd me But the Reverend and my Pinhead…
In 1983, while Rudi Protrudi struggles to find a label to release the first Fuzztones record, five young delinquents living a few blocks away are already recording their debut album. They are called Mike Chandler, Orin Portnoy, Jordan Tarlow, Shari Mirojnik, and Andrea Kusten, and they have (and will have) a lot in common with the Fuzztones: Orin is the brother of their guitarist Elan Portnoy (with whom he already records under the name Twisted and will later form two extraordinary bands like Headless Horsemen and Bohemian Bedrocks), Jordan will join the ‘tones in 1987 and will record In Heat with them two years later, Andrea will end up behind Rudi’s back playing drums in 2000, Shari will end up in bed with Elan and Rudi, while Mike, besides flirting with Deb O’Nair, will write (something that perhaps few know or forget easily even today, NdLYS) some of the most beautiful Fuzztones songs: Bad News Travels Fast, She’s Wicked, Highway 69, It Came in the Mail, Me Tarzan You Jane, What You Don’t Know, Brand New Man, Heathen Set.
But at that time the Outta Place are “just” three guys and two girls who take it upon themselves to release the first garage-punk record from the New York area.
They arrived at Midnight Records thanks to a self-produced demo that the boss J.D. Martignon takes the initiative to publish almost entirely on vinyl. The result is released on a twelve-inch that spins at 45 RPM and is the second record in Midnight’s catalog, which a few months later will also publish the debuts of the other two garage bands in town: the Fuzztones and the Vipers (produced, among other things, by Jordan Tarlow himself). But We’re Outta Place, in terms of beat/punk violence, had already said it all, shouting it with the loud, relentless, and provocative tone of Mike Chandler. Those six covers were the baptismal certificate of the garage scene of the Big Apple. And the instrumental outtakes (with Chandler's screams recorded in his apartment and added during subsequent mastering) that would be released three years later when the band was already disbanded, its death certificate. Everything that happened in those four years, the Outta Place had already burned through in a few months, as if there was no tomorrow. With the voracity and hormonal fury characteristic of adolescence. Even today, millions of records later, very few have managed to do better, with a fervor and bitterness vaguely similar to theirs. Even today, Outta Place remain the only untamed beasts to emerge from the caves of the federated state of New York.
Franco “Lys” Dimauro
