Spawned in Salem, MA, They’re One Devilishly Bad-Ass Band
By Anthony Caputo

Law and Order 101: Running someone down and hitting him from behind with a blunt object ought to get you an assault and battery charge, plus at least a couple of months in a confined space.

Rock and Roll 101: Chasing an obnoxious heckler through a crowd and then striking him over the shoulders with your guitar will most certainly get you some bad-ass notoriety.

Demons Alley lead singer and guitarist Pink ~ the name comes from a time in the early ‘90s when he had pink hair down to his waist ~ did just that during a show with a former band a couple years ago. The offending crowd member stood there dissing and flipping off Pink and his band mates until the singer had enough and jumped offstage to unleash what some might call poetic justice: performer uses instrument to put on show, heckler uses big fat mouth to express disapproval of said show, performer uses instrument to shut up heckler’s big fat mouth.

“I don’t allow myself to play expensive guitars because of that,” Pink said. Makes sense.

The other guys in Demons Alley are no angels, either. Bassist Nico “Nighttrain” Youngblood once got into a bottle fight with a biker in a bar while on tour in Texas.

“You f**k with someone on stage and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Pink said. “When it’s really rock and roll, that’s the way it goes.”

But since then, Pink, Nico, lead guitarist “Dangerous” Dave Meyer and drummer Joe Gigolo have toned it down. Perhaps their fieriness has been tempered by their uniting as a band and their love of rock and roll.

Demons Alley is a rock band that borrows heavily from many a tight-trousered folk. Underlying the Kiss bombast in “Devil in Disguise” is a grinding riff that would have made Johnny Ramone proud. The song can be heard on their three-song EP out this month and you can hear a snippet on the band’s MySpace page (www.myspace.com/demonsalley).

There have been hundreds of power ballads since “Dream On,” and Demons Alley’s “Lost Child” (also on their MySpace page) is no exception. With a chiming guitar and an emotion-laced vocal, it sways between Aerosmith and Poison.

“A lot of our influences come from ‘70s bands that influenced ‘80s bands,” Pink said. “We’re the real deal. We do this because we love it. I don’t do this because I have delusions of grandeur; I do this because I have to. Anytime I’m playing music, I’m happy.”

Like many bands, Demons Alley has found a musical home in Worcester. The band’s EP was recorded here with Pete Degraaf, the bassist for Clear the Way. Two of the band’s members, Joe and Nico, live in the Worcester area, while “Dangerous” Dave hails from Sturbridge and Pink calls Salem home. (Naturally, he’s seen some strange things go down there: “I’ve seen people in ant suits, walking around town.” But more about that later.)

Pink said that the band plays Ralph’s and the Lucky Dog on a regular basis. In fact, Demons Alley is scheduled to play Ralph’s on October 13th.

“Ralph’s and the Lucky Dog are our two strongholds,” he said. “We play Worcester fairly often. For Massachusetts, it’s definitely one of the centers of rock and roll.”

Demons Alley’s songs usually focus on the…well, underbelly of society, Pink said. “Generally we write about prostitutes.” They would get to know the local streetwalkers who would hang around their rehearsal room. And they’ve all dated strippers at some time or another, he said.

Pink’s current girlfriend is a hairstylist with pink hair (the singer’s hair right now is black and blue – if he went back to pink he’d just be copying her, he said, and that just wouldn’t be cool) and a bad-ass streak of her own. At one of his former band’s gigs, she too showed a heckler who was boss. Mind you, this is unrelated to the guitar-meets-a**hole story.

So, Pink and his band mates aren’t the only ones who take rock and roll seriously, their brand of it in particular. There’s just something about the music that brings out this aggression, this passion.

“You can listen to a Chuck Berry song and hear the danger in it,” said Pink. “The recording is sh*t, but you can still hear the danger in it. I think that’s what rock is all about…that and hitting someone with a guitar.”

Photo by “Orbit the Well”

www.myspace.com/demonsalley

www.demonsalley.com