Sat 6/28 @ 8PM
One of the bands that lit up Cleveland’s music scene in the mid 90s was Queue Up, a lively, melodramatic techno goth band, founded by former members of ’80s synth pop groups the Times and Verdanzen Dennis Yurich, Randy Blaire and Mick Derrick, plus actress/vocalist Alison Garrigan who provided a striking, dynamic stage presence. The group acquired a significant following in the industrial and goth scenes and even did some showcasing at out-of-town music industry events in Chicago and Toronto as well as Cleveland. It also wrote and performed music for a Dobama Theatre production called “The Vampyres” in 1997. The band broke up when Hernan retired in 1997 for medical reasons. Yurich and Garrigan revived the band briefly in the late 2000s. Yurich went on to form modern glam rockers Vanity Crash, calling himself “Dennis Van Crash.”
Last year, Vanity Crash did one of its special themed shows called “Our Day Will Come,” spotlighting the contributions of women to the Cleveland rock scene. It drew on the many talented local women musicians – and one of those, who joined Vanity Crash onstage, was Garrigan. When she and Yurich joined voices on old Queue Up tunes such as “I Hate You Mr. Einstein” and “On the Edge,” the electricity was palpable.
“It felt really comfortable again playing with her,” says Yurich. “Two years ago we started sharing some songs back and forth that we never really did anything with. I ended up writing a song I thought was perfect for her, and then we did the women’s show. We had already been thinking of doing a reunion, but it never happened. The big catalyst was the women’s show—rehearsing with her and playing with her and the fact that we had a little bit of a catalog of new stuff.”
The original 90s Queue-Up had an angular, industrial-influenced sound, a product of the times. It ended up using taped bass parts as well as sounds on tape, “voices, machine noises, weird stuff,” says Yurich. The new configuration drops that stuff and has a real bass player, Julia Jewels, along with Vanity Crash stalwarts Matthew Angel on guitar and Thomas Anonymous on drums.
“The song I wrote was probably closer to vein of old Queue up,” says Yuruch. “The songs Ali wrote were a little different, and when I re-worked they were even more different. They were still dark but had more of a funky feel. I’m not a person that likes a lot of complex stuff. I like grooves. It’s been a treat for me to dig back in this stuff and discover old stuff and thinking, we were really good.”
The new Queue Up makes its debut Saturday June 28 at the BOP STOP, sharing the evening with Vanity Crash. Go here for tickets.