Senders

Left For Dead Records is proud to announce their release of the first definitive collection of the rip-snortin’ recorded legacy of New York City’s Rock ‘n’ Roll diehards, The Senders. Titled All Killer No Filler (1977-2001) the compilation features over two dozen tracks, captured in down and dirty local studios and in sweaty dives between 1977 and 2001 all previously unreleased or long out of print. All Killer No Filler (1977-2001) is being issued November 18 as 2 x 12” vinyl LP featuring 27 tracks in a gatefold sleeve, a 2 x CD also in a gatefold sleeve and with four additional bonus tracks. The packaging includes separate liner notes by music journalists James “The Hound” Marshall and Tim Stegall as well as a Peter Crowley who oversaw the Senders session for a Max’s Kansas City Records seven-song single, material that appears on this album.

Here’re the album liner notes by James “The Hound” Marshall:

If you loved rock ’n’ roll in New York City between 1976 and 2001, you were almost certainly a Senders fan. For 25 years the Senders kept rock ’n’ roll alive in New York City, sometimes single-handedly.

From 1976 through the dawn of the 21st century the Senders played rock ‘n’ roll, ignoring all fads and trends. Lord knows how many musicians passed through the Senders, but I think of the classic line up as Wild Bill Thompson, who joined around ’78 on guitar; Steve Shevlin, a former boxer and later teacher to deaf kids, on bass; Marc “Moe” Bourset on drums; some nights, Danny Ray on tenor saxophone, and drummer turned singer Phil Marcade on vocals and harmonica. They were raw, greasy and fabulous.

By 1980 punk was pretty much over. Hardcore with it’s uniform and male aggro was on one side, hyphenated art world rejects on the other, and the rockers had mostly fled the city—the Heartbreakers to Europe, the Cramps to L.A., and too many to mention to an early grave. Clubs where you shared bar space with bikers and winos were out and “new wave” discos like Area were in. Velvet ropes, doormen, Eurotrash, disco and cocaine had moved downtown. Max’s, the Senders home base, had shuttered its doors in November ’81 and the band moved their residency to the Continental, where the Bowery starts at 8th Street. (Fittingly, the club in its previous incarnation, Jack The Ribber, had hosted Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ extended residency), although the Senders would play every club, bar, loft party and stage in the city at some point.

Being perpetually out of fashion and simultaneously ahead and behind their times, the Senders never landed a big record deal, they recorded for whoever would have them, Max’s own record label, the Midnight Records store label, some label in France, et al. But this means, like other bands of a similar mindset—the Blasters, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Dr. Feelgood, the Red Devils—the Senders were never neutered, processed, remolded, cleaned up or spit out by the record biz. No overproduced ‘80s sounding discs, no stupid videos, nothing they couldn’t be proud of. The 27 tunes here are a cross-sampling of what they did—the Senders thing. Tunes by Don & Dewey, Bill Allen, Howlin’ Wolf and Otis Blackwell sit beside their originals—“Fat Face,” “Don’t Mind Me,” “My Baby Glows In The Dark;” raw, unvarnished, unproduced and great. If you were there, you remember, if you missed it, here’s your chance to do Do The Senders Thing.