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					Also this issue: Here We Are Now -Patrick Rapa The Hangman James Lewes is documenting a very perishable part of the local rock scene. -Patrick Rapa Where They Were Then From Studio to salon to saloon, old-heads recall the scene they can¹t exactly remember. -A.D. Amorosi Punk Calling Diary of a man in a local band (or two) in the early 䢔s. -179Frank Blank² Moriarty Getting to the point the bryn mawr club knows where it¹s going, and where it¹s been. -Mary Armstrong Those were the frickin¹ days Rolling stone¹s david fricke remembers the main point -Patrick Rapa The Lowdown Peaks, valleys and what finally put a fork in The Low Road. -Lori Hill Deep Thoughts with The Low Road

October 17-23, 2002

cover story

changing of the guard

Second Generation: Josh Ostrander leans into the keyboards during a recent show at Club 218.

philly rock band laguardia shows its roots and branches out.

by John Vettese

It’s a cool Monday evening in October and the boys from Laguardia are in high spirits as they cluster towards the back of Bella Vista’s matchbox-sized Low bar. Never mind the space constraints, these four erstwhile Bucks County lads have ample reason to be cheerful; after a year and a half of sporadic recording and playing late nights at The Khyber and RUBA, things are starting to fall into place. A successful summer of shows spawned interest from a handful of labels and the band hopes to have a deal in place by next year. In the meantime, they’re just over a month away from their first national tour opening for The French Kicks, which will take them from Cleveland out to Detroit and around the Midwest for two weeks.

"Right now we do about two shows per week," says guitar player Lee Bernstein. "But to be able to play consecutive nights, five nights out of seven -- that should be great."

Keyboard player-guitarist Josh Ostrander concurs, looking at the tour as an opportunity to sharpen the group's already tight live set. "We try to really push it every night we play," he says. "I can't imagine what we'll sound like after [some time] on the road."

Cross-country gigs and major label courting is old news for at least half the band. Bassist Mike Morpurgo and drummer Greg Lyons have roots in the Philly rock scene that stretch back 13 years. It would probably be best to hire a genealogist to explain the band's previous history and interconnections, but Morpurgo says it can all be traced to when he was 19 and played bass in a little hard rock band called Dandelion.

"Back when we started in 1989, there wasn't much of a scene in Philly," he says. "We'd wind up doing these warehouse shows and Greg, who was like 13 at the time, would come out to see us."

Lyons was inspired by the Dandelion shows and went on to form the teenage pop-rock combo Trip 66 in '92 with friends Maria and Paul Nicgorski. They found Morpurgo and Dandelion to be most supportive. "They were our big-brother band," he says. "They really took us under their wing."

Morpurgo and his guitarist Carl Hinds recorded Trip's first demos, and when Dandelion got signed to Ruffhouse/Columbia in 1993, they brought them along. Philly music had begun to blossom again by this point, and Dandelion played frequent gigs with everyone from The Goats to Second Generation. But being well under 21, Lyons and the other members of Trip didn't get to experience the scene as much.

"We'd play Dobbs and Revival opening for The Brilliant Suns, Dandelion, whoever," says Lyons. "They would make us wait outside, go in the back door, play our set and get out really quick."

Still, things were going great. Both bands put out albums in '95 and got healthy airplay on the decade's alt-rock mecca, WDRE. But as Morpurgo puts it, "Around 1996, the scene just died."

Dandelion soon split up and Trip's album didn't sell as well as they'd hoped. Although they had the option to put out another record with Ruffhouse, the kids went out in search of a different label to work with, eventually breaking up in dismay.

While Maria stuck around Ruffhouse for a while and collaborated with Schoolly D and Morpurgo on a soundtrack project for Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, Paul Nicgorski went on to become the art-rock outfit Ty Cobb with Ryan Bernstein (brother to Laguardia's Lee, for those keeping score). The two brought in a rotating lineup of bassists, drummers and keyboard players for their live shows, which at one time or another have featured Lyons on drums, Morpurgo on bass and Ostrander on keys.

"They're actually the ones who taught me how to play keyboards," says Ostrander. "I was with them for two and a half years and Laguardia spawned from that."

Morpurgo met Lee Bernstein through his Ty Cobb stint and the two began working on some new music. Although Bernstein had been writing acoustic songs for several years, he had never been in a band before and Morpurgo looked to expand his songwriting beyond what he had done previously. As Ostrander and Lyons made their way out of Ty Cobb, the decision to play music together seemed pretty obvious.

"It's one big incestuous family with us," says Morpurgo. "But we like it that way."

Laguardia formed in fall 2000, playing their first show at The Continental in New York City. They collectively wrote and worked out about a dozen songs but played almost exclusively in the Big Apple before debuting in Philly at The Strokes' Khyber residency in May 2001.

"We wanted to get good out there without any friends or eyes on us," says Lyons. "We got our bearings first before we came back and showed our friends we were a band."

Today, Laguardia's combination of hard progressive punk and airy psychedelic drone is more refined than ever. Where Ostrander, Bernstein and Morpurgo once spent their sets inexplicably swapping bass, guitar, keyboard and vocal duties, the band collectively decided to shift the focus of attention towards Ostrander for the time being.

"As he started getting more comfortable with keyboards, the stuff he was bringing in was really defining our sound," says Morpurgo. "And I think defining our sound was important when it's coming from three songwriters."

Another recent change is the disappearance of the multimedia portion of the Laguardia's live show -- or more accurately, the theft of their CTX projector. They originally performed backed by found-film footage and slides of Bernstein's photography, with oddball sound loops and clips filling the gap between songs. But when the projector got lifted last winter, the band took it as an omen.

"We had a lot of people tell us ŒThe visuals are cool and all, but at the end of the day, it's all about the music,'" says Morpurgo. "We looked long and hard for that thing, but eventually we just put away the sampler too and focused ourselves."

As Laguardia moves forward, trying to collectively decide which major label they'll wind up going with, Lyons and Morpurgo's past experience with record deals has made them extremely cautious. "When The Trip got signed, we were 18 years old and happy that a major label was interested in us," says Lyons. "Now that [Mike and I] are a little older and wiser, we're determined to do things differently, do them right."

At the same time, the band's other half are virgins to the professional-musician circuit. Prior to Laguardia's first gig at The Continental, Bernstein had never performed in front of an audience outside of coffee house open mics, and at only 22, Ostrander still gets dropped-jaw excited when the band plays to a really great crowd.

"I'm really riding the energy from these guys, trying not to be jaded or skeptical," says Morpurgo. He got to experience their wide-eyed amazement last week when Laguardia opened for Rusted Root at Allentown's DeSales University; the crowd was packed and enthused even though they had never heard the band before. "It was dead quiet in the van on the way home, and I asked what was wrong," says Morpurgo. "Lee and Josh were like ŒWe want every night to be like this.' I told them ŒDon't worry, they will eventually. That comes with time.'"