Temptress - New York, NY
Sex, Drag & Rock and Roll
By Pat Ferris

The first introduction to Temptress was a couple of days after we launched our new version of HotBands. They were the first "problem" we had with our artists page. After checking their site out, I was wondering if I was on a porn site or an advertisement to a Saturday night showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show! The next introduction was seeing them as the top referring band for January...dwarfing the next top referring artist by over 300%. February was no different, and as I watched their traffic grow, I took an interest in a very bizzare and VERY funny artist calling him/herself Temptress.

Temptress, a cross-dressing guitarist, singer/songwriter leads a hard rock...almost punk band featuring dual lead guitarists Pete "Leather Vest" DiStefano and Leo "You Son of A...." Mellace, bassist Louie "In The Can" Spagnola, and drummer Joe "Mustachio" Pet as part of the Boston unit. If you're lucky you'll catch the NYC unit, featuring Eddie Torres on drums, Frank Malabe on Bass, Ed Evelyn and Vince Edwards on the dual lead guitars. To support the visual show Temptress fronts with two sexy go-go dancer/backing vocalist she refers to as The "Nasty Habits"; helping visualize the music with multiple costume changes and choreographed dance skits.

Contacting his manager Chuck, I found out Temptress has quickly created a VERY large groundswell of followers that enjoy the show, songs and GIRLS...LOTS of GIRLS that flock to this scene to check out the latest lingire fashions. With an extremely successful (although a little outside of mainstream) marketing scheme, Temptress has created quite a splash and has appeared on numerous magazines, television programs and even the Howard Stern show.

Catching up with Temptress was a bit of a challenge, and our scheduled interview was postponed because while the band was on tour in Canada last week, their gear was all stolen, so we didn't get together for this interview until late on February 28th (yeah...last nite). But, we did get the interview, and here is the story of Temptress!

<HotBands> First of all, sorry to hear about out your mishap in Toronto last week.

<HotBands> I've been ripped off twice, so I know what it feels like. It took me several months to get over the rage of thinking of someone else playing my axe.

<Temptress> Damn we were out of the truck for 10 minutes, we came back and the truck was still locked. I don’t know how they got in. The cops were useless of course.

<HotBands> How did Temptress start? Was the drag thing something that has been a long time thing, or something that was added to get the music noticed?

<Temptress> Back in 1991, A friend of mine and I used to produce English bands. We'd bring them in from UK, put them up in Boston, produce their demos and shop them to US labels. Neither of us had ever been in a band. We did love music, had some good business sense, and ran a music company called Four Ball Management. Anyway, we had a band called Broke and English we were working with, that were quite good. The bass player wrote great catchy tunes. After we had finished their demos we set up several showcases in Boston in and NYC to showcase the act to labels booking people, etc... About three weeks before these shows were scheduled, the band took off to the UK, Leaving us (Four Ball) hanging. One of the club owners threatened to toss us in the river, if we didn't come up with something (these guys from the club were all indicted on racketeering)

<HotBands> Mobsters huh?

<Temptress> Absolute mobsters! We knew a lot of the songs since we produced them, as well as a lot of hired guns, so we figured we could throw together a band for two shows, save our asses and our reputations.

<HotBands> So...threatened by death, you put on a dress and passed yourself off as a woman?

<Temptress> Actually, it was two Halloween shows, being last minute and all the costume store having rented just about everything, we borrowed our girlfriends stuff, wrote some parody lyrics to cover songs, did some standards, plus some of the stuff we produced. The response was overwhelming, the place went absolutely nuts, it was Halloween, so we chalked it up to the big party thing. The following Monday, we got a call at our office from the club, wanting us to play again. They even raised the guarantee, so I'm thinking; “Cool… more money, no dresses, no makeup”. The catch was... wear the dresses or no gig. I was scared for my life having to do it outside of Halloween! I had visions of beer bottles, ash trays, and chairs flying at the stage! Somehow we got the balls up to do it, and it was mid-November…LONG after wearing a costume was cool. We did the gig and the response was even bigger than on Halloween so we figured we must be onto something.

<HotBands> I see. So this has been an ongoing thing since the early 90's?

<Temptress> well it's changed a lot through the years, and there are a lot of funny stories behind all of it; The closet drag queens, The fag hags; Jealous girlfriends.
From a business stand, it was a great marketing tool. We were able to book into seemingly impossible venues, television shows, magazines, even The Howard Stern Show.

<HotBands> What is a fag-hag?
.
<Temptress> A fag hag is a chick that digs gay guys. Most people think because we cross dressed were gay.

<HotBands> So the cross-dressing thing was something born out of necessity (the need to keep your butt off the mob's black list), but grew into a marketing gimmick ...kind of like KISS or Alice Cooper?

<Temptress> The mob thing, is more like we were trying to build ourselves as legit, cool and honorable, so we needed to come thorough no matter what. We were going to end it there until we saw that it was opening doors. I’d say we are probably modeled more like Alice Cooper.

<HotBands> Have you ever had an experience where you were fearful? I'm sure you've seen the scene in "The Blues Brothers" where they end up in a red-neck bar by accident. I could imagine what might happen if you got booked at the wrong place.

<Temptress> Everybody had to learn Rawhide after that movie! Most of the fearful situations we have put ourselves into, ended up being some of our better shows, better reaction, etc. For example, we got booked about 5 years ago at Laconia Biker Weekend; it draws about 50K bikers to a small NH town. The guarantee was great, the promoter kept prodding me with "no balls" type statements, so I took it. We thought we were going to die! The rest of the band was less tense than me because I’m fronting the band. As well, that was right around the time the band changed from all drag, to just me up front in drag. There's a story behind those changes too...

<HotBands> Oh NO! A drag-queen at a biker rally!

<Temptress> Backstage, we’re getting ready to play, and I’m so nervous, I can’t hold my pick, I feel like I'm going to puke, my knees are shaking…the whole bit. When the promoter comes by, I told him “I' don't think I can do it”, so he tells me that we were what the whole festival has been looking forward to, and not going on would be a bigger problem. About then, the MC announces us, and the crowd starts chanting “Drag queens! Drag queens! We want drag queens!” I'm thinking “they’re going to justify this as a reason to kill”! We hit the stage, I'm so shaken that I can't get my pick to hit the strings, but I remembered to give them plenty of attitude and crunch in my voice...they loved it! I calmed down by the third song, and afterwards, we got a bunch of REAL encores, not the timed ones. We had a line of bikers coming backstage giving us gifts; booze, offers to “do” their girlfriends; etc.. They said we had bigger balls than all of them to do that in front of a group of bikers!

<HotBands> Cool..! So you didn't end up getting killed!

<Temptress> We ended up getting biker gigs all over the country from that one gig! Most of them aren't that well organized but a couple of flat beds in a field and 2-3 thousand bikers…they treat you well. I thinks its because they are sure of themselves, and don't consider what we do threatening to their respective manhood, just entertainment and laughs. It's what most people would think are nice people you have to worry about, like the jock wannabe. My act is very threatening to them, and we've had more close calls with that type, than bikers, gang-bangers, punks, etc.

<HotBands> I would figure that it's because the jock-wannabe's are probably questioning their own manhood and see the drag thing as something that makes them uncomfortable because it secretly excites them!

<Temptress> I think you got that right on. Either that, or they secretly wear their mother’s underwear and are afraid we nailed them.

<HotBands> The dancers...when and how did they become a part of the show? Do you think you get you a big following of babes at your show to check out the latest lingerie fashions?

<Temptress> The girls were part of the metamorphosis of Temptress, originally we started out with 5 guys in drag, know as the Worlds Only All-Male Girl Band, the problem was to get players that would put on a show, you'd sacrifice skills, I always believed that this is initially about the music and the show was an enhancement to the music. Besides, anytime you do a show, most people think you're going to suck, so don't give them any room to say that. Eventually, my management company said my band was holding the act back from succeeding because of inconsistent performances. Originally I was the front person for four shows, but I gave up the front for six years to play guitar but eventually thrown back into fronting the band.

<HotBands> who was fronting during the time you played guitar?

<Temptress> Scott Anderson was fronting the band for a long time. He had a great voice. He sounded like Ann Wilson and played lead, but he couldn't write and was very nervous all the time. Because of his voice, people would think “Are these guys for real?”…thinking we may be a real transvestite group. When they hear me sing, they got the gimmick figured out in about 2 minutes and realize it’s a show.

<HotBands> So when you took back fronting the band, did you incorporate girls as part of the gimmick? Also, do you have a couple girls with you, or do you have babes show up at the shows that do it for nothing?

<Temptress> We didn’t bring the girls on for about 20 shows or about six months after I took over…till I was starting to feel comfortable up front. I thought that it needed more visual stimulation. Plus most of those show that I was fronting alone, we had the (audience) girls up front near the stage and the guys in the back. We needed something to get the guys actively involved.

<HotBands> Ahh.... strippers...er...exotic dancers!

<Temptress> We have a lot of Nasty Habit girls, tucked away in all corners of the planet. We started with strippers, but they are too high maintenance, so we tend to go to the Hooters type girls. Some of the girls actually dance and sing their asses off, making my job a lot easier, most people that come to a Temptress show figure out real quick that its my job to recruit the girls, and that I'm a lesbian at heart... I just have an oversized clitoris! My Canadian girls are pretty much the touring girls, but if we have single “hit and run” dates we go to local girls in a market from the fan base, and the fan bases of bands we tour with.

<HotBands> Chuck (Temptress manager) said that Universal Music has an interest in your "Grinch Song ",which I think is hilarious.

<Temptress> I ran into that lead myself, at the NATPE convention. We're pitching a sit-com called She's All That, for television. I originally submitted our version of the Grinch song to Interscope Records, who did the movie sound track. We got ignored….they said they had a version that Jim Carrey did they wanted to use instead.

<HotBands> What is NATPE??

<Temptress> NATPE is the National Association of Television Producer and Executives. The whole TV and movie industry goes there.

<HotBands> This is in Hollywood?

<Temptress> So I went to the Grinch Party in Las Vegas wearing this over the top thing, huge hair, boots etc. They were serving Green Eggs and Ham, plus Green Martinis. They introduced the staff of the Grinch, and I made note of the music supervisor. After they finished their presentation I went up to the music supervisor and told him " I kicked your ass dude" he looked back and said "You must be in that Tempest band" I corrected the name and struck up a conversation with him. He told me that we had about 20 times the BDS spins as they did. We released the single on our own, with the help of Evolution Promotion and our website, while they had the resources of UNI and the biggest movie of the season. When he found out who we were speaking with at Interscope, he rolled his eyes!

<HotBands> What is BDS?

<Temptress> BDS is Broadcast Data Systems… the only scientific way to prove how many spins you get on broadcast radio. They scan your song and scan the airwaves looking for a match on the computers, it's how Billboard and the rest of them figure all this out.

<HotBands> So what happened after he rolled his eyes?

<Temptress> He's said something about the guy we sent it to being a moron on or something like that, so I told him it still wasn't too late and asked him how we could figure out a way to make more money. He liked that, so he mentioned to me that they would be re-releasing the film next season with a directors cut, plus the DVD. He wants us to license our version to them for the DVD, I asked if they'd be willing to make a video to push to MTV, MuchMusic, etc. He though it was a good possibility, and asked if I could get my attorney to contact him about the deal. So now it's up to my crack team of lawyers (1) to pull the deal home. The deal will be with the movie company not the label, as they don't talk much with each other.

<HotBands> Another thing your manager mentioned, was that you were in talks with the management for the adult video star, Temptress about producing music for her next video? Can you fill us in on that?

<Temptress> I don't think we'll produce any off that. I heard about a co-marketing thing where we would license music, maybe appear as a background band in a bar scene, and we would use Temptress (the porno star) in our videos, posters or CD covers, sort of the Janine-Blink182 thing. I think we should do a video where there's a bar room and we're playing, my Nasty Habit girls end up being the porno stars (one could be played by the other Temptress), that would also give us a boost, where we may have porno stuff going on at our shows

<HotBands> Finally, I wanted to ask one last thing of you. In all of our interviews, I ask a similar question to the artist to get their perspective on how to succeed in the music industry. This is because a lot of our readers are in up and coming bands, and different advice works for different people. I've always been of the mindset that a successful band is 90% marketing and 10% music, but a GREAT band.... one that will stand the test of time, is both. Tell the readers your advice on how you how to succeed.

<Temptress> I see the Music Business as persistence over resistance, but most of all it still is about music and more particularly songs, write great accessible songs, perform them well. Approach your music career as your job...get up early and prospect… make the phone calls you know , your manager or lawyer won't make. Stay pro-active in your career… there are no short cuts. Early in my career a lot of players that signed on did so thinking that our marketing would be a shortcut to the top, but it never was until we improved our playing, writing, and stage presence etc. That's when it started coming together.

<HotBands> I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview at the last minute.

<Temptress> Thanks for having us!

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