Lorna Donley and Dave Thomas, members of the Chicago-based band the Veil, are reminiscing about the early `80s and local outfits they played with in those days. Besides individual stints with other bands, both were involved with DA!, a band that Donley and Thomas say got positive mentions overseas and in some of this country`s national music magazines.
”We released a couple records back then that, in the English press, were constantly compared to groups like Siouxsie & the Banshees, Bauhaus, Gang of Four,” recalls Thomas.
”Locally, though, I think we were a little bit misunderstood,” says Donley, ”because we came out at about the time the Effigies and Naked Raygun and Strike Under came out. And all those bands were really hard-core.”
”We kind of got lumped into their bag, but we were quite a bit different from them,” adds Thomas. ”I liked to think we were a psychedelic existential band, whatever that was.”
When DA! eventually folded, Donley and Thomas hooked up with A Mason in Ur, a performance ensemble that wore masks and employed found objects as instruments and played what Thomas likens to ”Tibetan ritual music.” The unit, say Donley and Thomas, played at Link`s Hall and the Randolph Street Gallery-and at a club where the act apparently didn`t go over too well with the owners.
”I don`t know if it was the bone-burning or the fact we were all covered in blood or the rats on the turntable,” reminisces Donley. ”I`m not sure exactly what offended them.”
Bone-burning?
”Yeah, when you douse `em in gasoline, they really go,” volunteers Thomas, ”and they were miked and making one hell of a crackling noise.”
As you might begin to gather, Donley and Thomas were following a musical path in those days that was, well, fairly free-form.
”We were doing whatever we wanted,” recalls Donley, ”and in the early
`80s there was still a real strong punk mentality-sharing spaces, sharing players among bands, not many fights over how much money you`re making or how much I`m making. A lot of people then thought it was important to have this idea of: `I don`t want to be a star. I don`t want to make a lot of money. My gratification is just playing music.` ”
”One of the things I learned from that period was the punk, do-it-yourself ethic,” adds Thomas. ”Don`t trust anybody-do it yourself.”
These days, though, it would appear Donley and Thomas have reached an accommodation with the question of trust, not to mention the marketing aspects of pop music. Their band, the Veil, has been making an effort to establish its name locally-through concerts and the release of a cassette tape-as a preliminary step to entering a studio to record an LP or EP.
”I think we`ve come to a balance now,” says Thomas. ”You have to trust people, and you have to work with them. But at the same time, nobody can promote your band as well as you can yourself. That`s perhaps why we`re doing things the way we are now, where you kind of have to push yourself at people, whether you`re doing something mainstream and accessible or something random and off-the-wall.”
”After you play for so long and get really good at it, and you know you have a lot to offer, why not say, `I want to be successful`?” says Donley.
”Whatever successful means to you: Being a huge star or just making a little bit of money.”
With those thoughts in mind, bassist-vocalist Donley and guitarist-vocalist Thomas started playing together again about 1/2 years ago, after a couple years away from the music scene. About two years ago, they began to put together the Veil, eventually recruiting Downstate drummer Mike Ebersohl and guitarist Joe Haynes, who had played with Thomas in a late-`70s St. Louis power-pop band called Cool Jerk.
If the pair`s attitudes toward the music business have changed since the early `80s, so has their music itself. The Veil`s playing today is along guitar-pop lines, with the band capable of some tough, muscular outings-which no doubt contributed to their booking as the opening act this Saturday at Cabaret Metro for the Godfathers, a rock-solid, twin-guitar-attack British band.
”In the early `80s, there was this barrage of English music, which Dave and I loved, and then the American New Wave stuff,” says Donley. ”But before that, we both had been heavily into `60s pop, `70s glitter, hard-rock stuff. At this point, maybe we`re reaching back a little bit to that.”
”I think it`s been a natural progression,” says Thomas. ”Some of it is just that we`ve become more at home with what we really want to do. I think we`ve just changed and grown.”
Besides playing a healthy string of live dates and releasing a four-song cassette (available at some local record stores), the Veil has tried to establish a band identity with a logo that at first glance looks like an Egyptian hieroglyphic-or possibly a hobo marking executed by a particularly eccentric gentleman of the road. Look closely at the logo, however-and suspend your preconceptions of what the letters in the alphabet look like-and you`ll see it spells out ”the veil.”
The band members plan to enter a studio in November to record a backlog of songs written by Donley, Thomas and Haynes. If all goes well, they would like to release a record, self-financed or on an established indie label, next year.
”The goal for me is to become self-sufficient at this,” says Thomas.
”Which doesn`t necessarily mean selling tons of records. It`s selling enough records to make more records.”
