By Matthew Kantor

Martin Rev and Alan Vega remain ceaseless in their pursuit of their visions of art and music. Beginning in 1971, the keyboardist and singer connected as part of the Project of Living Artists in Soho and became the electro-punk duo Suicide. Nearly 40 years later, the group is ingrained as legends of a New York aesthetic that’s hardly in evidence nowadays. But the duo still pushes boundaries: Vega and Rev are two of the city’s hardest working dreamers in the face of gentrification and uniformity.

“It’s sad. That ’70s era that I loved so much; where is it? It disappeared off the face of the earth,” says the Brooklyn-reared Vega. “Every day it keeps changing and getting uglier. The architecture is completely different, they’ve revamped New York. They’re building everywhere. Who has the money for this shit?"

Martin Rev, who was born in the Bronx, agrees. “With the cost of living, the life that artists need for many years, they’re not gonna have it. What made New York great is that it was made from the immigrants that came here who built it up out of so little, who brought so many ideas and dreams,” says Rev. “They created the city economically and then artistically. But everything goes in cycles. You still have some of it. But the arts change and transplant and go to other places, they have to anyway.”

For decades, Suicide’s relevance has popped up amid many a wheel. In recent times, groups from Wolf Eyes to Glass Candy share Vega and Rev as a powerful antecedent. With 4,000 dead in Iraq and the noxious Bush-era climate in America, the message of Suicide’s two most iconic songs, “Ghost Rider” and “Frankie Teardrop,” also resonates like something from the front page.

“I flash on that line [from “Ghost Rider”] all the time, “‘America is killin’ its youth,’” says Vega. “I think, wow, it’s the same thing today. Frankie Teardrop. There’s gonna be more of these things, suicides, the way the country’s going economically and with these soldiers, these poor kids coming home. It’s the new Frankie Teardrops of the time.”

Suicide never needed approval, but with their current live show, the band is often adored by a cheering audience rather than suffering projectiles and abuse like the early days.

“There were signs of it changing,” explains Vega. “In Edinburgh in 1978, we were playing this ballroom, about 2,000 people in darkness. About the third or fourth song, I start to see the audience move and I say, ‘Marty be careful. Incoming.’ Then this disco ball went on and I look out and I see that people are dancing, man. I say to Marty, ‘My job’s over, they’re dancing. What am I gonna do? I’m an entertainer.’”

“We still get reactions,” says Rev. “In Boston a couple years ago, we were told about some musicians in the audience who were almost physically sick and had to leave. The intensity is there. We do what we want instead of just doing the same thing, and that keeps it interesting.”

“It’s still seen as something unexpected,” he continues. “The only way you mellow artistically is if you stop looking for the next place.”

“I had a breakthrough with my last album,” says Vega, in agreement. “That and my drawings and photography keep getting better. I’m a lifer, man—it’s like breathing.”

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