Real Dolls: The Bellmer boys are Anthony Malat, Daniel Sheerin and Peter Mavrogeorgis.
Peter Mavrogeorgis wasnt made for Long Island. Raised in Syosset, Mavrogeorgis’ early years were spent begging his mother for a Bee Gees 45 and taking forced piano lessons. A fateful mall trip led him to discover The Rolling Stones and The Beatles on cassette, and by age 9, he had formed his first band with a friend. Mavrogeorgis recently found the lyrics for a few of that band’s songs, which he now calls “disturbing.” “I can’t believe that 9year-olds came up with this,” he says. But for a guy who now helms Bellmer Dolls, a band that has no problem throwing itself into brooding, gritty, guitar- and bass-driven eeriness, those first songs were good precursors.
Mavrogeorgis received his first guitar at 11 and started performing Jethro Tull covers at Long Island bars around 13. He didn’t mesh well with the kids who surrounded him, and as a young teen, he had a moment of enlightenment. “I remember being 14 and reading Tom Robbins’ classic cult novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” he says. In the book, there is a line quoted from painter Paul Gauguin that resonated with the youngster: “The ugly may be beautiful, but the pretty, never.” Decades later, Mavrogeorgis recalled this idea when selecting a name for his current project, Bellmer Dolls.
Before founding the band in 2003, Mavrogeorgis held a three-year gig as the guitarist for Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, a band started in 1979. “I think I got the gig because no one else wanted it,” Mavrogeorgis recalls.
As he explains it, Falco, the rockabilly musician who melded with the New York no-wave scene in the 1980s, showed up in New York looking for a guitarist and found no takers. “I felt bad for the little guy,” Mavrogeorgis says. The gig took Mavrogeorgis across the United States, Canada and into Europe. It even gave him the chance to open for Ike Turner.
The idea of making a move to start a new band came to Mavrogeorgis while he was still in Panther Burns. “Tav stopped showing up for sound check,” he says. So instead of wasting the time, Mavrogeorgis and Panther Burns drummer Douglas Hodges started playing their own music, though, Mavrogeorgis explains, Bellmer Dolls did not come together until he met bassist Anthony Malat. Malat was living in Baltimore and playing with the group Love Life, and when Mavrogeorgis and Malat met at a shared gig, they had an instant musical connection. Malat eventually left Baltimore for New York, and the duo began what Mavrogeorgis calls a “miserable audition process” in search of a drummer.They ended up going with Daniel Sheerin because not only was he a solid percussionist, he also held his own when Malat and Mavrogeorgis took him out and tried to get him drunk. “Dan was the only one who passed the test,” Mavrogeorgis says.
The three became Bellmer Dolls, a name derived from German Surrealist Hans Bellmer’s “grotesque but somehow alluring,” life-sized mannequins. Mavrogeorgis says that to him, the dolls are like a 3-D interpretation of that line out of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that drew him in as a kid.The band spent most of its first year practicing in spaces that included a heat-deprived warehouse near Long Island City, where they kept themselves warm by heating up their shoes in an oven. The band’s self-induced rehearsal seclusion resulted in the development of a tight sound with dark and twisted roots of echoed-out guitars and thrumming bass lines coupled with Mavrogeorgis’s versatile voice whispering, screaming and all crowing through it all. The band released its first EP, Never Sates Nor Palls, in late 2004, followed by a second EP, The Big Cats Will Throw, in 2006. For the second EP, Mavrogeorgis brought in his good friend, producer Jim Sclavunos, who had worked with bands like Sonic Youth and The Cramps.The collaboration resulted in a driving rock romp through post-punk territory with a gothic twist. After the release, Bellmer Dolls went on a brief European tour, and when the guys returned, they hit the studio with Sclavunos again to work on their first LP.The album’s tracks show the band’s sound becoming sexier, more melodic, cleaned up and focused while retaining its dark and dirty edge.The album is finished, but it remains unreleased for two reasons.The first is that since the band has its own recording studio in Syosset, it has the luxury and burden of unlimited time for tinkering with the album.The other is some label trouble that Mavrogeorgis and Malat wouldn’t divulge—other than to say there was no lawyer present when they signed contracts.
The record release date isn’t set yet, but for now the band is excited about the challenge of playing the new material in front of audiences.
“We had to learn to play [this record] live,” Mavrogeorgis says, due to a stretch in the band’s instrumentation this time around.To help out, the band brought on their friend Gabriel Guerena. Is he an official Doll? That remains to be seen, but as Mavrogeorgis says, “He hasn’t quit yet.”
> Bellmer Dolls
Feb. 19, Vanishing Point, 240 Meserole St. (at Bushwick Pl.), Brooklyn, no phone; 9, $TBA
