Mink de Ville - Early Days in San Francisco

Early Days in San Francisco

Mink DeVille was formed in 1974 when singer Willy DeVille (then called Billy Borsay) met drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen, Jr. and bassist Rubén Sigüenza in San Francisco. Said DeVille, “I met Manfred at a party; he'd been playing with John Lee Hooker and a lot of blues people around San Francisco…. I met Rubén at a basement jam in San Francisco, and he liked everything I liked from The Drifters to, uh, Fritz Lang." Willy DeVille occasionally sat in with the band Lazy Ace, which included Allen Jr. on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen Jr., Colbert, Rubén Sigüenza, and guitarist Robert McKenzie (a.k.a. Fast Floyd, later of Fast Floyd and the Famous Firebirds) formed a band called Billy de Sade and the Marquis. "We were playing the leather bars down on Folsom Street," Willy DeVille recalled. "We were Billy de Sade and the Marquis then. We played the Barracks. After a while they would take their clothes off. This one guy—Jesus Satin he called himself—he'd dance on the pool table. It was nuts! Crazy!"

Read more about this topic:  Mink De Ville

Famous quotes containing the words san francisco, early, days, san and/or francisco:

    San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?
    Edmund White (b. 1940)

    Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.
    Andre Maurois (1885–1967)

    He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    the San Marco Library,
    Whence turbulent Italy should draw
    Delight in Art whose end is peace,
    In logic and in natural law
    By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Mr. Wiggam, I want you to change the policy of The Clarion. I want you to write a story I should have written myself long ago. I want you to tell the people of San Francisco that no city can exist without law and order. Write a story about that flag, write about what verifies and brings a promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There are some people in this town who don’t seem to know that. Let The Clarion tell them.
    Ben Hecht (1893–1964)