One of the dirtiest--and most open--secrets of the American music business is its prejudice against New York rockers. What's the biz got against Gothamites, you ask? Plenty, if you look at how many great artists come from that city--the Rooks, Richard X. Heyman, Frank Bango, Mannix, to name a few--and how few of them get national record deals. Clearly, this is not just a case of labels shying away from pop bands, either--a look at the major labels' rosters will reveal that only the tiniest minority of signees come from America's most populous city. As for the one New York City band to make it in the past year, the Strokes, it wasn't until they broke through in England that their Stateside label paid them any attention.

As I write this, the International Pop Overthrow festival is finishing its first-ever New York City run, and hundreds of pop fans from around the globe are discovering what New Yorkers already know: Regardless of whether the proverbial "buzz" is here, the good music never left. Moreover, even when the IPO crowds go away and it's back to scrambling to find 30 New Yorkers to see a power pop band, I know that local power pop artists will continue to play wherever and whenever they can. Because they love the music, and they can't imagine playing anything else. Isn't that what you want out of a great rock and roll band?

Early this year, I interviewed David Fagin and Evan Silverman of the New York City band whose radio-friendly, borderline-"alternative" sound makes them the most likely aspirant to break out of the local pop scene: the Rosenbergs. The interview was originally for the city's longstanding Jewish weekly, The Forward. Immediately after it took place, I lost my job. While I don't believe the two events are connected, the loss did cause me to put my freelance writing on a back burner. As a result, the unfinished article has languished in my computer for several months, until now. But, while it's too late for The Forward, it's not too late for Fufkin, especially while you can still pick up the Rosenbergs' first full-length album, Mission: You (on Robert Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile label, available from record stores or via www.therosenbergs.com).

Note: Because these quotes were acquired for the Forward, they're long on history and short on musical background. Soundwise, I'd put the Rosenbergs somewhere between Guided By Voices, the chunkier side of the Apples in Stereo, and early XTC, but less abstruse than all three. With the exception of a few golden moments like "Soaked in Polyester," they rarely match the melodic or lyrical beauty of their idols, but what they have is solid and eminently listenable. Certainly, if you heard a song of theirs coming out of the radio, you'd miss a train while waiting to find out who was the artist. And which of us hasn't done that at some point of our lives?

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Impressions with David Fagin and Evan Silverman of the Rosenbergs, early 2000:

On what it's like to have a Dickensian last name:

David: You should have been there in sixth grade when it was "Fag-in". The substitute teachers would mispronounce it and put me through hell. It was definitely what made me go into the direction of being an artist, or being an outsider instead of an insider, because I was always made fun of for my last name.

On the origin of their name:

David: I was at my friend's house and her grandparents were over. We didn't have a name, we were just coming together.

Evan: David and I were in a previous band and we got rid of everybody and started over.

David: Her grandparents were 80 years old, and he was talking about going skiing and playing racquetball that weekend. And I thought, 'Wow, this guy is full of energy. It would be really cool to be that cool when you're that old. And their last name was Rosenberg. So we named it after their grandparents.

On their early years:

David: We were doing the label dance for a long time. We were doing what every other band does; you just sit in New York and you wait for it to come to you. You showcase, and you showcase, and you showcase, and you wonder why you always get passed up. Finally, the straw that broke the camel's back was this golf-pro-turned-A&R-guy. He took us out to dinner, we were going to make a record, we were toasting to it, the whole nine yards. The whole time, it didn't feel right to me, for some reason, but we were just going with it. And he said, "You know what I need from you guys? If you guys could just sell 50,000 records on your own and get into the top modern rock radio stations around the country, we'd really have something here."

We just looked at each other and said, "Excuse us, but, if we could do that, what the heck would we need you for?" We didn't say "heck"... We wanted to go back to the reason why we were playing music, and that was because we loved to play it, and we didn't want to line up more label reps to come to shows, send out more demos, worrying about all the short cuts, and stuff like that. So we just started sending out CDs to newspapers and magazines like mad, just calling up clubs and going, "Screw this, we'll book it ourselves." We even came up with a fictitious booking agency guy--the David Becker Agency--from my grandmother's maiden name. I would say I was Scott Schneider from DBA, and people would give us shows. We would get our phone calls returned. It was amazing. And so we just started booking our own little tours and doing it ourselves.

On their great contribution to the novelty song genre, "Puff Daddy Isn't Kosher":

David: I wrote that in my house in Mahwah, (N.J.,) after seeing Puff Daddy on TV, rapping while Jimmy Page played [Led Zeppelin's] "Kashmir," and I thought that was probably the lowest point ever hit in the history of recorded music. I sat there and said, 'This is tragic, this is terrible, this is awful.' And so I came up with the line, "Puff Daddy isn't kosher."

On getting signed by Robert Fripp:

David: If you had said we were going to be in business with Robert Fripp, that he would be the catalyst for our musical career, we would have said, "You're crazy!"...Because he's so not "pop musician". He's progressive rock, and phenomenal at that. When we brought him to the studio, we thought, "He's going to listen to our three-chord songs? This guy plays like he's got eight hands!" He was in the audience when we were on the New Music Expo panel and he and his partner came up to us and said, "We don't need to hear anything. From what you guys said, you're the right band for us." Of course, eventually, they did have to hear us, but, when he said, "We want to give you major distribution, marketing, and tour support, and you can still own your music," we were, like, "OK, what's the catch?" There is no catch, really.

On musical disagreements and the eternal search for melody:

David: Some of the biggest fights we have in the band are when we come into a town in the middle of Oklahoma where the radio plays nothing but Eighties music and I refuse to change the station. I could listen to it for 12 hours, until we lose it. Part of the reason is not only that not only did I grow up on all that stuff--Duran Duran, Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio," stuff like that--but I think that music on the radio is so bad right now, that, whenever I hear anything resembling a melody, I'll run to it. Even "Karma Chameleon"! I used to never listen to Culture Club, and now I'm like, "Ah, melody! 'Karmakarmakarmachameleon'!" Cause, it's like, what am I going to listen to, matchbox twenty?

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