Jesse Malin (born January 26, 1968, Flushing, Queens, New York, United States) is an American rock musician. He is currently a solo recording artist. (More from Wikipedia)
Holly Ramos first got into the music scene when she met Jesse Malin in high school. They started a “party” (rave?) together in 1991 called GREENDOOR (where Ramos was the DJ) that persisted sporadically through the end of the 1990’s. “Green Door” is the name of a fun 1956 hit song by Jim Lowe about a mysterious nightclub where the singer could never gain admittance; I have a copy of the song on one of the Born Bad CD’s. However, the name was probably taken from one of the first high-profile pornographic movies (from 1972), Behind the Green Door – whose name was taken from the song – that starred then-unknown Marilyn Chambers (the famous “Ivory Snow” porn queen).
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Holly Ramos asked Jesse Malin to produce Fur’s music, and they worked together on their first single, “Sex Drive”. This single in its original form appears as the closing track on the band’s CD, Fur.
Jesse Malin was previously a member of Heart Attack, one of the early New York hardcore punk bands and reportedly one of the youngest at that time (some of the bandmembers were between 12 and 16 years old). The band was active from 1980 to 1984. Malin later became the lead singer for D Generation, a popular glam-punk band that was formed at about the same time as Fur.
Together with Ryan Adams, Jesse Malin co-founded a hardcore punk rock band in 2002 called The Finger. Ryan Adams (not to be confused with Bryan Adams) has been active in music since about 2000. I remember well a music video for his song “New York, New York” that was filmed just 4 days before September 11, 2001, showing the World Trade Center in the background.
Interestingly, The Finger took its name from a notorious hardcore punk rock band from Raleigh, North Carolina called Finger; Ryan Adams was a big fan of this group. Although I haven’t confirmed it, Finger might have grown out of an earlier Raleigh hardcore band called Colcor. Several songs by this band were included on a 1982 cassette-only compilation album called No Core that also features Corrosion of Conformity. I was delighted to find an LP of the music from this cassette (probably a bootleg) that was among the first albums that surfaced from the Katrina mud. Hardcore and thrash punk is not really my thing, but I do love that album.
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As mentioned, “Sex Drive” is the single that was produced by Jesse Malin. The rest of the CD was produced by Phil Caivano, who has been a member of the stoner rock band Monster Magnet since about 2000.
Holly Ramos moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2003 and is still active in music. Ramos co-wrote “Cigarettes and Violets” that appears on Jesse Malin’s 2002 solo CD, The Fine Art of Self Destruction; she also contributed to several tracks that appear on others’ albums in the mid-2000’s.
(June 2013/2)
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