Get ready for this holy grail title! With full legal license, this will be an official RidingEasy release in collaboration with Permanent Records Los Angeles.
We are proud to announce our next re-issue, Randy & The Goats “On The Lam.” Stay tuned for the release by signing up for our newsletter!
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A Hidden Gem Unleashed: Randy & the Goats’ “On the Lam” (1981)
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Randy & The Goats are still ‘On The Lam’ in 2023 as far as most collectors go, 42 years since this street savvy blast of ’70s New York rock and roll was unleashed. It’s way past time you caught up with them. Don’t expect them to hang with you for very long, escape is their modus operandi and their central theme. Wherever they are you can be sure they have one urgent eye on the exit sign. That restlessness is vividly real and supercharges the music. This is an under the radar dose of NYC action in peak form. The late Mark F. Chmielinski aka Randy Would is the creative force and protagonist laying down these. uncompromising glimpses into life on the edge. It’s his vision. He wrote the songs, produced and arranged, sings and plays nearly all of the instruments, backed by the deadly duo Doug Harris on bass and Rob Cenci on drums. He is quite ambitious, to the point of mysteriously crediting himself as two members of the band on the LP sleeve! Although Mark/Randy came from Albany upstate the vibe here is quintessential mid ’70s lower Manhattan back when law and order were alien concepts in daily life. The city was broken, dangerous and cheap to live in. Think post-Velvets Lou Reed for reference. Tough, confident, ironic, wise to the ways of the concrete jungle. There is a proto-punk / pre-grunge DIY edge here but at it’s core we have a singer- songwriter character who evokes Reed, Dylan, Johnny Thunders even… smart dude who knows how to slum it. He may echo those legends but he is his own man shaped by similar circumstance.
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As a whole this intense slice of life leans towards outsider hard rock on savage tracks like “Screwed” and “Nausea #2” with guitar action ripping like rats on garbage. “It Was The End Of The Movie Anyway” veers into a psychedelic zone that is the polar opposite of flower power, underlining their central theme of escape with a plea to change the channel amidst dark swirling guitars and voices. “Broken” is a chilling downer ballad. BUT… there is the proverbial flower blooming through a crack in the sidewalk and it is titled “N.Y. Survivor”. You really need this song in your life, especially amidst the darkness and decay the rest of the album captures. It emerges like a ray of light, streetwise with elegant motion and dreamy harpsichord flourishes depicting a radiant, confident NY survivor lady gliding freely through the debris. Life affirming and sexy gracefulness that can only be acquired through experience. It comes across like a reward for enduring all of the chaos and angst the rest of the album drives into your brain. A stunner, a head turner, and maybe you’ll get lucky the next time she rolls by! I’ve been recommending this record ever since the late ’80s. I never tire of it. It is real life on vinyl. If you are into vintage ’70s New York Rock you need this one.
Words by – Paul Major –
I’ve hosted the Local 518 music show in the Albany NY area on WEXT Radio 97.7/106.1 FM since 2014. Each show includes a feature called the Attic Classic, where I play a song and give a bit of background on a band/artist from the area a decade or more ago. Around 2017 or so, I acquired the 16-track 2009 Cold. Hard. / Randy & The Goats “On The Lam” CD, and featured “Screwed” on the show in early 2018.
As far as I know, and according to the CD liner notes & info, “Screwed” was one of a pair of songs (the other being “New York Survivor”) recorded in 1973, the seeds of a project that became known as Randy & The Goats. The recordings came about when the band Mark Chmielinski (aka Randy Would) and bassist Doug Harris were in was about to break up (I believe the band was George Arliss and the All Night Shakers). Before that happened, they headed to a studio in Connecticut to record those two songs Mark had wrote, with Curt DiGiulio on rhythm guitar & Larry Copcar (Scarano) on drums. After, they went their separate ways, ending up back together in the Capital District around 1979.
Mark had a notebook full of songs, and as main singer, guitarist and song writer, he had assumed the alias of Randy Would. With Doug on bass and Rob Cenci on drums forming the core of The Goats, they headed into Cathedral Sound in Rennselaer NY. The two previous songs from 1973, along with 8 of 11 others recorded were released as “On The Lam” in 1980 on the Broken Records label.
Two songs recorded in 1984, an outtake from the 1979/1980 sessions, along with three new songs recorded in 2009 made up the 2009 “On The Lam” CD release.
Mark/Randy and Doug were working & recording in the Albany area under the name COLD. HARD. until Mark’s passing in 2015.