Saraya

Pat Prince finds the love of another 'great' hard rock band by the name of Saraya. Don't even try to look this up in the dictionary kiddies, because it ain't there. What does it mean? Hey, here's a hint: It's the last name of the band's lead vocalist, ok? Read on then.

My first impression of Sandi Saraya, as I walked aboard the band's immaculate tour bus, was a damn good one. There she was in the back of the bus intensely tuning out to the first Pretenders album, singing along line for line while playing frolicsome air guitar. Being the long, die-hard Chrissie Hynde fan that I am, Sandi couldn't of made a better impression (unless was, of course, playing other rock n' roll faves of mine like U2, REM, PIL, or on the heavier side, Queensryche, UFO, or the Cult). Sandi, along with her bandmates were in a good mood too. They had just come off a semi-major tour with Bad English, their self-titled debut album has caused some stir on radio airwaves, as well as quite a few home stereos, and were just about to headline on their own East Coast turf by playing the (infamous) Cat Club in New York on the night of our little talk.

"We love to tour," comments Sandi on the lengths of touring. "We love doing eight months or longer on tours. We're like that. We don't wanna go home. We just wanna go out there and play and play in front of people every single night."

"And we've gotten a real good response so far, everywhere we've been," adds guitarist Tony Rey. "The best response we've gotten on tour though is probably when we went to England in August of last year."

"In England the audiences were rowdier," brightly smirks Sandi, explaining the characteristics of an English audience. "Before we went over there everyone said that the crowd over there was gonna be stiff and not too receptive, especially with an American band like us, and we found the exact opposite as far as we were recieved. You know, the first song was a little bit like, 'uh-oh', but after that we really won them over. And then night after night we just kept kicking ass. They really like us over there. Even the band we opened for called FM were like'You guys don't understand how great you're doing. Opening bands never get this kind of reception.' They were amazed how well we went over."

"I mean we walk down the streets here and no one really knows who we are yet," continues Sandi. "And over there we were walking through the square and people were asking us for our autographs." "Here in the city no gives anybody recognition," adds in Tony. "Jack Nicholson could walk down the street and on one would bother him."

From here (yes , the tour bus is parked in front of the infamous Cat Club) will you go on headlining? "Well, what we're planning on doing is taking a little time off," muses Sandi. "So we can write stuff for the next album. (Which should hopefully be out by the end of this year sometime). Because it's difficult for us to get together writing on the road. I find it better to write when I'm at home, personally."

Alot of bands like to write on the road better because there are more things that inspire them. "In theory it's good," comments Tony. "But we just can't find the time. When you're a young band you have a lot of promo work and stuff to do. You need a lot of time to go to a lot of radio stations. We also talked about setting a studio back here on the bus, but forget it right now. We're lucky if we could even discuss the song ideas on the road."

"Plus we got a Nintendo machine, which totally blew any spare time out of the water," jokes Sandi. "Yeah, that was it. Any songs that may have been written will now become jingles for Nintendo.," chortles Tony. "For Super Mario Brothers III it will have our music as the background."

"This is gonna be a fun album to write too" claims Tony. "With last album it was so weird. The band got together so far into it and we had to get into the studio, so we were throwing songs together back and forth. We were proud of the album when we recorded it and we still are now, but with this next album we'll be able to start from the ground level and write, and if we don't like something toss it and start over again. And I think the new album that we do will be closer to songs like,"One Night Away", "Runnin' Out of Time" and "Get U Ready"off of the first album. More riff orientated stuff, because on the first album, Sandi and Greg (Munier-keyboards) wrote most of the material just on keyboards and vocals and that was it. I only co-wrote three songs with them, the only songs written with a guitar player, so the new stuff will be more riff oriented with me helping with songwriting. And as far as lyrics, Sandi's the best lyricist for the band. She has to sing the stuff, it's better when she's feeling something that she wrote."

"What we're also gonna do for this next album is a cover version of I Give You Money by Peter Frampton," continues Tony, "it'll probably be a live version. One live cut on the album."

Some bands feel iffy about cover tunes, they rather get recognition on the merit of their own originals. "Not this song though, " answers Sandi.. "It's very different from the original. A lot of people say to me after we play it at a show that they didn't recognize the song but they knew all the words. It's funny, they'll sing along with it but they can't tell what it is." "We didn't do this song as a cover to just get immediate airplay," says Tony. "It's not like that. We're just doing it cause we like it. Back in the '70's, bands used to do that alot. Put one live 'pet' cut on a studio album. And we think songs will have more energy if we capture ti live."

The most recent song "Timeless Love" and the release of it as a new video (which is on the soundtrack of Wes Craven's last horror movie"Shocker" and will probably appear as the next album) (which is a better preference for a person like myself who wants nothing to do with horror movies like that). The video will probably set on some mountain cliff on top to the Grand Canyon. A different kind of scene capturing setting for a music vide. I was curious on how the band got the idea for something like that. "We wanted to do something subtle. We wanted to come up with something different. And you have to be careful nowadays with videos on MTV. They're getting sick of the tongue n' cheek crotch shots, and videos with the band going crazy. They're getting bored with all that, so we want to do something more than just that stuff. And we also appeal to a wider audience that just Heavy Metal and the Headbangers Ball, I don't consider us metal at all. but they consider Bon Jovi metal nowadays, who's not metal at all."

"And it's all a building block kind of thing," closes Tony. "I would be worried if our first album busted through the roof, and then you'd have to worry a lot on how to duplicate that on the next album. Even for Bon Jovi it took time to get where he is. It wasn't over night."

Well if someone as big as Bon Jovi can get success on a gradual process, I know Saraya can as well. Listen to their debut album. The band's talent is just as dominant as all their melody and catchy songwriting. Great potential. Just the right amount of what it needs to make it. Something that will grab you and not let go. I can only see Saraya becoming more and more successful in the '90's, I'll keep fingers crossed.

(Oh, by the way, "thanks Sandi" for the tape recorder batteries.)