About The Toys / New Toys

BORN: June 25, 1979 : Buffalo, NY
DISBANDED: June 1984 : New York, NY

After the demise of Aunt Helen Alan & Kevin K (Rocky Starr & Kevin Rat, respectively) were in search of a new project, something more outrageous than their previous band...enter Doug Tyler. Doug (aka Mick) had played with the two K brothers back in 1977 with the short lived punk group Grim Reaper. Mick was in his own band (Space Junk) but wanted to get back with Kevin & Alan, so in the Summer of 1979, the most outrageous and influential punk band out of Buffalo, New York was formed. Bringing the bass-master of mayhem (Joel Slazyk who played a fretless bass) with him, they set out to conquer Lake Erie!!

Their first gig was at the famous McVan's Capricorn Club, known in it's hay day as a speakeasy and later a jazz club, it was now one of the premiere venues for punk bands. With only a few gigs under their panties, the word quickly spread about their outlandish theatrics and dynamic stage presence. This was not your usual hardcore, angry punkers ala Sex Pistols -- not at all. This quartet [Rocky Starr (gtr./voc.), Kevin Rat (drums/voc.), Mick Tyler (gtr./voc.) and Meat Cleaver (bass/voc.)] were more like a cross between Alice Cooper, the Dead Boys and The Tubes. On any given night you could expect to see toy dolls being hacked apart during the Alice Cooper song Dead Babies, manikins being blown up, objects lit on fire, or Meat Cleaver (his name originating from the fact he used to dress up in a butcher's outfit) playing in his underwear. And you could always count on the outlandish performance of Mick Tyler doing his "Elvis Fuck-up" impression, in which he paid homage to "the king" by reworking the lyrics to All Shook Up to All Fucked Up...rolling around on the stage floor shaking and enacting a drug induced frenzy (how Elvis probably did it on the bathroom floor) reminding everyone that "the king" died on the toilet taking a crap. Then there were those truly memorable once-in-a-lifetime performances when the band would out do themselves. Before there was Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers there was Meat Cleaver. He was the true originator of naked bass playing. Though rare as it was, watching Meat try to run back and forth across stage with his pants and underwear around his ankles, weaving around Mick as Mick ran back and forth across the stage -- the audience waiting and hoping for a collision -- was a thing of pure poetry. Then there was the Halloween Night performance when Rocky and Mick dressed up as girls and Rocky disemboweled a bunch of pumpkins in honor of Halloween; leaving the stage a pulpy orange mess and the crowd screaming for more. Those were the performances you waited for, the reason you kept going back and the reason The Toys quickly made a name for themselves. But the antics of the band didn't stop on stage. The ultimate off-stage antic was to moon a bus full of cadets and nuns on the New Jersey Turnpike on their way to New York City, which subsequently got them taken into custody by the New Jersey State Police...but that's another story!

Gig after gig followed along with the momentum, packing clubs in Buffalo, Toronto, Albany, Fredonia and Rochester. It wasn't long after they opened up for Pat Benatar at Stage One that local concert promoter Eddie Tice approached them about being their manager. During 1980/early '81 The Toys opened up for such acts as Split Enz, The Romantics, The Tourists (later known as The Eurythmics), Squeeze and Bauhaus. But by Spring of 1981 the boys were no longer interested in being big fish in a little pond, so they parted from their manager on friendly terms, and set out on the challenge of gaining a following in Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and New York City.

By late '81/early '82 the punk scene was nearly dead, and many of the era's bands along with it. With their following waning they needed to affect a change or they too would be just another forgotten band from the "punk era" -- so the band reinvented itself. The out-of-control antics and sounds of Rocky, Kevin, Meat and Mick matured and adapted to the oncoming "power-pop" era. Having changed their name, now New Toys, and their sound, they decided to move to the Big Apple. Joel passed on the relocation (his last gig being July 30, 1982) and in stepped Peter Cain of Modern Men (former band mate of Doug's from the "early" days). By December the band relocated to the New York City Borough Of Staten Island, eventually becoming friends with artists like Dirty Looks, Johnny Thunders, Cheetah Chrome and Iggy Pop, and were playing regularly at clubs like CBGBs, Gildersleeve's, the Peppermint Lounge and Zappa's. With the sudden death of Dirty Looks' manager, who was going to help the band by booking them as the opening act for Dirty Looks, they found themselves struggling to gain a larger audience and find steady gigs. In the fall of 1983 Doug Tyler left the band and returned to Buffalo to join up with Joel to form the band The Layers. Kevin, Alan & Pete continued on as a three piece until early 1984. In July of that year the three would rename the band the Lone Cowboys and perform new material.

Where Are They Now

Rocky Starr (Alan K) died on November 10, 1996. After conquering a long addiction to narcotics he returned to New York City only to die in his sleep that same evening. You can read more about Alan on his Memorial Site. Mick Tyler (Doug Tyler) lives outside of Buffalo and still writes songs and performs with his band Rockasaurus and continues to teach his son the guitar. Meat Cleaver (Joel Slazyk) gave up music to become a vice president of a pharmaceutical machinery manufacturing company in North Carolina. He has two daughters and is married. Kevin Rat (Kevin K) is an international recording and touring artist, who regularly plays shows in the US, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Poland. For more information on Kevin, please visit his website here. ~ Doug Tyler & Ted Sterns