Sept. 21, 1974: Rochester's Armand Schaubroeck
Sept. 21, 1974
Prison Rock Opera – Step to Freedom
“YOU WANT GET TO THE PEOPLE, you oughta try a billboard,” Armand Schaubroeck
proposes.
Billboards work for Schaubroeck. His first ones in
“Today it sounds corny,” he says, “but then it was a big
thing. I got a lotta radio things, debate things. The store made it on the
publicity. My customers were the freak type and they dug it.”
Presently he has 25 billboards in and around
* * *
“THIS MUST BE
a pretty big town,” he estimates. “I wanted 25 percent exposure, so 25 percent
of the people would see it and it took 25 billboards. In
“I’ve put 20 billboards in
* * *
“WHEN YOU
first get there,” Schaubroeck says, “they give you interviews to decide when
you’re gonna see the parole board. It’s mass production. The psychiatrists are
quick and hard. They wanta see if you get violent. I can’t blame ‘em, but I’m
sayin’ that’s what happens.
“Psychologically they definitely convince you you are
dangerous. They shackle you when you move. You’re counted every hour. They’ve
got machine guns on the walls and they’ve got the dogs, that kinda security.
After a while, you believe it.
“You know, 70 percent of the guys in prison go back again,
50 percent of them for a harder crime. You learn crime in prison. If I didn’t
make it with the store, I woulda done something sooner or later.
* * *
“ANDY WARHOL’S
an amazing guy,” Schaubroeck recounts. “When he’s done with a conversation,
he’ll turn around and walk away without any warning, just like that.
“He wanted to make my album into a play. I couldn’t see
that, all that work seven days a week. I wanta make it into a movie.
“I could explain more in a move. I could get heavy like I
couldn’t do on the record. We had arguments about it.
“‘Play,’ he’ll say. ‘No, movie.’ ‘Play.’ ‘Movie.’ We do
that until he up and splits.”
He served nearly 18 months of a three-year sentence in
Elmira Reformatory as a youthful offender before he was paroled.
“I was punky and gang-like and I made it outa there all
right,” he says. “I sorta deserved to be there.
* * *
“BUT I’D SOONER
be in Attica than
He talks about the suicides, the brutal sexuality, solitary
confinement, troubled inmates, the threat of being killed or attacked or being
locked away in a mental hospital.
“Going over-religious, that’s one way of flipping,” he
says. “You’re totally isolated from society. There are no contacts whatsoever.
You know, it doesn’t make sense to put someone that far away, ‘cause someday
he’ll have to come out.”
* * *
SCHAUBROECK
was born Jan. 20, 1944, and grew up in
The war left his father a permanent patient in a VA
hospital. His mother worked in a factory to support the kids. The welfare
workers threatened to take him and his younger brother away, he says, until one
day his gang scared them off.
“We called ourselves the Del Boys,” he says. “There was a
deli and we usta hang out on the steps. We had rules and morals. It was a game
for most of us, a way of making it, I guess.”
He has no idea how many burglaries, safecrackings and
random thefts the
He says they he never got caught at the scene. The thing
that did it was returning a timing light to a kid they knew. It was on a police
stolen property list.
* * *
SCHAUBROECK
had his prison rock opera in his head when he walked out of
Released on his own Mirror label, it’s a six-sided stream
of consciousness tale. The music is mid ‘60s punk rock – like the Seeds or the
Standells – a bit crude, though it has some high moments. Where the impact
comes is in the feelings. They’re for real.
* * *
HE STARTED selling
guitars in his mother’s basement while still on parole (“She usta kick my
customers out,” he says), made it a success by out-discounting everybody. He
still does. His $6.98 records go for $3.98.
His store, the House of Guitars, occupies the biggest
building in
He ran for State Senate in 1972 and this year he’s the
third man in an Assembly race. His issue is a two-point prison reform.
* * *
HE THINKS
prison shops should bid on private contracts, pay inmates a minimum wage
instead of a nickel a day and teach them marketable skills which they’ll have
experience in when they’re released.
Secondly, he thinks prisoners should get to see wives and
girlfriends. This, he says, would reduce fights, sexual assaults and the bitter
toll of social isolation.
Currently he and his salesman-publicist, a roly-poly man
with the unlikely name of Dick Tomato, are on a cross-country promotion tour.
He’ll be home in time for the election.
“I’m gonna give you a scoop too,” he says. “I’m gonna do
another record. It’ll be oldies or else a rock opera based on the life of
George Eastman, who founded Kodak.”
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO:
Armand Schaubroeck in front of one of his
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: This
would not be Armand Schaubroeck’s only billboard campaign in
In
all, Armand has put out five albums, abetted musically by his brothers Blaine
and Bruce. A retrospective of his work by critic Ira Robbins in Trouser Press
notes that “Schaubroeck is no raving looney – his records are intense but they’re
sane, and ambitiously conceived and executed. And while his musical and
songwriting skills have grown by leaps and bounds over the years, he has never
mellowed – his fifth album is more intense and gritty than any of his others,
save the first.”
His
brothers also collaborated on the House of Guitars. Armand promoted it in
Among his activities these days is a radio show which airs from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturdays on WRFZ 106.3 FM, Rochester Free Radio. The first show every month is dedicated to Upstate New York musicians. It’s podcasted here at https://www.mixcloud.com/ArmandSchaubroeckSpins/stream/.
* * * * *
FURTHER NOTE: All of these transcripts of old feature articles
about the
Comments
Post a Comment