SEDITIONARY KITTEN RECORDING ARTIST: Steven Deal
Playing since I was 13 years old, sneaking into clubs, and then getting a notarized note from my parents to play when I got my first record deal with Relativity/Sony at age 18. This was my first group Bleached Black. I was known as Stevo in those days. Dropped out of college to tour the USA and Canada several times as support act for groups such as Dinosaur Jr., Das Damen, The Screaming Trees, The Neighborhoods, etc. Band released "Wrist Slashing Romance" EP, Self-titled Album produced by Lou Giordano (Husker Du, Volcano Suns, GooGoo Dolls, and many other credits...), some 45's. Broke up Acrimoniously in 1988 after only appearing on MTV 2 or 3 times...Started Chopper in 1989, signed with Big Deal/Caroline, toured, played MANY gigs and recorded the "4play" EP, "Chopper" self-titled album, toured throughout the UK, France and Spain doing promo appearances, recorded "Slogans and Jingles" album with Adam "Red" Lasus, and the swan song "Madhouse On Castle Street." with Michael Deming of the Lilys as Engineer. This band too ended acrimoniously in 1996...in 1997 my third band The Absolute Zeros picked up my deal with Big Deal, now owned by Paradigm in NYC. We recorded a million compilation tracks, got trashed in People Magazine, and eventually broke up after our Peter Katis (Interpol, Philistines, Jr., Babyheads, Zambonis...) recorded album "Dreams Gone Sour" stiffed bigger than any other recording in my history. This is in spite of the koo-koo cover art done by Nick's famous Brother Steven Appleby (ex-Altered Images artist responsible for all those Duran Duran sleeves and those cartoons on that damn Pixies disc---oh yeah, and his BBC series, "Captain Star", along with many, many books....) Then I dropped out for awhile, reforming the Zeros with guitar-virtuoso Chris Cretella taking over for Nick and Nick moving to bass. We recorded a few things---a punk cover EP called "NICE!" and album called "Twisted" featuring unreleased tracks and demos. So that was it until I joined the Naomi Star as 2nd Guitarist/
Vocalist/Songwriter last year, and quit after playing gigs in Boston, NYC, CT., and NH. WHY??? Because I started writing and recording songs that I loved again with Dan from Naomi Star and the band said, "Naaaa..." we said, SOLO CAREER!!!!! And I say Let's Fucking Drink To That! I'm working on new material with Dan, and have just licensed 6 songs for the soundtrack of a movie co-directed by Lisa Hammer (The Venture Brothers) and James Merendino (SLC Punk), and written by Ben Edlund (The Tick). So There!