The Hanslick Rebellion is a rock group like they don't make 'em any more. Formed in Albany, NY in 1995 by a couple of teenagers—keyboardist Jed Davis and bassist Mike Keaney—the band rocketed though an immensely successful two-year run in upstate New York, performing its singular brand of brash, honest, visceral-yet-thoughtful rock and roll in front of thousands in the region. They recorded one album, a scorching live tape called the rebellion is here. Then they did what teenage rockers do: flame out. The Rebellion ended in April of 1997 and its two founders didn't speak for the better part of a decade.

But ten years later, the four members of The Hanslick Rebellion found themselves face-to-face once again, instruments in hand, 200 miles south of the band's birthplace—at a rehearsal studio in New York City. There had been other bands for the H-Rebels since 1997: Collider, Provan, Citizen Fury, Rhythm Ritual. There had been session success: Jessica Simpson, The Deuce Project, Bandcamp. There had been songwriting credits: tunes recorded by Daniel Johnston, King Missile, the surviving Ramones. But neither Jed nor Mike, nor guitarist Alex Dubovoy and drummer Mike Kearns, felt like they had ever approached the power and passion they once generated together. After a series of chance meetings, they agreed to put all the old baggage aside and just jam. One time.

Once felt good enough to try twice. Twice became a weekly thing. Weekly sessions made the band tighter and hotter than ever before. And one show—a packed and rabid house at CBGB on the 10th anniversary of the Rebellion's first gig—was enough to solidify the unit. The rock group that Metroland critic J. Eric Smith hailed as "possibly the finest band to ever call Albany home" has returned to finish some business. And it's business of the noblest kind:

The Rebellion takes its name from Eduard Hanslick, a 19th-Century music critic of the Vienna Neue Freie Presse. A feared writer whose opinion could make or break a composer's career, Hanslick was responsible for such gems as, "Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear."

As Gen-X kids pimping out the ideology of the band they might become, Keaney and Davis would sit in Denny's and rant until the wee hours about how Hanslick's "rebellion" against musical excess should be revived to bring back rock and roll in its purest form, to strip away the decadence and the bullshit.

There has never been more decadent bullshit in music than we've got right now. So consider yourself lucky that the Rebellion has refused to grow up or give up. Consider yourself lucky that the Rebellion is here—to write great songs and play them all fuckin night.


Rebellion links