THE RAY BRAZEN STORY

The man who would become known to the world as Ray Brazen was born somewhere on the outskirts of New York City about 10 to 15 years before the Internet. Given the original first name of David, the first song he remembers everyone singing to him constantly was "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," eventually forcing him to change his first name to Ray.

By the time he entered school, it became necessary to change his last name as well, as it matched the name of a notorious game show host and Ray quickly grew tired of being mistaken for a relative of his. To this day, Ray's real last name remains a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few who have been threatened with forcible fingernail extraction should they ever reveal it.

By the age of twelve, Ray had developed an obsession with music that would never let go of him. Soon he had acquired a guitar at a garage sale and was regularly strumming it for anyone who had the time to listen. Eventually, when Ray was 16, one of his high school friends who had heard his strumming suggested the time was right for him to finally sit down and learn how to play the guitar. It would be another three years before another friend advised him that it was good practice to go back to standing up and playing now that he had some ability.

Ray recording the infamous song
that earned him a visit from the FBI

Ray's first brush with controversy came when he made a tape of his songs for a fellow student who played the tape on a school bus during a field trip, not knowing that one of the songs on the tape mentioned the school's dean of discipline by name and directed a few choice insults at him. The next day, more than half the kids on the bus requested copies of the tape from Ray. That evening Ray was visited by the local and state police, the PTA, the FBI, and several CIA agents. Ray would never insult the dean of discipline in his songs ever again.

Ray experimented with approximately 246 last names before settling on Zinnbrann and forming his first band, Ray Zinnbrann and the Fruit and Cereal Lovers. This band was together for only one day in February 1984, although a few months later the band would reunite for one more day in an unsuccessful comeback attempt. The next band Ray would join, Cody Jarrett's Mom, broke up after just 90 minutes and have no plans to reunite at the present time, but we'll keep you posted.

Tired of dealing with the creative tensions and flatulence problems of others, Ray decided to go it alone, and soon his tapes were regularly heard on the Pat Duncan Show on WFMU, a freeform radio station in East Orange, NJ. But it wasn't until he hooked up with Bill Berger in 1986 and started appearing on Bill's new show devoted entirely to home tape artists, LO-FI, that Ray's star began to ascend. Unfortunately, all of the prime viewing nights for the star were overcast in the New York metropolitan area.

        
Original copies of these rare tapes do not
fetch upwards of $2,000 on Ebay, Yet.

1988 could have been a banner year for Ray, as he made his live New York debut at the Lismar Lounge. That same night, bodegas in the vicinity reported a 500 percent boost in sales of cotton balls. That summer, Ray release his immortal cassette album, IT'S THE BRANN MAN... AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT! and celebrated its release by coming very close to getting laid.

After this near-miss, Ray formed the Living Guitars with another artist introduced to the world through the LO-FI program, Jet Screamer (a/k/a Mark DeAngelis, now in Lancaster County Prison). This twin-guitar duo sounded like a cross between the Ventures and the Stooges, albeit minus bass and drums. Much though they tried, however, they could not execute their gameplan for international success, as the original group of RCA studio cats Ray had stolen the duo's name from never took notice of them, and subsequently never sued them for millions of dollars.

Disillusioned, the duo played one last gig in which Ray "killed" his "living guitar" as a symbolic gesture. But he only received a few years' probation after he successfully argued that it was a mercy killing.

The LIVING GUITARS were
heavily influenced by the Shadows.

By the early 1990s, Ray had released several cassette albums, including LEAVING ELMWOOD PARK BERGEN COUNTY, REDLANDS, and the classic LIFE IN EXILE, which all 22 people lucky enough to hear its 15-minute instrumental title track will never forget. He also assisted Scott Prato in the formation of the Thundering Lizards, a heavy pychedelic funk experimental band that at various points in its existence counted Billy Syndrome, Evil Jim Friendly, Bonnie Kane, and notorious punk rock accordion player Malcolm Tent as members.

Again the band looked to create publicity from controversy to further its name, but somehow escaped the attention of police during its ill-fated Midwest Tour in 1993 despite driving 30 miles in excess of the speed limit at every given opportunity in a tour van loaded with 1000 vials of crack cocaine, 5000 tabs of Ecstasy, and three pounds of heroin.

Ray and Malcolm Tent (upper left)
in one of their gentler moods

Ray and Malcolm Tent left the Thundering Lizards in 1994 and went on to form a new zydeco easy listening avant garde bluegrass punk rock mariachi jam band named Thai Raid. Malcolm suggested that Ray change his last name to "something a little less corny" for this new project. After fierce disagreement on this issue landed both of them in jail after one barroom brawl and in the emergency room after another, Ray finally gave in and accepted the newly suggested surname of Brazen.

Thai Raid gained local notoriety for its massive caffeine intake and for its voracious sexual appetite for African American women. But disaster struck when the band opened for the classic rock band Mountain in Atlantic City. The boys were hoping to get themselves noticed by the veteran rockers, but Leslie West fell asleep and Corky Laing disappeared with a groupie midway though Thai Raid's set. At present, the long officially-defunct band is now working on winning the Guinness World Record for reuniting and breaking up again more times than any other rock band in history.

Ray continued his solo career by becoming a subway musician in New York City. One week, the wandering troubador took requests from weary train travelers and the top two requests were "Shut the fuck up!" and that old favorite, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett."

Looking for new creative trails to blaze, Ray turned to the Internet and started EL MUNDO LOCO DE LOS DUG DUG'S, a website devoted to a Mexican rock band whose music he had discovered during a trip to Mexico, in 1997. Ray never figured that this site would be successful to the point where he would get to meet the main Dug Dug himself, Armando Nava, in person. This site would spawn a sequel in 2001, AVANDARO, which presented the history of a Woodstock inspired festival in Mexico at which the Dug Dug's and other bands played.

Ray added to his online legacy by opening THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE GODZ in 1998, which attracted some attention from former members of the legendary New York-based psychedelic pranksters and none from Pope John Paul II, and in 2000 Ray started THE TV TOY CHANNEL, a fond tribute to some local music which had influenced him while he was growing up. Ray has so far been unsuccessful in getting this channel picked up by any cable or satellite dish systems, but he hopes to rectify that situation at least before the year 2035.

A rare photo of Ray Brazen
without any masks or makeup

Now, in a last ditch attempt to force his music down the throats of millions of unsuspecting listeners, Ray has finally swallowed some pride (that's okay, he's got plenty) and put some of his finest music in the ever-popular CD format, in a new release cleverly titled the racing brain of RAY BRAZEN, on the 2003 BC record label. Vinyl lover Ray attended six weeks of classes on "Overcoming Aversion to CDs" in order to bring himself to put his music out on a format he swore for years would never resort to. Only you, the listener and websurfer, can possibly convince him that it was worth all the bank robberies he pulled off over the last three years to finance the project.