Without converting DEAF SPARROW into a STIFFS, INC. tribute page we would now like to present the history of the band on their own words.  The following compiles excerpts from a detailed e-mail interview initially planned as research for the Lost & Found piece on Nix Nought Nothing.  Considering that STIFFS, INC. is one of our favorite bands we could not have all these excellent content go to waste. The following is, we vehemently believe, the most comprehensive document detailing the band’s existence. Read on!

THE BAND:

Paul Boering – Guitars

Whitey Sterling – Vocals

R.X. Mauser – Bass

Bryn Mars – Drums (1993 – 1998)

Donnie T. Tremors - Drums (1991 - 1993)

ACT I: THE BEGINNING

AND THEN THERE WAS THE STIFFS.

Bryn Mars:  We all grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and went to the same high school. If you get out a map of the Philadelphia suburbs, you will find the town I was named after, Bryn Mawr, whose residents seemed to come from another planet.

Paul Boering: Bryn and I are brothers, so we met when he was born. I met Whitey in gym class. I was wearing a VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO "banana" t-shirt. Whitey was also a fan of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and we started talking about them and found we had other musical interests in common.

Whitey Sterling:  I saw Paul in Gym class wearing a VELVET UNDERGROUND T-shirt, and that was all it took for me to approach him or, to be more accurate, run alongside him, as we were running laps. 

RX Mauser: I first met Whitey in chemistry class when I was a junior and he was a sophomore. We pretty much hit it off right away having similar interests in music, movies, literature, and sharing what some considered an unbalanced sense of humor. Through Whitey I became friends
with Paul and Donnie.

Paul Boering: Although we were all friends during the last 2 years of high school, we did not start playing together as a band until the summer after our first year at college.  That band, THE RABBITS JACK, was basically a cover band and was comprised of Whitey (lead singer & guitar), myself (guitar), Donnie (drums), and this other fellow we knew playing bass.  Our original bass player did not fit in.  Even though we were only playing cover songs, he had a different taste in music.  I remember he always wanted to cover songs by THE POLICE. 

RX Mauser: Other than their band, we were pretty much always hanging out together and doing a lot of fun and creative things, like making short videos, playing elaborate practical jokes, and lots of aimless loitering.  I suggested the idea of joining to Whitey, who was all for it. Paul was more skeptical, but after spending a few months learning to play bass by playing along to THE RAMONES, UNDERTONES, BUZZCOCKS, and the like, I was good enough to make the cut and THE STIFFS came to be.

Paul Boering: When Mauser joined on bass, we continued to play cover songs but eventually started to write original songs.  We played our first (and only) show in our hometown in January 1991.  We played 2 songs at the open mike night at a club called J.C. Dobbs. The drunken emcee introduced us as "THE STUFF", and we then proceeded to play "Awake at the Wake" and "Bored Stiff" to an audience consisting of one of our friends, and 5 or 6 disinterested parties who were there only to get drunk.  

RX Mauser: By the end of the summer we had towards twenty songs. I remember right when we recorded everything we had come up with in Donnie's basement. We managed to get everything down before Donnie's parents kicked us out of the house, upon which we promptly drove to the graveyard listening to what we had done. As we sat among the departed we were ecstatic thinking that we really had something and decided that the next logical step was to take it to NYC.

THE INFLUENCES

Paul Boering: At the time we were listening to various punk bands:  THE ADVERTS, THE AVENGERS, THE BOYS, THE BUZZCOCKS, THE CRAMPS, THE DAMNED, THE REZILLOS, THE UNDERTONES, WIRE, EATER, GENERATION X, RICHARD HELL, 999, TELEVISION, THE MODERN LOVERS, JOHNNY THUNDERS, THE VIBRATORS, etc.  Later, we started to delve deeper into post-punk and spent much time listening to the second and third WIRE albums, GANG OF FOUR, AU PAIRS, KILLING JOKE, SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHESS, THE STRANGLERS, FAD GADGET, TUXEDOMOON, etc.

Whitey Sterling: I could not for the life of me figure out how to find more bands like the SEX PISTOLS, and every time I read about Punk, I was led to them.  It was only in New York that I finally blew the lid off of that, and once I opened that door, I was gone.  I was interested in nothing else than the English bands of 1977-78.

Bryn Mars:  For me, the music that inspired me is all "real" punk rock (i.e. nearly everything from 1977-1981), roots reggae, dub reggae, DJ reggae (basically any reggae from 1974-1985), and 1980's electronic music is my guilty pleasure (JOY DIVISION, NEW ORDER, DEPECHE MODE, etc.).  If you listen closely, I was able to sneak in quite a few "reggae beats" into several STIFFS songs.

Paul Boering: Hammer horror films, film noir, German Expressionism.  The hardboiled crime novels of Jim Thompson and David Goodis. "Evidence" by Luc Sante.  There was an East Village theatre group called BLACKLIPS PERFORMANCE CULT which would perform plays weekly.  It was at BLACKLIPS where we befriended three cast members who were to contribute greatly to our output: Poison Eve, Marti Wilkerson and Antony Hegarty.  Poison Eve became our Master of Ceremonies and would often perform onstage before or during our live shows, exhibiting antique oddities and making macabre gestures.  Marti Wilkerson became the band's photographer. Thirdly, we met Antony (now of "ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS" fame) who co-produced Nix Nought Nothing with us.

Whitey Sterling:  I loved all sorts of media, including late 19th century to early 20th century horror writing, early 20th century science fiction, crime fiction of the first half of the century, movies of all sorts, comic books, et cetera (M. R. James, Philip K. Dick, Dashiell Hammett,  David Cronenberg, Arthur Pewty et al).

RX Mauser:  We were basically influenced either positively or negatively by anything that infiltrated our collective experience.  People would always see us walking together and ask if we were part of a theatre group or comment on our "costumes." One of my favorite comments came from some Hispanic kids when we were walking around the lower east side who yelled, "This is America. Go back to England!"

MOVE TO NEW YORK

Paul Boering: Before we left Philadelphia, we recorded a 5-song demo tape at a recording studio there.  The tape consisted of our best songs at that time: "Awake at the Wake", "Bored Stiff", "Cry Baby", "Seven Inches" and "Capital Offence".  In June 1992, Donnie, Mauser and I moved to NYC.  (Whitey had already been living there for a year or so.)  This is where and when we started to work on the band in earnest --- that is why in some articles about the band we refer to the beginning of the band being in New York City in 1992.

Bryn Mars:  I came to the city in 1993, around the time Donnie was leaving to go to art school.  While they searched for another drummer, I sat in with the band and something clicked.  During those days, Paul and I lived together in the East Village on Avenue A, between 10th & 11th Streets.  We lived next door to Brownies, which was a bar where bands played, including the STIFFS.

Go to ACT II: THE MIDDLE