Paleface

Paleface surfaced in 1990 within New York’s anti-folk scene, regularly appearing on the Lower East Side open-mike circuit while shaping his anarchic folk approach with pronounced hip-hop inflections in the orbit of John S. Hall of King Missile. A former roommate of Beck, he was playing the old Chameleon club when Danny Fields—the onetime manager of the MC5, the Stooges, and the Ramones—took notice, and the ensuing management offer led Paleface to sign with Polygram for his self-titled 1991 debut that contained the underground hit “Burn and Rob.”

A poorly matched tour supporting labelmates the Crash Test Dummies produced friction when his performances of the vitriolic “World Full of Cops” triggered repeated confrontations with local police, after which Polygram dropped him mid-session on his second album. Switching to electric guitar and recruiting a punk band as his backing unit, he tracked 1995’s Raw for Shimmy Disc; although conceived as studio material, live-bootleg recordings were inserted at the last moment once the singer accidentally erased half the master tapes. He subsequently joined Elektra and delivered Get Off in 1996.