Episode

Nic Dembling: recalling new wave New York with Comateens

The Comateens member — AKA Nic North and Nic West — chats about founding the '70s new wave/punk band with Ramona Jan and the artistic merits of a challenging time for New York City.

Today, the Spotlight shines On musician and songwriter Nicholas Dembling, aka Nic North, aka Nic West, of seminal New York CIty New Wave Pop band, Comateens.

The New York that birthed Comateens was in the midst of a particularly vibrant musical moment. There was new music everywhere. Jazz cats were staging loft concerts in pre-glitz SOHO. The punks and no wavers were holding court on the Lower East Side. Philip Glass and the minimalists were premiering new works and way up in the Bronx, hip hop was coming on strong.

Nic was working at New York’s MediaSound recording studio where he and co-worker Ramona Lee Jan began to write songs together. With necessity as the mother of invention, Nic and Ramona began to play gigs with only a bass, a guitar and an electronic rhythm box, so that the band and its equipment could fit into one New York City taxi cab. This self-imposed constraint led to the original Comateens, a concept shared by Alan Vega and Martin Rev, who were doing something with a similar lineup with their duo, Suicide.

Nic takes us through both his and Comateens musical upbringing and development, as well as how he is documenting and preserving the band’s legacy.

(the musical excerpts heard in the interview are taken from the Comateen's reissued 1979 single "Danger Zone"/"Elizabeth's Lover")

Dig Deeper

• Check out the exhaustive Comateens archive at comateens.com
• Listen to the Comateens' 1979 single "Danger Zone"/"Elizabeth's Lover" on Bandcamp
• Follow Comateens on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), and YouTube
• Ramona Jan & Nic North Reflect on Their Life and Times as Synth-Punk Band Comateens
• The Odd Couple theme song
• New Wave Central: CBGBs And The Birth Of New York Punk
• Suicide: The terrifying world of NYC's outsider punks
• America is Killing Its Youth: Martin Rev and the Artistic Legacy of Suicide
• James Chance & the Contortions, Live at Max’s Kansas City, 1979
• Harvey Jay Goldberg - Engineering Discography
• Please, Stop Calling it ‘Content’
• Summer Of 1977 In New York City in Photos
• Isaac Bashevis Singer: American Masters
• Sam Jaffe (IMDB)
• Zero Mostel Testifies Before HUAC (1955)
• The 1950s Hollywood Blacklist Was an Assault on Free Expression
• The Front (1976)
• A recent interview with Ramona Jan on the Comateens
• 1980s Songwriter Ramona Jan’s Message is “Enjoy the Ride”
• GoFundMe for Ramona Jan

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