I am the horse in the Cairo square

I am a tall chestnut, slender in the legs

Clopping wildly

Down the modern pavement

Of the ancient city.

Ridden rough

Handled rudely

By a rider spreading fear

And afraid himself.

Suddenly I was alone

Dancing away and then held

By hard-eyed men

Who beat and bloodied

The heavy shouldered thug

Who kicked me…

One time too many.

"Monkey Love"... A Verrry simian display of affection in East Hollywood

When Spinal Tap walked with Tyrants: “The Call of the Wild.”

A late 80s disco 12” record on a small L.A. dance label provides a fascinating off-the-wall link to Spinal Tap (often billed as the loudest band in the world), and The Tyrants in Therapy (often billed as the weirdest band in the world).


It all started with a chance meeting in East Hollywood between Viv Savage, Spinal Tap’s original keyboard player, and the Tyrant Michael J.

“I was writing a song with a collaborator named Jim Mandell when the doorbell rings and in bounds this extraordinarily cheerful Englishman, who proceeded to light up the room in more ways than one,” remembers The Tyrant Michael. “We really hit it off, exchanged phone numbers, and started writing songs together.”


“Back in those days, the Tyrants were proceeding on 2 completely different musical fronts, disco and rock,” Tyrant Michael continues, “and David Kafinetti (Viv Savage’s offstage name) became a wild, wonderful and willing accomplice to our musical efforts in both those worlds.”

“David is a really open as a collaborator,” says Abbe Kanter, the female Tyrant, “he not only goes with the flow, he creates the flow. Once Michael, me, David, Duncan Faure (of the Bay City Rollers) and Stacy, our favorite ex-Tyrant, were all in our studio writing and we came up with a great (and as yet unreleased) song called ‘Surrounded.’ I was amazed because each of the 5 people came up with something special that added to the final song.”

“One cold and rainy night in the Fall of ‘87, David dropped by late,” recalls Tyrant Michael. “and in the mood to write. So I fired up our trusty Roland CR 8000 drum machine, he played one of our dinky old Casio mini synths, and ‘Call of the Wild’ was born.”

In those days, the High Energy dance scene was booming in L.A., and the Tyrants had many opportunities to release records under their own name and various solo configurations.

“We played a very rough version of ‘Call of the Wild’ to Jim Callon at JDC Records who had released our big hit ‘Too Tuff To Cry,’” says Tyrant Michael, “Jim liked the basic idea of ‘Wild,’ and suggested that we enlist Sabby Rayas, my collaborator on ‘Too Tuff,’ to help with the track.

So Sabby programmed the drums and percussion, David laid down some nasty keyboard riffs, and Duncan played some screaming rock guitar. Adding to the excitement was a sample I made from one of our live gigs in Mexico City. About 3,000 people were yelling “Patrick, Patrick” in honor of DJ Patrick Miller, the gig’s promoter. We made that sample into a chant and dropped it in throughout the record. Then Duncan, Abbe and Tyrant Stina sang the background vocals. Finally I did the lead vocal, and it was released as a Tyrant Michael solo record on JDC.”

Sad to say, the exuberant ‘Call of the Wild’ was not destined to find acceptance in the Dance Music world circa 1988.

“It was a great high energy record, but it came out at precisely the wrong time,” says Tyrant Michael. “Club DJ’s were jumping on the House music bandwagon, and nobody wanted to play an Italo disco high energy record at 132 beats per minute. To try to save the project, Jim Callon had us speed it up at the mastering lab in an effort to make it sound more Techno. Eventually it came out at 148 bpms, which is absurdly fast.”

But strangely enough, ‘Wild’ has always been greeted with great enthusiasm during the Tyrants’ live shows, so they decided to include the track on their new cd ‘Dance with The Tyrants, Classic Dance Hits Vol.1.’

“It rounds out the compilation nicely,” states Abbe Abbe, “and adds a macho element to the sweetness of our high energy love songs on the new cd.”

And what of the Viv Savage/Tyrants in Therapy collaboration?

“It’s stronger than ever,” says Tyrant Michael, “David is well represented on ‘High Class Trash,’ our 2009 cd. In 2004, we wrote one of the strangest songs in history called ‘My Dying Girlfriend,’ an interior monologue set to a seductive chill out track that’s weird, funny and poignant all at the same time.”

“And he also co-wrote ‘Angels Remember,’ one of the most spiritual songs we’ve ever released,” adds AbbeAbbe, “That’s on ‘High Class Trash’ as well.”

As he approaches his 5th decade in music, David “Viv Savage” Kafinetti shows no signs of slowing down.

The energetic blue-eyed Englishman who played keyboards in Spinal Tap, also had a major international hit called ‘Sympathy’ with Rare Bird back in the 70’s

He continues to make music in L.A. and the Bay Area, and is currently writing for and gigging with bands fronted by Linda Imperial and Bluesetta.

When asked about his life these days, he slips into his patented Viv Savage drawl and says “I have a good time…All the time.”

‘Call of the Wild,’ ‘Angels Remember,’ and ‘My Dying Girlfriend’ are all available at iTunes, amazon.com, cdbaby.com, or at tyrantsintherapy.com.

When Bay City Rollers Danced with The Tyrants

When The Tyrants in Therapy were making their dizzying assault on the dance music world back in the 80s and 90s, they were often accompanied by a couple of Bay City Rollers.

“Duncan Faure was like the 4th Tyrant in those days,” recalls The Tyrant Michael, who produced two dozen dance records by the Tyrants for L.A labels during their 12” singles heyday.


Faure, the former Bay City Rollers lead singer/lead guitarist, was living in Los Angeles at the time not far from the Tyrants in the San Fernando Valley.

“Duncan was like a long-lost cousin,” says AbbeAbbe, the female Tyrant, “He enjoyed hanging out in studios, and was a fixture at our sessions around Hollywood. He was enthusiastic, and really versatile. He had great pipes, like a combination of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He could sing high and blend perfectly with me and whoever was the other girl Tyrant du jour, and when he sang low, he could meld with the Tyrant Michael’s backgrounds, like on “Boy,” and smooth them out, which really took some doing.”

“He’s all over our dance records,” says Michael, “including our biggest one, “Too Tuff to Cry.” Duncan, Abbe and Brenda X created those memorable choral blends that helped make it a hit. On “Sweet Magic,” he blended with Abbe and our favorite ex-Tyrant Stacy Carroll for those soaring ABBAesque vocals. And that’s him screaming on “Sex Bomb,” from ‘92, which turned out to be the final vinyl 12” record the Tyrants ever made.”

An excellent guitarist and keyboard player, Faure was often called upon by The Tyrant Michael to add a rock ‘n roll edge or classical influence to the Tyrants’ productions.

“He could do anything in the studio,” remembers Michael, “He’d bash out bruising electric guitar lines on “Paint It Pink” and “Too Tuff House Rock, and then turn around and play some gorgeous grand piano on “Sweet Magic” and “Springtime in Italy,” a track I produced for Splashgang. Duncan also sang background on “P-P-Power of Love,” “Matter of Time,” “Crazy Dreams,” “Big Pink House,” and “Call of the Wild.”

“Come to think of it,” Abbe adds, “On the new cd compilation of our classic dance songs “Dance with The Tyrants Vol. 1,” Duncan is on every single track except “Underground Girl, ” and Woody played bass on that one.”

The Rollers’ bass player, Stuart “Woody” Wood, also lent a hand in the studio during the early days of The Tyrants.

In addition to “Underground Girl,” Wood played bass on “In the Shadow of Hitler,” and collaborated with the Tyrants on some wild and whimsical pop experiments like “The Box” and “The Happiness Factor,” which have yet to be released.

“Woods was totally cool in the studio.” says Abbe, “He’d been making records since he was 15, and our funky little sessions were a big deal to us, but a lark to him.”

“We were very tight with Woods when he lived in L.A.,” says Michael. “He was such a mellow, thoughtful guy who was taking a break from being a teen superstar before his next phase of life. The night we fired our co-founder Tyrant Carol, Abbe and I were shattered. So we brought over a bottle of Glenlivet Scotch to Woods’ apartment and drowned our sorrows with him until the wee hours.”

The Bay City Rollers connection was a result of The Tyrant Michael’s brief foray into managing other musical acts including Karu, the group that Faure and Wood formed in L.A. after the breakup of the Rollers.

“I knew Duncan long before he joined the Rollers” says Michael, “He’d come to L.A. after the breakup of Rabbit, a big pop group in South Africa that he and Trevor Rabin fronted. He auditioned to replace Les McKeown in the Rollers, got the gig, and went from sleeping on couches to staying at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in a matter of weeks.”

When we formed Tyrants back in ’84, the boys were back in town and living in Granada Hills not too far from us. We were lucky to have them around to help out on our early records. They really helped shape the Tyrants’ sound.”

by Michael J.

The hidden message on the cover of “Too Tuff To Cry.”

The hidden message on the cover of “Too Tuff To Cry.”

Although tens of thousands of HiNRG disco fans own a copy of “Too Tuff to Cry” single by the Tyrants in Therapy, few realize that there’s a hidden message embedded amidst the hieroglyphic writing on the classic vinyl 12” album cover.

“The cover of “Too Tuff” illustrates the story of the Tyrants’ tumultuous early days,” says The Tyrant Michael J, who wrote and produced the track with Sabby Rayas.

“When The Tyrants cut “Too Tuff,” I was still working part-time at an advertising agency in Beverly Hills writing ads and commercials,” remembers The Tyrant Michael, “and my partner in crime was an expatriate English art director named Barry Brenner who was himself segueing into a career as a painter. We used to go out at lunch, enjoy a little herbal stimulation in the park, and then get a drink at one of those fancy little bars in the neighborhood. And little by little, I told him what was going on with the Tyrants, like how we started out with a guitarist named Jack and a keyboard player named Charlie, both of whom didn’t work out; why we fired Carol (the original third Tyrant) and Brenda X, the girl who sang background vocals on “Too Tuff;” why diminutive rocker Breath (aka Beth Sharon) only did one gig with us; and the story of Mau Mau (statuesque Maureen Mahon) who appeared on two Tyrants’ covers but never sang a note on any of our records. We were on JDC Records at the time, and they were between art directors, so Barry Brenner designed the “Too Tuff” cover for us, channeling all the sordid details of TIT’s expanding and contracting lineup into that ingenious graffiti-like motif.”

“On the “Too Tuff” cover, Barry Brenner actually predicted the Tyrants becoming a duo,” says AbbeAbbe, the girl Tyrant, “because when you look at all the names on the cover, the only ones that are not x’d out are ‘you’ and ‘me’ which of course was me, and the Tyrant Michael. (Lucky) Pierre, the veteran radio DJ who was our booking agent and, much later, the host of many of our cable TV shows, his name made on the cover, too.”

The red rose on the cover also has special significance because it soon became a tradition for AbbeAbbe to toss roses to the crowd whenever the Tyrants came onstage.

The backside of the cover also contained a coded message: The face of a girl who’s wearing the beret is eerily blank.

“When “Too Tuff To Cry” came out, there was no third Tyrant,” says The Tyrant Michael, “Maureen was long gone, and we had just parted ways with Brenda X, so Barry put the same picture that we had used on the back of “Paint It Pink,” and he just whited out Maureen’s face. It gave the whole thing a surreal aspect that creeps me out to this day.”

“And the cover’s prediction came true for TIT in the early 90s,” says AbbeAbbe, “we were between co-Tyrants and we got an offer to perform in Hollywood at Circus Disco. Throwing caution to the winds, we decided to take the gig anyway and performed for the first time as a duo, just The Tyrant Michael and me. After the show, fans told us that it was the best Tyrant’s performance ever. We took the hint and we’ve been a duo ever since.”

Both “Too Tuff to Cry” and “Paint It Pink” (along with hard to find tracks from the Tyrants’ solo careers like “Sweet Magic” and “Call of the Wild”) are included on a new compilation “Dance With The Tyrants, Dance Club Classics Vol. 1.” Available at iTunes, Amazon.com, cdbaby.com, and through the Tyrants website at tyrantsintherapy.com.