Some of the Losers, clockwise from the upper left: Richard Barone, David Driver, John Linnel, Bob Mould, Martha Wainwright, David Terhune, Jules Shear, J. Mascis, with Joe McGinty in the middle

Henry Mancini. ABBA. Brian Wilson. The Bee Gees. Dusty Springfield. Queen. Neil Diamond. The Zombies.

What do all these artists have in common? Aside from great pop sense and a place in music history, not a lot, save that they (and about a dozen more) have all been honored by the Loser's Lounge, a motley assortment of downtown New York musicians who gather once every few months at Fez (on Lafayette under the Time Cafe), a Manhattan night club done up in chintzy cardboard decorations to replicate the feel of kids partying in a rec room while the parents are away for the weekend.

The Lounge has been around since the summer of 1993, starting with informal shows at another club, the Pink Pony, where founders Nick Danger and Joe McGinty worked out their repressed childhood neuroses on Partridge Family songs and other assorted hits. In the past seven years, it's grown into a dime-store extravaganza, featuring dozens of guest vocalists (most struggling recording artists who deserve a better lot in life, but won't get it these days), a permanent backing band (the Kustard Kings), and sold-out shows every time they play.

Why is the Loser's Lounge such an underground hit? Because they have no shame and plenty of talent. And the audience must be starved for this--I know I am, as the cultural icons they honor hardly exist anymore, in terms of stature or talent. Today's audiences have become so fractured and micro-marketed that it is becoming virtually impossible for artists to have longstanding fan bases, much less cross-generational appeal. It also seems like pop music has been driven to extremes throughout the 90's, and bands like Fleetwood Mac or the Bee Gees wouldn't make it past one album, as they would be neither hard nor soft enough to find an audience, nor ironic enough to appeal to dislocated pop fans who don't seem to know what to feel, other than distance.

The audiences at the shows clearly lean to the over-30 crowd, although I've noticed smatterings of young folk who will spout harsh mortality reminders like "Fleetwood Mac was my stepfather's favorite band" as explanation for their presence. At that same Mac show, I saw a man who looked to be in his mid-40's baying "More Bob Welch, yeah" every time they played one of his songs. And there's the warped beauty of it--some deluded jack ass pretending he's still 22 and doing bong loads in his dorm room with "Bare Trees" on his Soundesign hi-fi can find common ground with a twentysomething who hears "Rhiannon" and recalls being raised by her stepfather.

Led by McGinty, the Kustard Kings are consummate professionals who can play any style of music, and at the same time "get into it" on the emotional level of fans playing their favorite songs. They can slip from blatant irony on one song to show-stopping sincerity for the next. Every show is a rollercoaster ride with a real sense that anything can happen. This was the case with their ABBA tribute, where major hits like "Dancing Queen" and "The Winner Takes It All" drove the crowd into a near frenzy of perverse recognition. And there were those startling moments where a singer took a relatively unknown song and made it his or her own--pure rock magic, man. What it's all about.

The album, available at Kim's and other fine retailers

With well over 30 shows under their belt, the Lounge has seen fit to release a compilation CD, "Simply Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad about the Loser's Lounge," culled from one of their "hi-lite" shows this past summer, where artists hand-pick their favorite songs from past shows. (You can buy the CD and get information on past tributes and members of the Lounge at their web site, http://www.loserslounge.com.)

In between playing keyboards on various sessions and writing/recording both solo and with his band Baby Steps, Loser's Lounge co-founder, Joe McGinty agreed to answer some questions about the Lounge. The Lounge is currently preparing for their Queen tribute on February 4th.

William Repsher: With the Losers Lounge, there's a strange sense of connection with the audience, as we are watching performers take obvious joy in singing songs that they may have first performed as kids strumming tennis rackets in front of their bedroom mirrors. As a long-time music fan, when I hear great music, I often imagine myself either performing it or somehow being responsible for that music--true, a twisted little fantasy, but one of those desperately private feelings pop music fans have. Do you find yourself projecting similar fantasies on these songs as you perform them? Or feel a sense of realizing teenage rock-and-roll fantasies?

Joe McGinty: Well, I guess part of the reason one becomes a musician is to realize teenage rock-and-roll fantasies. And part of the fun of the Loser's Lounge is that there can be a connection with a song that goes back to that phase in your life. Many of the performers at the Loser's Lounge are singer/songwriters who spend a lot of effort working on and performing their own material. So I think it's fun for them to step outside of that world, and just get up and entertain.

WR: As the ring leader of all this, what criteria do you use to select a band or artist for a tribute? Is it a committee process? Does the ability to play the music ever become an issue, as some pop music is more complicated than most fans imagine?

JM: It's hard to say specifically what the criteria is, except to say that good songwriting, a large body of material, and some sort of nostalgic quality are all very important. As you can imagine, I'm always getting suggestions, so I have a good sense of what the people want, but it really comes down to my own taste in the end. And the ability to play the music isn't an issue. We have a top-notch band and a pool of talented musicians involved in the show. We like being challenged, and learning the material is like an education in pop music. I mean, we pulled off "Pet Sounds" and right now we're in the middle of learning all the vocal parts to "Bohemian Rhapsody".

WR: Walk us through the process of a how a Lounge tribute develops after choosing a tribute subject: song selection, assignments, musical arrangements, rehearsals, etc. Each show I've seen, you've performed at least two dozen songs per show, which must take an enormous amount of time and practice. Pardon me for asking, but with all the performers involved, how does anyone make any money on this?

JM: Generally after a tributee is chosen, I start collecting as much material from them as possible (sometimes I think the show just exists so I can go out and buy more records). I have many knowledgeable record-collector type friends, and I mine their resources as well. I am by no means an expert on a particular tributee before the show, but certainly afterwards I am. So I guess sometimes I pick an artist 'cause it's someone I'd like to know more about. Then, I'll have a listening session with some friends, usually Ed Rogers, and try to narrow hundreds of songs down to 50, and then down to about 24. The difficult thing for me has always been keeping the show a reasonable length. I generally want to include everything. Then I'll have our stage manager, Patty Lenartz, contact singers. We have a grid of which songs are available which night, and gradually the grid gets full. At the same time, I'll make a master tape of the songs for the band to learn. We book about four rehearsals. We split up the duties of making charts for the songs among the band members, and we try to get through about eight songs per rehearsal, then the last rehearsal is a marathon where we review everything with the singers. Singers get 15-minute slots to do their song two or three times, or they get to run their song at soundcheck. And, no, we don't make a ton of money at the Loser's Lounge. And perhaps that's part of what endears the audience to us. It's truly a labor of love, or maybe we're just crazy.

WR: Of all the artists you've honored, which stand out most in your mind? Which was the hardest to perform? Have you had moments where you and the backing band have found yourselves shocked or surprised by the results?

JM: Different artists bring out different memorable moments. Certainly the ABBA show really captured the joy that is the spirit of the Loser's Lounge. The crowd were dancing on the tables! And Burt Bacharach is a perennial favorite. His songs work so well in the setting of the Fez. The first show we did in '93 was Bacharach--originally intended as a one-off--and it went so well that we had to keep doing it. And some shows, like Dusty Springfield and the Zombies, had surprisingly large turnouts.

WR: The Lounge seems to be a sexually balanced show, i.e., about an equal number of male and female performers, and a few drag queens to boot. Do you take this into account when choosing a tribute subject? Do you deal with issues based on this?

JM: It's not really an issue. We have females singing male songs and vice versa. Sometimes we change the key, sometimes a singer will change the lyric to suit the gender (and sometimes not).

WR: My friends once caught me air-guitaring to "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" with a broom in basement and never let me live it down. As a child and teenager learning the piano, were you imagining yourself as Billy "The Piano Man" Joel or Elton John? What artists and songs do you recall emulating at that time, either publicly or privately?

JM: Certainly Elton and Billy Joel were heroes. And often we've performed songs that I played over and over again at the piano in high school. "Bohemian Rhapsody" being one of them, as was "Evil Woman" by ELO, "Hold Me" by Fleetwood Mac, "Daniel" by Elton John, then later "Highway Star" by Deep Purple, but that's a whole different phase.

WR: The beauty of the Lounge is it feels halfway between Beatlemania and a high-grade karaoke show. Fantasies on both the audience's and performers' parts play a vital role in each show. What would be your ultimate band/performer and song that would reach down to the very roots of your rock dreams?

JM: That's a tough question, though I think we've already covered a lot of those. But Alice Cooper would be high on that list.

WR: You've done tributes for mostly 60's and 70's artists, most of them purely pop. Do you ever see the Lounge tackling other genres: prog rock, punk rock, new wave, heavy metal? What 80's artists do you see the Lounge getting into?

JM: We stick to pop music 'cause that's what I'm most drawn to and that's what I'm a fan of. And the 60's and 70's seem to be the golden age of pop music, but I know that's all relative. But we've talked about doing an "Arena Rock" night (Journey, Loverboy, Styx, etc.). I think Madonna or Duran Duran would make for a fun 80's theme night. But the suggestions keep coming, and we'll see.

WR: Some of your song choices for artists have been shocking--not for the material, but because one must be a die-hard fan to know some of these songs. Your ABBA show in particular pulled out some bizarre choices, most of which I knew being a sick jack ass who owns ABBA bootlegs. But there were certified ABBA fans all around me whispering, "What in the hell is this?" when you weren't doing numbers like "Dancing Queen." Is that you making those obscure calls, or do the performers come to you with these off-kilter choices?

JM: I like to find some obscurities that will surprise even the hard-core fans. That comes out of the research. But often singers will find stuff. Joe Hurley found a punk-rock version of a Jeremy Spencer song for the Fleetwood Mac show, and nobody believed that it was actually in any way connected to Fleetwood Mac. Lee Hazlewood came to the show and said, "Fuck the hits!" I think what separates us from other tribute shows is that it's not a "parade of hits". You can come to a show as a fan and still hear some surprises.

WR: I hadn't really made the connection before, but what the Lounge does isn't much different from a 70's act like Sha Na Na paying tribute to 50's music. I recall thinking Sha Na Na were a joke when I was a kid in the 70's. Do you get any sense that we're in the same boat now that Sha Na Na and their fans were in the 70's? Should we feel somehow depraved? And do you realize this makes you the 90's version of Bowser?

JM: If I'm the 90s version of Bowser, maybe I'll be able to get on Hollywood Squares! And I guess "That 70's Show" is like "Happy Days", and the High Llamas are like the Stray Cats. And what about the "Swing Revival"? Or Tiny Tim, or "Winchester Cathedral"? I guess there's always a part of pop culture that's looking back and drawing inspiration form the past.