Richard Mgrdechian is an engineer, a problem-solver by nature. The problem, as he saw it: There weren’t any patriotic, pro-America hard rock bands.
So he created one.
They fight and die for our freedom No one had to ask them to do Without a moment’s hesitation
For the red, white and blue!
— “Soldiers of America”
Mgrdechian, 45, was a high school senior growing up in Bayside, Queens when “Born in the USA” hit. He loved the album cover — the blue jeans, the flag. He loved the title. He even loved the song — at first. “It definitely grabbed me right away because the music and chorus were so powerful and direct,” says Mgrdechian from his Midtown office. “I just assumed it was the ultimate pro-American song.”
He was in good company: In one of the daffier moments of his ludicrously easy 1984 re-election campaign, Ronald Reagan praised Bruce Springsteen for his “message of hope.”
He was the Gipper, he had the knack.
He took a bullet and he still came back!
— “In the Days That Reagan Ruled”
Mgrdechian, who considers Reagan “infinitely inspiring,” says that when he thought some more about “Born in the USA,” he “realized how vile it really was. The whole thing was all about ingratitude and failure — ‘You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much’ . . . ‘Sent me off to Vietnam to go and kill the yellow man.’ What type of lines are those?”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to detect the dismal undertone of much popular music, but as it happens Mgrdechian is a rocket scientist. After majoring in electrical engineering at CalTech, he worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and went on to make a killing as a techie inventor (he sold a Foursquare-like social-networking app called Vicinity Messaging to Yahoo) and investor (at the hedge fund Blackstone Group).
Now he’s financing the Monkees of conservativism, the Clash of the counter-counterculture — just think of them as Rage For the Machine.
Meet Madison Rising. Yes, they’re named after that Madison — fourth president, lead author of the Constitution. Kinda beats Def Leppard, no?
After months of posting ads on places like Craigslist and holding endless auditions, Mgrdechian put together the band piece by piece, finally finding himself a front man factory-built for photo shoots: throaty, tall Navy veteran Dave Bray, who was singing in bar bands in Pennsylvania. The other four dudes in the act refer to him as a girl magnet, though not in those precise words.
A heavy sound that fits into the Stone Temple Pilots/Creed spectrum seems to portend a lot of gigs at military bases and NASCAR tailgates, the kind of crowds Mgrdechian sees as his target audience as he builds Madison Rising on his own indie label. Their headbanging first single, “Soldiers of America,” is out on iTunes, with the rest of the album to come at the end of the month. In addition to “In the Days That Reagan Ruled,” other tracks will include “Honk If You Want Peace” (an anti-anti-war anthem) and “Before the Hyphens Came” (which says affirmative action causes divisiveness).
All the guys in the band are unabashed conservatives from the Northeast: guitarists Alex Bodnar and Christopher Schreiner, drummer Sam Fishman and bassist Ryan Kienle. Fishman says he traces his gratitude toward his country back to his grandfather’s story of escaping from a concentration camp during the Holocaust and making his way to the US. Bodnar plays a similar chord: “I’m from Brooklyn and you will not see a single American flag anywhere. Their country doesn’t pop in their head all day.”
But isn’t hard rock supposed to be kinda nihilistic and rage-y?
“We do have to destroy some people’s worldviews,” says Bray, “in order to give them a more clear understanding of what could be.”
Destroy? Yeah! Somebody smash something!
“Well,” says Bray, “challenge is a more appropriate word.”
OK, so Madison Rising (whose lyrics are a group effort from the band members and their patron) walks a narrow line — to try to restore a traditional, pre-postmodern view of America with songs that are, in the rock world, practically radical.
“We’re trying to make conservatism and patriotism cool again, and there’s no better way to do that than through rock music,” Mgrdechian says. He pictures a political rally (say, the Tea Party) that might normally draw 500 people. “But if it’s a rock concert, suddenly 5,000 people show up. It becomes a great way to leverage the political message.”
And underneath the fuzz guitars and the booming bass, there’s no mistaking the message. You’ll never hear Springsteen sing lyrics like these:
Tearing down an iron wall Acting in his greatest role Made his critics look like fools ‘Cause even jelly beans were cool!
— “In the Days That Reagan Ruled”