Sonny Vincent

Born in New York, Sonny Vincent has been part of the history of American independent rock since the late 1960s, first in early lineups with hard rock and proto-punk leanings, then in the mid-1970s with Testors, a band associated with New York’s first punk scene. With Testors, Sonny Vincent played CBGB and Max’s Kansas City in a direct, tense and abrasive style, between raw rock’n’roll, garage rock and uncompromising punk. After the group disbanded in 1981, Sonny Vincent moved to Minneapolis, where he launched Sonny Vincent and The Extreme, then Model Prisoners and Shotgun Rationale, while developing projects related to film and multimedia art. Later based in the Netherlands for part of the 1990s, he continued a trajectory marked by frequent lineup changes and collaborations with musicians from the Stooges, the Dead Boys, The Damned and Rocket from the Crypt. He also spent several years as guitarist for Maureen Tucker, a former member of the Velvet Underground. His discography under his own name notably includes Good Dogs Die Young (1997), Parallax in Wonderland (1998), Hell’s Kitchen (2001), Soul Mates (2005) and Snake Pit Therapy (2021), with songwriting that remains faithful to a form of nervy, dry and unadorned rock.