DOCKERS ROCKERS Aged Inventory play the Intrepid (top left) as their fans let loose, June 2009.

‘Shit, I never played guitar. I never played drums like I wanted to.’”

Almost all of the Wall Street band members I talked to for this story brushed off the suggestion that they helped drive the economy into the ground. But during the boom, many of them raked in seven figures trading bonds on the backs of people with mortgages they couldn’t afford. When borrowers defaulted en masse, often losing their homes, they effectively killed Wall Street’s fantasy band camp, too. Groups that had always played for free suddenly joined the horde of musicians who compete for gigs and even pay to play. Face to face, these traders were fun-loving, thoughtful, hard-working guys who really believed that they, too, were victims of the recession. None of them seemed in the least bit evil. But for years, they were runnin’ with the Devil.

REDIT SUISSE WAS hardly the first financial firm to encour- age its employees to get together and rock out for charity and positive PR. In fatter times, before the president was propos- ing a new billion-dollar stimulus package every month, Wall Street–sponsored groups seemed as common as company softball teams. They were blues or cover bands, mostly, with names like Soul Focus (from American Century Investments), the Loaners (Quicken Loans), the Residuals (Fleet Capital Leasing), and the Fifth (Lehman Brothers).

These days the Fifth’s bassist, Ken Umezaki, a 45-year-old Princeton grad, blends in with the freelancers sharing a Wi-Fi hub on a May afternoon at a Park Avenue Starbucks, but he used to be a managing director at Lehman. His division often traded on the very risk that fueled the crash. “Even away from the band thing,” he says, “I’ve gotten the whole ‘Oh my God, you’re the reason why things got so bad!’ ” But isn’t he “No,” he insists. “Not as far as I know.” Then again, his band plays mostly for friends and fellow former Lehman folks. “So they’re not going to yell at us…unless we suck.”

One of his bandmates, affable guitarist and former Lehman

colleague Greg Gentile, 33, adds, jokingly, “It’s the only cool thing I have left! We’re clinging to it! Don’t take this away from me!” These monsters of corporate rock weren’t all white-collar white guys covering “Brown Sugar,” but their musical portfolios were far from diverse: Tom Petty, the Black Crowes, and the Doobie Brothers cropped up regularly on set lists. The bands were extensions of the traders’ hard-charging personalities and an emblem of bull-market abundance. Members’ backstories are almost always the same: A high-ranking company exec who played guitar e-mailed a coworker-guitarist and asked if he knew any other musicians in his department. They dusted off their old gear, picked a few hits from their youth, and rehearsed.

Some of the gigs were fantastic. For an April 2006 retirement party for a Van Halen–loving coworker, Aged Inventory bassist Mullarkey sent David Lee Roth’s manager a flurry of e-mails, eventually negotiating a personal appearance in exchange for a significant payment to Roth’s pet charity, Songs of Love, which gets music superstars to pen personalized songs for terminally ill children (friends of the retiree covered the party’s costs). Roth’s manager had only one request, says Mullarkey: “Can we spray Jack Daniel’s on the crowd?” Diamond Dave showed up in a quilted, electric-blue racing suit, brought his own lead guitarist, and performed four songs with Aged Inventory: “Jump,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” and ZZ Top’s “Tush.” As it turned out, the spray of Jack Daniel’s barely licked the crowd.

“Hands down, the best experience I had with the band,” says Aged
Inventory singer Allen Oppici, 45, back at the bar near Credit Suisse. “Dave
gave us approving nods a few times.”

Even the company gigs came with sweet fringe benefits. Financial firms rewarded their bands with plum shows at House of Blues–sized venues or Hard Rock Cafes. They flew their acts to parties in Connecticut, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Nashville; hired sound and lighting techs; and rented all the backline. They paid more than $7,000 a pop, plus expenses, to send their bands to the finals of the Fortune Battle of the Corporate Rock Bands at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (after shelling out a

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66 november 2009 / breakfast served all day at sPIn.Com