RAZOR NIGHTS

DD + Mario "Moonrunner" Gomez

THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

At a Chinese Rocks Halloween 2017 gig, Mario "Moonrunner" Gomez told me he wanted to start a new band. We'd first crossed paths when his band Jet Kill Radio gigged at Bar Eleven with Chinese Rocks in 2012, and I remembered that he had real talent, lead singing while playing drums simultaneously.

at the Chinese Rocks gig, where Mario asked me to start Razor Nights

After quitting The Little Richards and that whole scene in January 2018, the timing was perfect for me to refocus my creative energy with someone I'd never worked with, before.

He emailed me 3 demo songs he'd been working on, and i loved what i heard! We soon got to work filming a few videos with our friend Neil Revenga on 2nd guitar (who i'd worked with before as the Mick Mars in our Motley Crue tribute Too Fast For the Devil).

Initial lineup: Moonrunner - lead vocals/DD - guitar, backup vocals/Neil Revenga - guitar, backup vocals

At first, we had 2 guitars and no bassist because we thought if The Cramps could do it, so could we. We also had no drummer, just a tambourine.

Neil, DD, and Moonrunner filming a video in Neil's kitchen

Eventually, we decided we would like to have a classic rock n roll setup with a bassist + drummer. I recruited drummer Matt Franco, who I'd previously worked with in Flaggs; Mario got bassist Rick Blair, who he'd been in Multiple Stab Wounds and Makeout Boys with in the 1990s.

"Come Without Warning" era lineup: Moonrunner - lead vocals/DD - guitar, backup vocals/Rick Blair - bass/Matt Franco - drums

Franco, DD, Mario, and Rick outside the Til Two

"Last Days" era lineup: Moonrunner - lead vocals/DD - guitar/Rick Blair - bass/Andrew Hockenberry - drums

Around the time of the second album, I started feeling disillusioned. Franco got an awesome job offer in Los Angeles, and moved away. Mario wasn't as interested in my ideas for backup vocals or lyrics anymore, he wanted my guitar playing to be more like Johnny Ramone's (all downstrokes), and I grew weary of his songs always being about Satanism, Charles Manson, or cocaine. Cocaine is a drug I've never done in my life, and Mario was straightedge; he only indulged in Diet Coke.

To me, "Last Days" has a dark, more uptight energy to it, not as fun and carefree as our first. I made key changes and bridges to a few tunes plus composed all the music for one song Mario named "Pretty Little Thing", but I felt my contributions overall were limited. This album wasn't really a melding of rock n roll minds, like the first. When "Last Days" came out, I decided to quit.

Although I walked away from the group, we maintained a cordial friendship. In 2024, he called me and said we ought to revive a duet we tried working on back when we started the band called "You Never Can Win". I agreed it would be a nice song to revisit, and we could even get it done remotely on opposite coasts via email.

Unfortunately, it's the morning of 03/09/25 and I received the news yesterday that Mario passed away after a long and difficult illness. I'm still processing the news, but compiling all of this content is very therapeutic.

Currently working on a link with a complete gig list (during my tenure) including setlists, flyers, and as many videos as i can salvage. Franco just emailed me a zip file full of stuff I need to go through and add to what I've already got, so the upload is going to take awhile; please bear with us.

Mario was always a joker, and i like to think that by living past 30 and proving his childhood doctors wrong, he got the last laugh.

Razor Nights was a damn good American rock n roll band.