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Rhythm and muse: Tom and Mike of hot dance duo Dangerous Muse talk about loving the '80s, being "supersexual," and the power of eyeliner
Advocate, The, April 25, 2006 by Adam B. Vary
On a cool Saturday afternoon in a nondescript Hollywood photo studio, the members of Dangerous Muse--the new and impossibly pretty electronic dance-pop duo of Mike Furey and Tom Napack--prepare to shoot their first music video. It's for their hit single "The Rejection," which in November 2005 debuted at number 2 on the iTunes dance charts with practically zero promotion. As a skeleton crew preps the small, all-white set--an homage to cheap and simple early-'80s videos--vocalist and lyricist Mike, 23, consults with director Mike Korbic over the video's female dancers' outfits. Keyboardist and programmer Tom, 21, chills off to the side to a mix CD of dance music (Soft Cell, New Order) playing in the background, at one point quietly mimicking the chords to Madonna's newest single, "Sorry," on his trusty "keytar."
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Finally, the set in place, the proto-Robert Palmer black lace and stiletto outfits OK'd, Mike--sporting the requisite skintight low-rise jeans and loose-fitting black top--gets into place, the dancers strategically placed around him, waiting for the director's cue. Korbic calls action, then for playback. The song's Depeche Mode-esque synth chirps pump through the speakers, and the women swarm Mike, clawing at his clothes and pulling him to the floor as he struggles to sing to the camera lyrics like "I'd like to like you like you like me / But I can't, please understand."
The meaning seems clear--a sexy gay boy trying his best to fend off rabid female suitors. "It can definitely be read that way, for sure," Mike says with a smile the next day by the rooftop pool of a West Hollywood hotel. But he continues, "I would like to leave it up to the individual listening to the song. I wouldn't want to limited it to any specific interpretation."
Mike's not being cagey. He and Tom are the product of a growing pansexual New York City nightlife they discovered while students at Fordham University in the Bronx, so much so that when asked they both avoid placing a definitive flag anywhere on the Kinsey scale of sexuality.
"We're supersexual," concedes Mike, laughing. "I don't think it fits in Kinsey's chart. It's multidimensional. I grew up in Maine. In Maine nobody's cool with anything different at all. So when I came to New York I thought it was awesome that I was able to express myself in many different directions. It was so cool to move to New York and to be a part of this nouveau sexual revolution."
"I think in this day and age," adds Tom, "especially in the New York nightlife that we're a part of, sexuality isn't a label anymore. Everyone goes out, and you don't think of people as gay or straight or bi. Everyone's there, and a bunch of things happen. No one thinks twice about it."
"There's no such thing as 'out' anymore," Mike interjects. "It's like, everybody's out. People are always trying to attribute behaviors to labels, and a lot of these behaviors are being stripped from genders. Even though you look like a man, you don't have to act 'like a man.'"
Like, for example, Tom's indigo eyeliner, which he says he wears every day, "to class or whenever I see my family or go out to dinner or whatever"--he gets quieter--"and they have to deal with it." Even though his parents may not quite understand it, Tom explains, "a lot of my friends come to expect this from me. At school on the days that I don't wear it, they say I look weird."
Mike immediately interrupts. "I like you without eyeliner too," he says gently to Tom. "You're fine."
In fact, it quickly becomes apparent when talking with the pair how much the two have grown to complement each other in the short two years and change since they first met on a Fordham production of The Who's Tommy. They often finish each other's sentences or jump in when one gets off track. Where Mike listens to underground music so new he often doesn't know the names of who made it, Tom says he "only likes '80s music," modifying his statement with a gamut of bands like the Who, Bauhaus, Peter Gabriel, and the Smashing Pumpkins. "Nowadays? Shoot, man, I don't listen to any new music."
To be clear, this is a platonic partnership, but like many successful bands the two have spent so much time together that in many ways they might as well be dating. "I couldn't work with anybody other than Tom," says Mike. "I don't know how the hell we found each other. Something must have been right in the cosmos. I had written songs on the piano for a long time, but they sounded stupid. I'm not a singer-songwriter. I wanted something that had a harder edge to it, and you just can't get that with a piano. You can't have something [with a piano] that somebody's going to dance to."
"To find someone who finally was at least moderately interested in what I was interested in," explains Tom, "was just the biggest thrill that I could've had."
