Walk down St. Mark's in New York, the Haight in San Francisco, Melrose in Los Angeles, or the main drag in any medium-size American city, and you'll see the type: arty-looking kids panhandling for a quarter to pay for the next meal, body piercing or a hour of studio time. Sometimes guilt takes over, and passersby drop a coin in the cup; other times, they wonder why these kids don't get off the streets, get a job and get a life. Ask the street-kids straight up, and they've undoubtedly got an excuse.

The five members of Remy Zero are a bit like those young punks on the street. And while their excuse is pretty mundane -- they're suffering for their art -- the result is a cut-above your average street-kid-hippies-tryin'-to-be-rock-stars gig. These guys are in fact artists, and have been since they first joined up in 1989.

"Cinjun's father was an artist and his mother was a cellist. My stepfather was in a space funk band back in the late Seventies. Greg's father is a jazz saxophonist," says bassist/guitarist Cedric LeMoyne. "So we all had this lineage of music that we just grew up around." When the five future members of Remy Zero were all around sixteen years old, they decided to forgo traditional education and move into a house in Birmingham, Alabama. There, LeMoyne, along with brothers Cinjun and Shelby Tate (vocals and guitar, respectively), Jeff Cain (guitar) and Greg Slay (drums) were free to explore their love of painting, filmmaking and experimental music a la Brian Eno and Television. "Shelby had old tape machines that his parents used to make spoken-word records back in the late-Sixties," continues LeMoyne. "And we decided that each of us would concentrate on a particular instrument to make us a real band."

With only a demo tape floating around, Remy Zero caught the ear of Radiohead, who asked them to join their U.S. tour supporting The Bends back in '95. "It was cool that other artists that we respected saw what we were doing," says Cinjun, "even though we were at a really, really dark place."

That place, as it happened, was Los Angeles. After moving from Birmingham to Atlanta to New Orleans -- couch to floor to futon along the way -- Remy Zero decided to leave their Southern roots behind for good and head out West. With a contract from Geffen records in hand, they landed in L.A., but the limo wasn't waiting for them.

"A couple of members were homeless for a while. Substance abuse crept in," remembers LeMoyne of their early days in L.A. "But instead of being broken by these weird experiences, we mythologized them. That became what we wrote the songs about, to distance ourselves from it." Remy's self-titled debut album, while delicate and sophisticated (and reportedly used as a reference by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich for OK Computer), sold a meek 2,000 copies, but didn't break their spirit. The quintet moved into Hollywood's Villa Elaine, a run-down flop-house known as the local repository for the city's low-lifes, and started again.

"It's a strange place -- it's really beautiful," romanticizes Tate. "Man Ray used to live there. Orson Welles lived there. The rent is super-cheap, and they don't care if you make music late at night." In their tiny room, Remy Zero concocted a textured, soaring rock & roll album that, while touching upon dismal themes, lifted them out of the darkness. "We wanted to make a story album, a big record. We wanted to be a big, bombastic band in some ways, an art band in others," says LeMoyne. Where Remy Zero was delicate, threatening to fall apart at any moment, Villa Elaine crashes, grinds and makes enough ruckus to fill a stadium.

Now they're just waiting for the opportunity.

HEIDI SHERMAN