The release date of Ramos’ debut album Her Majesty is just two weeks away. Sophia is due back in her hometown of New York City to prepare for the CD release party. First, she has to do this interview. But she’s nowhere to be found. She has impulsively taken off for parts unknown to study massage therapy.

After leaving many, many phone messages, her manager finally gets through on her cell phone. He doesn’t care where she is or what she’s doing; he just wants her to call me so we can do this interview.

It’s just as well that he doesn’t want to know the details of her latest escapade. When she does call me, she informs me with wickedly delighted laughter that after eleven days of the massage workshop, she ran off with the instructor. The two of them are now driving through the mountains of Southern California.

"Isn’t it romantic?" she asks gleefully. "My friends are so jealous!"

Her manager had to know what he was getting into. Ramos, a powerhouse rock performer with a penchant for rough language and even rougher onstage behavior, had already earned quite a reputation before signing with California-based Play Records.

Already, she’s been banned from NYC’s Brownies for trashing the stage. An even more notorious incident happened at the Mercury Lounge when the club owners decided to cut short her time slot without giving her advance warning. A tech walked onstage in the middle of a song and unplugged the bass amp. Livid, Ramos charged him with a mic stand. When her guitarist body-slammed her to prevent her from committing murder, she simply decided to take off her pants. Onstage. With the band still playing.

Ramos remembers that night fondly. "The place went ballistic. People threw chairs. Basically, I started a mini-riot. It was the same thing that happened at Brownies – they screwed me on the time slot too and cut our sound in the middle of a song. So I tore down the Brownies sign, threw the monitors across the room, put the microphone down my pants, and refused to leave the stage until my band and their instruments were safely outside."

She laughs. "New Yorker Magazine was there that night and wrote about it. Hey, it was great publicity! Clubs know I can pack a room, so they’ll continue to book me even if Brownies won’t!"

She insists that she’s really not psychotic. "I’m really a peaceful person. You just can’t fuck with me. In most situations, I’ll walk away from a fight, but if you have the nerve to bother me when I’m onstage, I have no compassion. You’ve fucked with the wrong person."

That attitude has not only put a wonderfully dangerous spark in her reputation and career, it’s also kept her alive. Born in the Bronx in 1974, she grew up in a neighborhood of crack addicts huddled in burned-out buildings. She left home at sixteen and survived by scouring garbage cans in wealthy neighborhoods for items to sell on the street.

Eventually, she teamed up with fellow hustler Pat Briggs, who was also the frontman for a dramatic and androgynous rock act called Psychotica. Their outrageous freakshows took them from NYC nightclubs to the national spotlight when they were invited to join the Lollapalooza Tour in 1996. Working the connections she made on that tour, Ramos later recorded tracks with Metallica’s Jason Newstead in San Francisco.

Back in New York, she began singing commercial jingles and doing voiceover work. She sang "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" for the 1999 Gatorade ad featuring Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm. She also began recording tracks that would turn into her debut album, a collection of raw, hungry, down and dirty rock and roll.

She saw her share of career disappointments. In September 2000, VH1named her "Best Unsigned Artist" on a new show called "Breakthrough." Before she could build on that publicity, the show tanked. She was then picked up by Sony Records in 1995 and quickly dropped when the label realized they didn’t know how to market an aggressive, female, Puerto Rican rock singer from New York.

Thankfully, other labels did have a clue. Ramos gained a Seattle fan who ran two record labels. Their rosters leaned more towards blues artists, so the management notified their colleagues at Play Records, who took one look at the gutsy rock goddess and fell madly in love.

"I’m so glad I found those guys," Ramos says. "It’s hard to find someone in this industry who isn’t full of shit. I’ve finally found someone with integrity. They made this great CD sampler with a really professional video on it, and they interviewed my mom, my cousin, my friends – it’s great. They’re sending it out everywhere."

They’re also releasing the album that Ramos has spent so long recording. Her Majesty was recorded at The Magic Shop in New York, an analog studio filled with vintage equipment.

"I fell in love with the studio when I saw it," Ramos remembers. "I’m not a fan of ProTools. It’s just too cold for me. I love the old school experience, playing with a band on two-inch tape, capturing the live feel. And I’m so proud of these songs. ‘Torn Down’ is real goddamn heavy anthem rock. Massive. The guitar sounds great. I also dig the vocal stuff on ‘Girlfriend’s Ghost.’ It really kicks ass."

The CD release party will be followed by an east coast tour, presumably under the watchful eye of a manager who hopes she won’t wander off again. But his job might get easier if Ramos follows through on an idea she’s toying with – leaving New York entirely and moving west.

"I’m sick of New York now," she says. "The city’s spirit has been broken. People are just going through the motions. People really did connect after the terrorist attacks, but they’re more disconnected now.

"I was on a subway recently, and I just felt the fear vibe. I knew what everyone was thinking. We were trapped down there. Everything was okay, but at any moment, something terrible could happen, and we wouldn’t be able to get out. I’m ready to move on."

She’s quiet for a moment, then starts thinking out loud. "Of course, I love Hawaii, too. When I visited there, I actually cried when it was time to leave. I’d never felt so attached to a place before. But I also just bought land in Puerto Rico. Or maybe I’ll move to Italy!"

For the management at Play Records, there’s not enough Zoloft in the world.

Visit Sophia on the web at www.sophiaramos.com

Copyright 2003 by Jennifer Layton