The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

DEPARTMENTS

BIG BOYS = BIG FUN

AUSTIN — Unbeknownst to most Americans of the Northern persuasion, Texas's capital city has been a constant wellspring of new bands of virtually every genre. And now, spewing forth from the void, come the Big Boys, the latest in hardcore punk. But to classify these troupers with the rest of the punk horde would be like calling Eddie Van Halen "just another guitar player." Incorporating everything from folk to funk to metal to Motown, the finished product is spicy speedrock, including a horn section and some of the most inventive bass shiftriffs to come out of the hardcore heap.

Onstage, the band radiates spontaneity, encouraging members of the audience onto the stage for screaming "singalongs" and all-around headbanging. Lead singer Randy "Biscuit" Turner is a costume freak whose outfits change regularly with every show. Among his most popular is the four-hundred-pound-ballerina/ Divine look, replaced of late with brightly-colored wrestling leotards, complete with lizardmask.

The impulsiveness the Boys possess in concert seems to get a lot of milage—and is perhaps what holds the band together. In fact, when they started out onlv four years ago (they were skateboarding buddies). Chris Gates and Tim Kerr flipped a coin to determine who would play bass and who would play Qu.it3._r. Sts.tcs K.6ri ' \A/6 switched around (on instruments) a lot just to see what happens, just for fun. If it's screwed up, it's screwed up, but we'll try it and just see what it's like."

Just for fun, eh? Fun seems to be the main reason for this band's existence. Turner: "We're not preachers, so we feel bands like the Dead Kennedys have trapped themselves into having to Have some sort of urgent political message."

And the Big Boys' message? "FUN, FUN, FUN NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY,

FUN, FUN. FUN WE'LL HAVE SOME ANYWAY."

—From "Fun, Fun, Fun" (Turner/Gates/Ker/Schultz) Turner goes onto say that he is "especially proud of the scene in Austin and how our fans, instead of sitting around waiting to be entertained, go out and find entertainment and help promote it with homemade posters, shirts, etc." And while the highest praise an Austin punker can give his or her heroes is a little honest slamdancing, the overall emotion is completely friendly and jovial, a concept extremely difficult for outsiders to understand.

Sez drummer Fred Schultz: "People who go and see us for the first time that don't know everyone is friends will be saying. 'Look at those people killing each other!'

But since the whole idea is having fun, the feeling stays innocently amicable. In fact, when I caught the band at Austin's Nightlife club, Turner accidentally spat on a cute, young blonde in the front row, and proceeded to knee! down and clean the offensive foam from the fan's defiled arm, even going so far as to give her a glass of water to wash it off.

The Big Boys have embarked on their first mid-western U.S. tour (they had earlier been playing the southwest circuit, from San Antonio and Austin to L.A., and have led off for such "now" celebs as Grace Jones, X and the Go-Go's), and thus move up to the level of National Security Risk!

NOW GO START YOUR OWN BAND!!!!

Cuda Giles

Y00-H00 MAXIMUS!

We certainly wish to make no claims about the literacy rate of Men At Work's Greg Ham, or the Australian people as a whole. Nonetheless, it strikes us as entirely typical that said Mr. Ham would spend his spare time in front of a camera reading "The Agony And The Ecstacy Of Young Love." In fact, were Mr. Ham less familiar with the breeding habits of dingoes, kangaroos and the plural of "platypus," he might be much more interested in more literate publications. Such as the one you're holding in your hands. Unfortunately, Mr. Ham and his entire band prefer to read publications such as the one you see him pictured with. Thus, it strikes us as entirely fair that a nuclear war will destroy him— and, indeed, all of us—within the next two weeks.

CRIMINALS CHEWED OUT

ASTATULA, FLA.-Federal agents here ended a rash of mail thefts with the arrest of two fourth-graders.

The devious criminals, aged 10 and 11, had swiped $300 in checks from mailboxes by "fishing" for the mail with a wad of bubble gum on a stick.

Punishment for the boys' involvement in what police are calling "The Great Bubble Gum Caper" has not yet been determined, although a spanking and sending them to bed without supper have not been ruled out.

Heather Joslyn

POWERTRIP WANT TO BE YOUR FRIENDS!

NEW YORK—No one would seriously argue that the average I.Q. of most heavy metal bands soars much past 90, or that the cranial capacities of your typical punk are any more impressive. So what happens when you form a hybrid of these two brilliant genres? You get Powertrip.

Says lead singer Jeff Dahl: "I'm a mindless guy. I'm not the most intelligent creature on earth. But that's something I accept. I hated all the intellectual guys I knew in high school."

One of Powerfrip's songs, "Permanent Damage," has the insistent refrain, "When we cut, we bleed!...When we cut, we bleed!" Says Dahl: "That's about hurting yourself. I've got a masochistic streak in me that goes about a mile wide. It's a song I wrote for myself after I leapt off the stage and shattered my tail bone."

Founded by Dahl after he left the Angry Samoans, one of L.A.'s most notoriously cretinous punk bands (CREEM writer Gregg Turner is a member), Powertrip call their music "Speed Metal." "We take the best things from punk and the best from metal. From metal we take the musicianship, the loud full sound, good song arrangements and real good equipment. From punk we get the speed, intensity and attitude, and we avoid the heavy metal excesses like long guitar solos and over-dramatic crap like excessive stage shows and pyrotechnics."

HM bands that Dahl admires are "Motorhead—they're loud, fast, aggressive, unpretentious and they can play better than just about anybody," also "Girlschool—they really put out," and Cheetah Chrome. Bad metal is "Def Leppard, Styx, Triumph and Rush.. .Ozzy is kind of amusing and I like quite a bit of Van Halen but they're not my favorites. Rose Tattoo's first album was great but the last two have really bit." And the oldband influences are "Blue Cheer, the Stooges, of course MC5, and early Alice Cooper."

Powertrip released a 7-inch, 4-song, self-produced EP just prior to their "Death Trip Tour '82." It contained the abovementioned "Permanent Damage," a nasty little piece entitled "Have A Nice Day," "No Place," and "Lab Animal." The latter, says Dahl, "is one of our serious songs—about a girl I knew that got thrown in women's prison and got abused pretty badly."

The band's album was to have been released by Faulty Products this spring but Chapter 11 got in the way. Now it's scheduled to be put out by a new L.A.-based company, Public Records. In addition to the three songs from the EP the album will contain such titles as "Die," "Demons," "Iron Horse" (about the band's presiding passion, motorcycles) and their most accessible song "Caught In The Act," which could appeal to a mass audience.

Behind Dahl are big John Bliss (ex-Marina Swingers) on drums, Mike Bailey, a veteran of heavy metal club bands, on guitar, and novice Frank Mone on bass. Powertrip recently went on another cross-country tour. How is the public reacting to speedmetal? "Everywhere we go we've been well received," says Dahl, "but we can't get booked at a lot of places because we don't fit into some people's safe little categories. People who book clubs are some of the most mentally deficient people on the face of the earth." He continues: "a large portion of our following are girls who are rather loose. We've got a very big female audience which is weird because I consider us one of the goddamnedest ugliest bands I can think of."

Powertrip were to have toured for the third time in less than a year—this time a 16-day jaunt to the U.K. playing the Dingwall's chain, but, alas, the franchises are dropping like flies and the tour was cancelled. "It would have been fun going to a country where the national dish is Spam," says Dahl. Can a note of chauvinism be detected in this Vietnam veteran?

"Absolutely. We're completely, totally pro-American. None of this subversive anarchy crap. If you don't like how it is, you should work to change it or split to some country you think is ideal." Can a band this subtle fail to hit it big?

Richard Fantina

5 YEARS AGO

PRETTY VACANT

Sid Vicious never made it home for the holidays due to his most recent run-in with the law. Trouble began when Sid and a few friends dropped into Hurrah's in New York to see Skafish. Vicious took a fancy to Patti Smith's brother Todd's girlfriend Tarrah and commenced pinching her on the rear. When Todd asked him to cease and desist, Sid allegedly gashed him above the eye with a broken Heineken bottle. Todd ended up with five stitches, and Sid was arrested the next day, and a grand jury has accused him of "attempting to seriously and permanently disfigure" Smith. Patti Smith is urging her brother to sue for damages. Sid's trial for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen begins January 2.