July 9^th 7pm

The lightning sizzles through the gray sky like a cat o’ 9 tails, the thunder threatens to crack open the asphalt in front of us, and the blinding sheets of rain slam and rattle our beat- up Volvo. It’s starting to seem like we’re swimming to the show, not driving to it. Bob Maloney’s behind the wheel. He’s the bass player of the soon to be ultra- mega stoner-soul band, Quitter. Mark Thompson’s riding shotgun, he’s the bad-ass head honcho behind Tortuga records, and Scissorfight’s manager. I’m in the back with J Bennett, my editor at Boston’s Weekly Dig, the newspaper I write for. Motley Crue’s ‘Shout at the Devil’ blasts out of the heaving speakers.

"Dude, We’re gonna end up with extra tickets." J’s mulling things over. "This always happens. We’re scrambling for tickets, wondering if we’re gonna have enough, and then we get there and there’s too many waiting for us."

"The third world is starving", I say, and we have too many free tickets for the Cult?"

"Whatever", Mark says. "All I want to know is, how drunk are we going to get? And will there be pussy there?"

10:30 pm

Ian Astbury thanks Providence, Rhode Island for coming out. We are, of course, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

11:30 pm

The street outside of the Palladium is littered with rock and roll burn-outs and retro-metal sluts in mini-skirts. I’m leaning on the House of Blues police car, waiting for everybody, so I can get the fuck out of here. Theoretically, I’m supposed to be up at 5:30 for work, and we’re still an hour out of Boston. Bob and J are shmoozing with some of the other Boston rockers that have made the ride up, but they’re mostly punk-ass writers, so I’m not interested. I watch Mark wolf down a giant mustard covered sausage, and then stick his tongue down some rock chick’s throat a few minutes later. There’s a whole drama going on behind me. A 25 year old suburban chick in spandex is crying her mascara into a gooey mess.

This whole little scene can’t help but to make me think of Monster Magnet’s ode to girls like this, ‘Bummer’. "You’re looking for the one who fucked your mom, it’s not me", Dave Wyndorf explains. "I know life’s a bummer baby, that’s got precious little to do with me." I wonder if she’ll see the irony of it all next time she plays that record. Probably not.

1:30 am

I finally get home. I’m so exhausted, I feel like crying. I keep thinking of that line from the Drunk Horse song, ‘Greasy Mustache’- "Been up for weeks, like a mad scientist, it ain’t stopping cuz you want to rest".

My fumbling with the keys wakes up Stacey. "Good show?" She asks me, squinting through the dark. "Pretty cool, yeah." I say. "Hey, you know what I’m thinking? I should get a job as an air courier. Then I’d be able to sit home and wait for the phone to ring. They’d call up and go, ‘Ken, you want to go to Japan today? We’ve got some eyeballs on ice here’, and I’d go the fuck to Japan. That’d be cool, right?"

"Are you trying to get out of going to work tomorrow?" Stacey asks me. I think I probably am.

I wake up at noon the next day, eat a bowl of cereal, and turn on some Fu Manchu. I’m 5 and a half hours late for work, but I’ve never felt more right on schedule in my life.

You can call Dave Wyndorf a rock star all you want, accuse him of debauchery and excess bordering on the paranormal, and he won’t even cop a plea. But one thing you can’t call him is a sell-out. Sure, Monster Magnet might be the favorite sons of the rock’n’roll brotherhood, the only cats with bottles of decent champagne to bust over your head, but Monster Magnet’s inexplicable success has more to do with the kids in the street than the cats in the head office. 

No, the reason Monster Magnet is where they are is because of the spark that flares up deep in the hearts and groins of every teenage loser when a record like "Dopes To Infinity’ or ‘Power Trip’ starts to spin on a cheap assed ghetto-blaster out in the woods somewhere amidst cheap beer, cheaper pot, and hopeless crazy talk that doesn’t seem so fucking crazy anymore when Wyndorf exclaims, with all authority, "Well I died a million times, and I choose my culture well, and I’ll build myself again, and you can all go straight to hell!" The acid metal guitars swirl with superhuman electricity and satanic bombast." I’m never gonna work another day in my life, I’m way too busy power tripping!" Cue the thunderous applause for the greasy haired motherfucker in the leather pants who just achieved that rarest of rock’n’roll’s magic tricks…transcendence. Maybe you’re still a loser, but at least you don’t feel like one anymore, and that’s half the battle.

Earlier this year, Magnet Honcho Wyndorf had a brilliant idea about how to follow up 1998’s gold record ‘Power Trip’, an album he wrote in self-imposed exile in Las Vegas, a silent observer in a sea of neon, greed and madness. This time he planned on taking his act to America’s version of ‘The ending of all things’- Vietnam. He’d sweat out the heat and disease of the napalmed jungles, write the fucking record, and come back a disgraced anti-hero, just like Martin Sheen in ‘Apocalypse Now’. Well, it worked in theory, anyway. "The thing about Vietnam is, they don’t really like Americans." Especially long haired ones. "I had a drug record from a while ago, so they didn’t want to let me in. It came down to, ‘Ok, we’ll let you in, but you’ve got to pay us this much money…it became cost-prohibitive, so I couldn’t do it." As the Backyard Babies say, ‘Plan B is just so unfair’. "I had 6 months to put this record together, and I spent most of the time recreating tour scenarios at motels on the weekends." Not so suddenly, the time to hesitate was through. "If you want to know what kind of force I was channeling to write this record, it’s pretty simple- I had a deadline. I sat down and wrote the whole record in a week, walking around with a notebook, scribbling stream-of-consciousness lyrics."

Despite it’s hastily constructed conception, the end result, "God Says No", is state of the art Monster Magnet, a filthy, swaggering monolith of all things rock. Time to hit the road with this bitch. Although Buckcherry and Fu Manchu were both in the running to join the campaign to save rock and roll, ultimately, the biggest guns of all were called upon- the Cult. Together, they’re spreading the heavy gospel nationwide in a quest for fire that might never stop burning. As the rejuvenated Ian Astbury announced at the Cult’s comeback gig at South by South West earlier this year, "You now have permission to rock again".

"Where the fuck are we? We gotta get out of California, man." The illustrious Dave Wyndorf called me from a payphone somewhere on the West Coast in early June to testify on the glory of rock and the miracle of pussy…

Tour support, which keeps you on the road longer than you deserve to be, because you’re not making the money yourself, distribution…you get your stuff distributed to a lot more places than if you were on an independent. That’s about it.

No. Definitely not, we don’t have those kind of sales. I’ve made and spent millions keeping Monster Magnet alive, though. It’s like, I have a decision to make. I can take the money, or I can put it back into the band and continue the crusade. If we sold 12 million records, than I’d be a millionaire, but Magnet’s only sold about a million worldwide. That’s not a lot…I mean, it’s enough for me, fuck yeah, but a millionaire? No. But God help everybody if I become a millionaire because the show’s gonna look like ‘Apocalypse Now’…helicopters flying down and strafing the audience…

They do, and right now is prime time for Monster Magnet to get shot down. As soon as you climb up a rung of the ladder, they expect more from you. Right now, my record company expects more than we’ve had to give them before, and gives us less support at the same time. If you have some success, they just expect you to hold it. So instead of, ‘Yeah, let’s push this ‘space-Stooges’ thing, they figure, ‘Well, they got this far, let’s see where they get’. It’s the kind of thing that usually ends with the band getting dropped. The labels are usually only good for a couple of albums. The cool thing is, though, that we’ve already established a Monster Magnet franchise, you know? I can take this band anywhere. We can set up camp anywhere in the world and continue on, whether we get dropped or not.

Yeah, that’s good to know. Man, I wish more bands would get it, that rock can be a happy thing, you know? You don’t have to be a pussy to play rock. Your decadence should be taken with a smile, or else it’s not really decadence. I mean, I’m not in this life to be fucking tortured. I deal with my demons, get them out through my music, and get on with my shit, and I wish to hell other bands would understand that. But right now, rage is the order of the day. I don’t know, maybe that’s what the kids are really all about, but…

That’s absolutely true. I mean when you’re fat and happy, if you’re white and living in America, you just don’t have it that bad. ‘Oh, there’s too much information, and my parents don’t care about me’, even that starts snow-balling because the kids start lessening their defenses because the media tells them to. They start thinking they have the right to complain-‘issues, I have issues’, until finally, they don’t even know what it’s like to go, ‘Alright, this is fucked’, and get up and do something about their lives.

Well, it’s flattering. I think I might’ve invented the term ‘Drug Rock’ from the first couple of singles, you know, ‘It’s a satanic drug thing, you wouldn’t understand’. And we went around with this psychedelic light show, yelling about ‘Everybody eat LSD!’ but the actual sound of Stoner Rock? I’d say that was Kyuss.

Fuck, that’s right…

That’s because we flew the banner high. We took our cues from the Butthole surfers, Spacemen 3, and Loop. I never knew that there was a market for stuff like this, I mean I was in a punk band, and I quit, and I was just listening to those ‘Nuggets’ records, and all of a sudden, there was Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, early Soundgarden, the Cult… the Cult was the only real rock band to come out of the 80’s, probably the only real rock band since the 70’s…I mean, everybody else was all, grindcore, thrash metal…but the Cult was like classic rock. So they were a huge influence… so was Zodiac Mindwarp.

Zodiac - those guys held the fucking line, man, when everything else was tumbling down. And then, when everything started happening in Seattle, it looked like it was gonna be fucking great. Of course, it all collapsed within 4 years, but it really looked like rock was back. Even early White Zombie, not the music as much, but the look- I mean, I think it was understood what was cool about punk, what was cool about old rock, and what was not cool about the current state of rock, which was corny head-stocks, and stupid hair, but that’s a fragile little line. The mass audience doesn’t understand that line, but guys like Mark Arm from Mudhoney did. And I think all those bands in Seattle were a lot more influenced by the Cult then they wanted to admit, because they were so self-conscious about fucking everything. So were happy as shit to be doing this tour.

Oh, it’s definitely a campaign, and Ian Astbury knows it, too.

I know, (laughs) but when you do this stuff, and you do a bunch of records that don’t do so well, you have to do something else as an artist, or you’ll go crazy. You can’t even see the forest from the trees when you’re in them, and it’s really easy for us to stand back and go, ‘Oh the Ian Astbury record sucked’, or whatever, but he had to do something, rather than nothing, or he never would have come back. You gotta keep mixing it up, and he had to go around that bend to go, ‘ok, I can do Cult songs again’.

Well, because of the situation with the Cult, it’s all about engaging the audience this time out. With those guys headlining, we just don’t have enough room for a big set. Usually we’ve got fire, shit blowing up, psychedelic light shows…I’m really into platforms lately, you know climbing onto them and jumping off.

You’ve got to go with what’s cheap and available…the Power Trip record was almost burlesque, you know? Like, ‘Give me sex, give me drugs, give me money’, and everything just seemed to fall into place. The girls just started showing up, and they obeyed the record, you know? They’d show up and go, "I want to get naked!’ and I’d say, ‘Get up there.’ Next thing you know, they’re doing live sex shows on stage. It was very cool.

Just chicks that showed up and wanted to dance, man.

If I could have, I would. I’d talk about that everyday. But you know, the real people are even better than the strippers. Real girls will go for months or years waiting for that moment to go absolutely ape-shit. And then, all of a sudden, here we are…

I’ll probably write a bunch of stuff, at the end of it, you know.

I try to make pretty music sometimes, but it kind of falls flat, the voice, y’know. But I’d love to get in the studio and produce some good music. Whether it’d be commercial or not, that’s another story.

No, it was directed by this guy, Joseph Cahn. I called up Hype Williams, he’s a big rap video director, and I told him that I wanted to make a rap video for Monster Magnet, and he said, "well, I don’t do white people."

Swear to God. Pretty cool, right? And he said, "But my director of photography, he knows exactly what I do, he can do it." So I called up Joseph, and he goes, "Absolutely, that’s a great idea, where do you want to do it?" I said, "Vegas. I want to shoot it on the Vegas strip. I want every rap cliché you can imagine, but I still want it to be rock. That’s a fine line, and I’m gonna trust you with that." Like, I wanted a muscle-car instead of a Mercedes, stuff like that. And he took it from there. And what he did, I didn’t even know this, he swiped his own video. He shot a Maze video in the same spot, so he ripped himself off. So anyway, that was the extent of my directing- "Put this here, put that there." Pretty easy. That was all just about making a commercial that people would watch.

I did that. I went to LA to shoot one, and the director was just totally out of gas, it was like ‘Spinal Tap’. Bad girls, man, bad looking women. My management did some deal with Playboy where they were going to be totally naked, but they were like, Miss September 1982, or something. (laughs) So, I didn’t like it. I scrapped the whole thing, I was like, "This is not what I’m paying for". It sent us into a video tail spin, so I made a really cheap video, but MTV ain’t buying no rock these days, unless it’s the bad stuff, so…if the record does really well, I’ll do another big video, if it doesn’t, fuck ‘em. It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s like a moot point. When MTV came along, suddenly the rock was all about the image. It used to be that stuff like magazine articles were really important, now all that's out the window. Now it's just like, "Do you look good? Because it’s more important to look good than to sound good." So fuck those guys.

Ugh. I was not happy, not smiling. The only reason I did that thing was because I got to work with Bob Ezrin, the guy who produced the first Alice Cooper records, Kiss…that’s why I took that job, not because of the movie, just because I got to be in the studio with him for two days, and I got to ask him about what it was like to produce "The Ballad of Dwight Frye". It was pretty great. Otherwise, that movie was a piece of shit.

You know what, though? On something like a soundtrack, I don’t mind mixing it up with the nu-metal guys, because some kid’s gonna buy that record, and he’s going to be so fucking sick of that shit, and he’ll hear Monster Magnet, and go, "Finally, some real rock."

It was 1993, and I was a low budget media terrorist halfway to gone on whiskey and pills. The venerable Dimitri Monroe had just escaped from a psychopathic glam rock chick, and an angry Boston mob, to Ohio. For more information on how well that little life decision worked out, just read his column. Dimitri was the host of my TV show, ‘Welcome To Weird City’, a weekly foray into the gutter of fringe culture, the palace of the big freak-out, where splatter heroes, amateur porn skanks, dangerous conspiracy burn-outs, drug bingeing outlaw bikers, and lower echelon rock stars converged to drink, fight, and prove some vague point about justice, freedom, and rock and roll. That was the idea, anyway. Mostly it was broken equipment, surly, hung-over guests, suspensions and disclaimers, shameful behavior and regret in sound and color. Without the ‘show -up and blow —up’ alley cat charm of Dimitri…well, we were already fucked, now just a little more so. We briefly flirted with the idea of replacing him with Chaz Halo, and hoping that nobody would notice. Chaz isn’t the kind of cat that can hang with getting blood in his well —gelled hair, however. We finally decided on an alcoholic homeless puppet named ‘Mr. No Legs’, and a mildly retarded headbanger from the south shore of Massachusetts named Krakus. It was actually a lot better on tape than it reads.

Marilyn Manson and his spooky kids were blowing through town on their first national tour in support of that horrible first record of theirs, and we thought, given the freak-show nature of their scene, a little Weird City interface would liven things up considerably. Promotions people are such whores that they’ll agree to anything if they think it’ll sell more tickets, so they scheduled us, along with a slew of real Boston media, to interview the band at a hotel conference room downtown, the morning of their show at the Middle East club. This cat I knew, Henry, was our puppeteer. He was a professional improv comic. As professional as a job like that gets, anyway. So he was away on some gig, and my smoke-dulled, liquor fueled, Armenian Rasta room-mate John decided he could commandeer Mr. No Legs, no sweat. "He’s a puppet that says ‘fuck’ and coughs a lot, how hard is that?" This was mistake number one. Mistake number two was dragging an agitated Krakus along. He had the good taste to hate Marilyn Manson from the moment he saw the press photo. " I don’t like these guys, they look like a bunch of fuckin’ queers", he told me between sips of Miller-in-the-can, "And I ain’t talking to no queers." I told him that he only had to ask them about manly things, like chicks and Motley Crue, so he reluctantly agreed.

Luckily, I was too hung-over that morning to make the interview, so my co-producer, Hollywood Rich, shot the interview. "The place was packed with all these newspaper guys and record label chicks", he reported to me. "They told us we were only allowed three questions each. We had to line up like fucking circus animals. Marilyn Manson and his guitar player, Twiggy, were sitting there at a card table, looking bored and pissed off. One by one, the ‘reporters’ went up to the table and asked shit about influences, and censorship, or whatever. Marilyn would answer the question like he was smarter than everybody in the room, and Twiggy would only give one-word answers. It was pretty boring and lame, really. "

It didn’t stay that way for long. Finally, Weird City got its chance to take on the corporate rock machine. "John froze, man, it was a riot. He’s standing there with this puppet, y’know, this white, dread locked guy in thick glasses with a fucking muppet covering his arm, fumbling with some notes, going, ‘So, is ‘Cake and Sodomy’ a political statement?’ with Mr. No legs’ mouth opening and shutting, totally out of synch. These Manson fuckers aren’t even responding, they think it’s some kind of joke. The publicity guy goes, ‘Ok, next’, totally dismissing us, right? And then Krakus steps up to the plate and goes, ‘So, you guys like to go 4-wheeling?"

"Everybody in the room cracks up except for the rock stars and their little body guard there, who’s pissed. Krakus keeps going. "Cuz I like 4-wheeling, especially on gravel. I get my brother’s truck and go down to the quarry. I’m doing fucking spin-outs, I’m blasting the tunes, like maybe some Halen…you queers like Van Halen?"

"Twiggy over-turns the table and storms off. The press guy starts yelling that the interviews are over until we leave. I’d say it was a successful mission."

That night, Marilyn Mason was playing a sold-out show downstairs at the Mid East, and I showed up with a hi- 8 camera to shoot the proceedings. Hot chick industrial pop band Zia and fat, sorry-assed industrial metal band Monster Voodoo Machine opened up. I hung out on the side of the stage, swilling Jack Daniels from a flask and taping the bands. The room slowly filled to capacity, like 600 kids, half of which were wearing Manson’s ‘Satanic Army’ t-shirts like some junior suicide cult. The road crew peppered the stage with oversized, pseudo-goth nursery room props. Krakus was starting to make some sense. Some Manson security thug comes up to me and says, "Put the camera away. No filming tonight." What? "First of all, you guys started trouble this morning, so you’re lucky we even let you in. Nobody’s allowed to film on this tour, anyway." "Fuck all that", I say, " I need to get some footage." "We’re going to put out an official live video", he says, trying to reason with me, "we’ll send you one." "Listen, man, I’m taping the fucking show." "If I see you shooting the band", he warns me, "I’m going to break your camera." By this time, the Mid east’s security staff has shown up. "You ought to leave", one of them tells me." You’re kind of drunk." Well, that was true. I was also pissed beyond repair. I stormed up the ramp and out the back door into the parking lot. Standing in front of their bus, smoking weed, was Marilyn and his pretty ugly boys. Good. I was looking for a fight.

"Hey!" I yell in their general direction. "What’s this shit about cameras?" I started lurching towards the band. "This ain’t fucking Florida!" I remember saying, whatever the fuck that meant. They were just staring at me, really, so I decided I would film that. I needed to get some kind of story out of this bullshit. As I fumbled with my camera, somebody came up and punched me in the back, and then shoved me. It was the Manson tour guy again. What else was I going to do? I started swinging. Marilyn Manson was closest to me, so he was lucky enough to eat the first Sleazegrinder knuckle sandwich. The last one, too, it turns out, as I got tackled from behind. I was pretty much done by then, anyway.

I stumbled home with a broken camera and a bruised back. John refused to let us run the interview footage, citing some mystical legality. Then he threw me out of our apartment. Krakus accidentally destroyed Mr. No Legs on air a few days later, while rocking a bit too fiercely to Antiseen’s cover of BTO’s "Taking Care of Business", so we were out of a host again. Thankfully, the TV station cancelled our contract soon after, for obvious reasons, ending a two- year wage of televised mayhem that would have killed me if it dragged on any longer. Hollywood Rich took off , fittingly enough, for Hollywood, where he got a job as a cameraman for ‘Bay Watch Nights’. I slunk off to rehab. So much for keeping TV evil.

I thought there might be a moral to this story, but there really isn’t. ‘Don’t go to Ohio’, maybe, but you already knew that. Oh, well. ‘Kicks is kicks’, as Rich used to say. By the way, to Phony Rock and Roll, Inc., I want to apologize in advance, and retract all of my above statements, even if they are true. Your band still sucks, though. I can’t do shit about that.

Imagine the Barbie Twins, only with pink hair, tattoos, and crusted blood and skin underneath their fingernails. Now imagine that this heady con-glam-oration is the nucleus of a searing Motorpunk band that’s named after a bad-ass hotrod. Now imagine they’re headed to your town, looking for cheap thrills and rock’roll damnation. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Denver’s reigning queens of noise, Hemicuda. They are a gasoline and estrogen cocktail, shooting out of the starting post like a triple speed, even-more-coked-out-than usual Roadsaw. Hemicuda lay down the piston- punk with howling fury, running on a full tank of pop hooks and sleazy thrills, before slamming into the finish line with the sonic tiger purr of a satisified slant 6 engine tooling for a post-coital smoke. Calling them ‘Action rock’ might smack of heavy handed innuendo, but if their latest record, ‘Classics For Lovers’ is any indication, then wherever these chicks are is where it’s at, if you know what I’m saying. And I think you do.

I called Karen Exley, the Cuda’s bass player and sometimes vocalist, from the Wonderland dog track, for a dose of speed-rock gospel. As my millions burned thanks to panicked greyhounds tripping over each other and stopping mid-race to lick their nuts, Karen laid the Hemicuda story on me. "It just kind of happened. I was in this band called ‘Self-Service’ at the time, and Anika ( Zappe- guitar and vocals) had a band called the Hectics, that broke up. So, her and the other girl that was in the Hectics had a new band together, but they never had a bass player, and I would see them around town and give them shit about not having a bass player in the band. Eventually, they hunted me down, and we started rocking." Karen’s obviously in a rush to get to something cooler, a little devil-speak, a little trash-talk maybe, but she’s dutifully tracing the lineage anyway. "And then Julie, the other girl, she quit after like the first or second show." I ask her what happened to Julie. "She wanted to stay home, be domestic, and plant flowers", she laughs." Which is ok, we’re a lot better musically without her. " I note that Hemicuda decided to forge ahead with a boy on the battery, dissolving the she-rock factor. "There’s not any girls in town that can actually rock", Karen tells me. We’ve gone through four different drummers so far. We’re on a quest this summer to find a permanent drummer. It’s kind of a pain, you know. We want to play all these shows, and we have to find another drummer for every gig and teach them all the songs." I ask her why Hemicuda have such a problem finding drummers. A question just about every rock band in the world is trying desperately to find an answer to. "It’s just hard to find somebody with the level of commitment we want", she says. "A lot of people in Denver are happy with their little comfort zone, and don’t want to leave." She tells the tale of the last Hemi-casualty. "We found this one kid that really wanted to play with us. He was going to school for drums, he had tattoos, the whole look. We wanted somebody young and ambitious, so we were psyched. Then the first day of practice he bailed out. He said he had to get a job for the summer", she says, sounding disgusted. Obviously, the hip young cat got a little to close to the rockn’roll flame, and he got burnt. "Exactly. You know, school, corporate jobs, that stuff is going to be there forever. You should rock while you still have the chance." Right on, sister. "So that’s the problem with the drummers, it’s not that we’re a couple of bitches. Plus, the view back there is pretty good", she laughs. 

When I first heard the name ‘Hemicuda’, I thought maybe they were chicas or something. I ask Karen what the fuck a Hemicuda is, and how she chose it for a band name. "Julie booked some shows for us, so we had to come up with a name." You know, this is something I’ve noticed in my many days in the rock and roll trenches. Guys figure out the name, look, and theme of their bands before they even learn to play their instruments. Girls wait until the last minute, figuring it’ll all fall into place. "We all had some cool ideas, but none that all of us were digging", Karen says. " And then I thought about how when I was little, my step-dad was a total gear- head. He had a ton of hot rods, and he had a Hemicuda. Little kids in elementary school can be pretty ruthless, so they used to make fun of me a lot, and it wasn’t until later in life that I realized how fucking cool it was that I got dropped off at school in a purple Hemicuda everyday. That car is one of the most bad —ass street cars ever made. So we were like ‘Yeh! Hemicuda!" Another legend born of revenge for playground cruelty. I ask her if they actually own a Hemicuda. She laughs at me. "Those cars have a blue book value of like a hundred thousand dollars." I tell her she ought to put the car down as part of their first big record contract. "Fuck yeah, a pink Hemicuda. We could make it from Vancouver to San Diego in 4 hours!"

We get to talking about Hemicuda’s slut-chic look. "Our shtick, with the matching wigs and stuff, came together over the past couple of years", Karen says, talking about the sexy-crazy-cool image. "We always tried to co-ordinate the stuff we wore on stage, but after we started with the wigs, things got more over-the top." I ask her how the image plays with the great unwashed. "There’s some people in Denver that hate the shtick, you know, but it’s not like we don’t rock. It’d be different if we sucked, if we couldn’t play and we just relied on our looks." Hemicuda could get by being dog faced drivers, given the ferocity of their rock and roll mayhem, but pretty pictures still make for a better story. "Totally. We see the value of all aspects of performance. You go to see any band in town, and all the guys, they’re wearing exactly what they were walking around in all day. Not that that’s a big deal, or anything, but that’s one of the things that separates going to a show from just listening to a CD- incorporating all the senses. That’s why we always smell so bad", she jokes.

‘Classics For Lovers’, the new album, bursts out of it’s cage like a tiger, the "Hemicuda theme" opening the proceedings with a ripsaw buzz-punk riff and a full-throated roar of "Hemi-fucking-cuda!" like the revolution has hit the streets. Songs like ‘Do What I Please’ and ‘Betting Man’ follow a similar greased path of speed and raunch. A couple of tracks, however, in comparison to the rest of the record, sound…a little girly. "Well, we’re girls, what the fuck do you expect?" Karen counters, with a laugh. "We had a few songs that, for awhile, we wouldn’t play because we didn’t think they were tough enough, but fuck it, ya know? They’re good songs, so why not play them?" Fair enough, but ‘Karen’s theme’, with it’s wistful ‘Oh, did you know you’re the only one, the only one…’ is a far cry from the theme song’s ‘Got my bitch up front and my nitrous in the trunk’. "Actually, the title of that song is to distract you from the fact that it’s really Anika’s theme. She had a broken heart, and broken hearts are always good material for songs." Anika didn’t want to cop to such frailties, but Karen didn’t care. Everybody already knows that she’s as hard as nails. "It kind of summed up my attitude anyway", she says.

I ask her about the Hemicuda sound, and what flavor of the rock inspires them. "Anika likes a lot of garage stuff, real basic, stripped down 3-chord rock", she says. "I listen to a lot of metal, a lot of hardcore, but the music I write is usually never like what I listen to." Metal? After talking with Karen for a half an hour, I find scant evidence of head banger chick-ness. She hasn’t even called me ‘dude’ once. "I like Pantera, Slayer, stuff like that." Thankfully, there’s no thrash metal shredding going on in the grooves of ‘Classics’, but Roadsaw’s trademark motor-stoner tones slip and slide throughout the proceedings. Speed-stoner rock? "Anika plays in another band that’s total stoner rock", Karen admits. "They’re called the Super Bees. They’re kind of a Fu Manchu, Queens of the Stone Age kind of thing. But that’s Anika’s thing, I don’t want to talk about them to much, this is about Hemicuda." Something tells me that Karen’s not down with the stoner rock brotherhood. "Aww, I like some of it, but most of that stuff is just band wagon rock. You know, like someone does something that’s cool, and everyone just kind of jumps on the bandwagon, and starts doing it too. It’s just not very original music. Not that what we do is all that original either", she laughs.

Ok, so Hemicuda didn’t invent hot chicks with guitars, but they have made good use of a winning formula. Here’s another point where girl bands and guy bands differ. Guys develop a sound, and then they’re done. Who needs songs, baby? We got a killer tone. Case in point, every European stoner rock band. Girls, however, go through the trouble of actually writing melodies, harmonies, hooks. "Oh yeah, we’re hookers", Karen jokes. I wonder if Karen sees any ‘Cuda hits in the future. "Yes. I’m confident in saying that. I mean, we get a lot of college airplay. We probably wouldn’t get signed to a major label or anything, but I think our songs are good enough to be hits, yeah." As far as Hemicuda are concerned, rock and roll ain’t no loser’s game. "Our first show was sold out, and Jello Biafra was waiting in line to get in", Karen beams. Likewise, as far as the new album goes, nobody’s complaining. " We really haven’t gotten any bad reviews", she says, "Which is surprising, I figured somebody would hate it. " She pauses for a moment, searching for a negative spin. "We got a good review in this Denver paper, and this guy wrote a letter about it, saying how bad he thought we sucked. That was encouraging", she laughs. "That kind of stuff really makes me want to rock hard."

I ask Karen to take me to the big show, so to speak. What’s the live Hemicuda experience like? "A lot of shit talking", Karen says immediately. I figured as much. Couple of live wires, tearing the place up. "Do we start fights?" She asks, repeating my question. "No, we finish them. Well, Anika doesn’t, she’s, uh…" Karen struggles for diplomacy. "I’m kind of the aggressive one of the two of us." I ask her if she’s happy with that dynamic- ‘Karen’s the loud one, Anika’s the quiet one’. "Oh, she’s not quiet", Karen corrects me. "She’s just stoned". She laughs. " I don’t think that I’m so aggressive that I’m mean. I have a reputation for finishing a couple of things that people started with me, but I’m actually very, very nice, and goofy. Like Marmaduke." Marmaduke with a spiked collar and a dog bowl full of superman juice, maybe.

Speaking of dogs, mine just limped into last place, and I’ve got to get the hell out of this race track while I still have shoes to walk home in, but it wouldn’t be a Sleazegrinder interview without one good road story. Karen is happy to oblige. "It was our first tour, and we were on our way from LA to Phoenix to play with the Street Walking Cheetahs, and we forgot about the time change, so we thought we were going to be late. So we’re speeding down the highway, going like 110 miles an hour. Our drummer’s driving, and meanwhile me and Anika are in the back, getting our whole shtick together, so that we’ll be ready for the gig. I’m wearing this corset, it’s got head- lights that light up on the boobs, you know, like fenders and tail -lights, and stuff? So, I’m putting this on, and we’ve got these crazy wigs on, and this cops pulls us over. I hear the siren, the ‘whoop, whoop’, and we’re like, ‘fuck’, because nothing’s going right, and now we’re getting stopped by the cops. So the cop walks up to us, and he looks at me and Anika in the back, and then he turns around and gives our drummer a thumbs up, and drives off! I was all ready to give him a story, ‘I’m sorry officer, I have a head light out on my dress!" I’ve got to admit, that’s a classic. "Our tours are all about rock and roll excess", Karen readily admits. "We have tons of stories like that, they just tend to get lost in the wash of our poor memories."

"Humans are such easy prey." - From Beyond

The Humanoids have obviously got the fear factor and grave robbers from outer space ghoul-power down to a sloppy science, but the burning question remains- do they rock, or is this just another sub-Misfits psychobilly ruse? Well, that’s the clincher, chicken brother. Despite the horror punk trappings, once the guitars are strapped onto their rotting torsos, all Hell, fittingly, breaks loose. A giant wall of full-bore motor sleaze pours out of the wheezing speakers, and the still breathing are plunged head first and ass up into a flaming pit of Detroit Rock City riff rawk, showing those Scandi-assed punks in the Hellacopters and Turbonegro how to respect the Rock, America. With the monster pop hooks of vintage Kiss, the cocky twin guitar swagger of the New York Dolls, and the rampant pussy obsession of Ted Nugent, The Humanoids are like a 7 day weekend’s worth of heartbreak, hard-ons, and hangovers, circa 1975. Except, y’know, dead.

Unearthed by an errant undertaker two years ago , the Humanoids have slunk around after dark, wielding their scorching brand of total rock chaos cloak and dagger fashion, at abandoned mine shafts, Satan parties, and dubious barbeques, waiting for the proper solar alignment to launch their horror holocaust worldwide. Smelling the stench of the next big thing, Star hustler Marc Schleicher has just beat a debut single out of these well dressed hard rock zombies, and their splintered bones are being welded back together in some ill-lit mad scientist lab as we speak to ready the dying young men for a flurry of big time, grave cheating, live (?) spectacles. Lock up your living dead girls, the flesh feast is on…

"They don’t have rock and roll girls in space," Clay informs me. "Or beer. That’s why we came to Earth." The other four Humanoids have arrived now too, presumably smelling my still pumping blood. I’m a little confused as to just what kind of creatures are circling me with fiendish grins. Came to earth? I thought they were zombies. "We’re both, obviously" Mike Demonic tells me. "We’re undead Aliens from an unknown planet." Fair enough, but I don’t think Kiss or the MC5, two of the Humanoids’ dominant influences, ever toured Mars. "We received earthly radio transmissions" Johnny Machine, lead guitarist, mutters through blackened lips." But they stopped in the late 70’s. I think they take a long time to get up there." Joey Sin, bass, adds," So when we beamed down two years ago, and turned on your human radio, we were pretty horrified at what we heard. We then knew what our mission was…to save rock and roll." And eat some brains along the way, presumably.

Clay: Well, I’m half Swedish and half zombie. Maybe the Swedish part helps.

Sinister: We can’t praise you enough for your Earth drugs.

Johnny: We’re glam zombies. We like leather pants. They feel like a second coating of human flesh.

Clay: No way, you ever see the Thriller video? Just add a beat, and they pep right up.

Clay: It’s not an image. This is the way we look. Sometimes we put on human faces for the ladies, but we’re dead, man.

Joey: even the drunkest of assholes doesn’t want to take on a zombie.

Johnny: We played at a punk gig that didn’t work out so well. I think they were expecting us to sound like the Misfits. There was silence in between the songs, it was terrible. Some kid came up to me after the gig, all pissed off, and said, "You guys sound like fucking…rock and roll."

Mike: You’re Goddamn right we do.

Mike: They were excellent. Marc and Nick Z really understand zombie rock from outer space. They must have visited our planet.

Clay: We’re releasing two singles. Four A-sides. Nothing but hits for the Humanoids.

Mike: Couple months. As soon as we get our tax returns. I mean, as soon as we exchange our Martian dollars.

Clay: It’s www.thehumanoids.com. I did it from outer space. I took a correspondence course via satellite. I just kept beaming down pictures of the pirate and the turtle until they let me in.

Mike: MC5-"The Big Bang".

Clay: The Sacrilious Sounds of the Supersuckers.

Joey: Grande Rock by the Hellacopters.

Johnny: Anything by Kiss.

No, not Animalize. Double Platinum, you’ll be all set.

Sinister: David Lee Roth - era Van Halen. "Women and Children First."

Right on. So, what are the Humanoids willing to do to save rock and roll?

Mike: I am willing and ready to wrap a Ferrari around a tree and hang out with 14 year old girls, if that will help.

Clay: Never seen them around, no. Our planet isn’t divisible by any numbers.

Now you know what I’m dealing with. I’m surrounded by flesh eating ghouls in leather jackets and AC/DC t-shirts, and there’s only one other thing that can slake their unholy thirst, and that’s rock. Luckily, I have a whole steaming pile of it with me, so I toss it to the dead boys and watch them tear into it. Here are the results.

I would be remiss, incidentally, if I didn’t mention that this bit was conceived and flawlessly executed by the cleverly named and always inventive JD Monroe a decade ago in the pages of the sadly defunct ‘Ready To Snap’ magazine. I however, perfected the art of keeping the all-star reviewers completely off-topic.

The picture of Tormentula on the cover of this single looks like 3 teenage glam rock chicks who’s faces got pushed through a windshield at 60 miles per hour and were sewn back together with fishing wire. Beauty defiled by corpse-paint. The back cover features a close-up of one of their spandexed asses. Without even hearing the record, we’re all ready to declare Tormentula the best rock and roll band in America. Mike drops the needle onto the wax, and something wounded and evil slithers out of the speakers. ‘The Lure of the Grime’ sounds like ‘The Ballad of Dwight Frye’ as performed by a bunch of crazy girls that have been locked up in the attic for ll years. The declaration stands.

Johnny: I can’t stop staring at this record cover.

Clay: I can’t wait to party with these chicks

Johnny: What song?

I’m guessing these cats are German, what with the gutteral way the singer’s barking . The Speedfreaks come out swinging wildly, like a PCP-crazed cock rocker taking the sunset strip down with a machete. Ferocious, full throttle gonzo rock.

Johnny: Fuck yeah. Sounds like the Dictators.

Mike: Any rock song that’s actually about rock gets bonus points with me.

Johnny: Motorcycle rock.

Johnny: No. But I’m getting one, though.

Johnny: How’d you stop it?

Johnny: Sweet. I can’t wait to get one.

The best song called ‘Fuck You’ I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard hundreds. Given the song’s title, and the horrible band name, you’d probably assume this is some lame-ass hardcore record. Well, it ain’t, jack. This is pure fists-of-fury biker rock, played at blinding speed. Bonus points for sampling a motorcycle revving during the guitar solo. Their name sticks in the Humanoids craw, however.

Johnny: the fucking Swedes, man. I mean, they’re not real Americans, but they do a great job with the rock. These guys remind me of Gluecifer, fucking awesome.

Clay: They should change their name, though.

Clay: Something with ‘The’ in the title, that’s always rock. The Reality Boys. No, The Noise Dolls, maybe.

A Canadian band that goes for MC5- styled murder city mayhem, but in a stripped down, garage-y sort of way. As the record plays, I find myself distracted by the cover of the new Humanoids single, which features a pile of rock ephemera- panties, Dio records, liquor bottles, and pills.

Clay: Actually, they’re allergy pills.

Clay: I’ve been to downtown Canada.

Clay: Yeah, like a couple of miles away from the airport, you know?

Clay: I heard that from some kid in the 4^th grade. I had a Dio pin on my jacket, and he said, "You know what that symbol means?"

Joey: Wait, what’s it supposed to say?

Clay: No. It says ‘OID".

A menacing, rock and roll punch in the mouth, AC/DC riding a fucking rocket to Russia. One of the biggest favorites of the day, Adam West are motherfuckers of the highest order.

Mike: This is some bad ass…

Johnny: Heavy fucking rock.

Mike: With some, uh…southern-ness going on.

Joey: Although I’ve got to say that the lead singer sounds like Gene Simmons.

Clay: I bet they’re all dicks. Everybody in KISS is a dick, except maybe for Ace Frehley.

Mike: No, Adam West are kick ass 70’s rock. Let’s listen to that again.

Johnny: And there’s a naked chick on the cover of this, so you can bring it into the bathroom with you.

Mike Demonic has put the single on at the wrong speed, as a blurring high- pitched chirp bursts out of the speakers.

Mike: Sorry. I thought I had it right, I mean it’s got a big hole.

Clay: I thought it was the medium from ‘Poltergeist’ singing.

After adjusting the speed, we settle in for 3 minutes of rocking.

Joey: This sounds good for dancing.

Clay: Makes me wish we had some chicks with us. And a 3o pack.

Mike: we couldn’t do that, man. The dancing chicks would make the records skip.

"My bass amp caught on fire. The whole works, smoke, flame… I just kept doing what I was doing, man, rolling around the floor or whatever. People said, ‘you must have been bummed out’, but you know, that’s showbiz."

While we’re on the subject, I talked to the pride of Colorado Springs, the Confessions’ grand poobah, Mr. Loose Cannon, about the perils of high -elevation rock and roll. Out of the half million or so bands I’ve heard in the past 6 months that cop a heavy Johnny Thunders vibe to make it though the night, the only ones to turn my hipster-burnout snarl into a smile are the Confessions. Maybe that’s because they dig back into the Dolls catalog for inspiration, forging sleaze punk with R&B swagger. They play hip shaking rock and roll, in other words. Cats like Loose and his confessin’ clan make me think that baby, maybe it ain’t too late after all, and that this beautiful sin we’ve created ain’t never gonna die…

Loose, brother, how did we get here? "We started out as teenagers in the Deadites, playing Misfits kinda stuff, our lyrics were ripped from the scripts of the Twilight Zone. The horror train started running out of steam, and we were already getting into the rock and roll thing anyway." It ought to be noted that the Confessions ain’t so far way from the Prom even now. "Yeah, man, we’re still young, we got a lot of rocking to get to", Loose says. Don’t hold their age against them, though, because they already sound like they’ve been scraping stickers off the wall at CBGB’s for ten years. Even their name sounds like they’ve been around for awhile. "The Confessions sounded black, like it had soul", he explains. I ask him if sounding black is a good career move in Colorado. Turns out it isn’t." Denver’s like the lost Island of long- haired metal kids. It’s the radio station out here, KLO. I don’t know what they’re doing to them, playing all this rap- rock. You start praying for old Gunsn’Roses." Amen, brother. I’m whispering the same prayers myself. I tell him I like the idea of the rockers in leopard skin mixing it up with baseball cap crowd, if only for the mayhem. "My singers always getting into fistfights", Loose laughs. "We were playing a show and this kid came up to him in a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt. He was wearing a Union Jack on his jacket, so this kid says, ‘Are you British?’ My singer says, ‘No, are you in Cannibal Corpse?’ and they got into it." You start to wonder if there’s any hope at all for these rage-o-matic little bastards. " The kids all look like they want to punch somebody, because they don’t how to do anything else", Loose agrees. " The Confessions are teaching them how to dance", he says hopefully. "I mean, you gotta rock, but don’t forget to roll, y’know?" I ask Loose what the Confessions’ major inspirations are. Without flinching, he tells me, "Sex and booze, ruin, heartbreak and rock and roll". I believe him, for once. The single and smattering of demo cuts I’ve heard from the Confessions reeks of it all, losing hands and winning smiles. Every rock and roll band has at least one song in their catalog that serves as a sort of half-assed manifesto. I ask Loose which one serves the Confessions best." ‘I like you better when you’re drunk.’ At least, that’s what people usually tell us after a show."

Detroit’s finest lay down a swaggering motor punk - hit single, one of their best. The tape is a mess of various Humanoids screaming over the gangland chorus about how much these guys kick ass. I gotta agree with them…

Mike: Naw, I’m all set with that, thanks. I had my little phase.

Mike: Well, you can only get so high, and then it’s the next day and you’re at your niece’s christening, y’know, and you can’t even remember your name. Then it’s not so cool anymore.

Another example of Scandinavian devil music - scorching riff rock, fake American accents and real Swedish snarls.

Johnny- It’s usually the other way around.

Clay- Yeh, like, ‘If I have another beer, I’m gonna fall down dead.’

Everybody’s jaws drop when the needle hits the grooves on this record. Bar brawling biker rock, tough as nails, liquored up and ready for anything

Johnny: Holy shit, I love Hammerlock!

Clay: 4 stars, it’s awesome, my favorite record of the day!

Mike: That shit is hard as nails. I want a record, or a t-shirt, or some leg warmers, or something.

Rancid Vat’s rough and ready scuzz-rock grace the flipside, with a tune called ‘Job-Jumper’, a song about Whiskey Rebel’s many torturous day jobs, which sparks a debate about who’s had the worst job.

Mike: I worked at Chuck E. Cheese.

Mike: I worked in the kitchen, and every half an hour the manager would come in to do ‘fun checks’. It was horrible.

Mike: Yeah, he’d come in and go, "Is everybody having fun? " and you’d have to go "YAAYY!" I’d do anything to get out of there. I used to volunteer to take out the trash all the time. I’d get my hands filthy, covered in all this slimy garbage juice, then I’d go right back in and make pizzas without washing my hands.

Clay: Mine was worse. Chester’s Fried Chicken. We got no business, because we were on this busy road, like around the corner and down the hill, so you couldn’t even see it from the road. So to drum up business, they sent me down by the highway, dressed in a chicken suit.

Mike: With a cowboy hat.

Clay: Yeah. Chicken suit with a cowboy hat.

Clay: Oh yeah. And if it wasn’t busy, they’d make me go mow the fucking lawn.

Mike: Was this in the summer time?

Clay: Yeah, and they only had one suit, so it smelled like everyone that ever wore it. Like ass, cigarettes, and chicken.

Everybody in the room is well aware of Antiseen’s reputation, so no one wants to admit their dislike for this noise rock catastrophe, like Jeff Clayton himself is gonna bust through the front door to bust our knee caps with a monkey wrench if we bad- mouth it.

Mike: The best thing about this is that the guy is wearing a Hammerlock t-shirt.

The only band in Iowa, and they sound like some broke-assed Cramps. Loose as hell, and stripped so far down to the bone, you can taste marrow. The Chickenhawks are the definition of primal. A Chick in a fur bikini never hurt the cause, either.

Clay: I’d like to see this live. Well, I’d like to see the chick in the bikini live, anyway.

Johnny: It’s almost as if the fuzzy pink bikini blocks out her screaming.

Well, the song’s pleasant, if forgettable, garage rawk, probably the most ‘retro’ thing we’ve heard today; but the song’s got a great title, doesn’t it?

Clay: I definitely did. I had a lady that would go around the house, drinking whatever was left in the bottles lying around. One night I was putting on the dirty moves, and she was so drunk, she poked me in the eye, so I had to call it quits.

Johnny: These guys are from Seattle. That’s a point against them right there.

Clay: This is pretty good, though. It’s kind of evil, kind of rock. It reminds me of stuff like the B-Movie rats. It’s a little too garage-y for me to listen to everyday, but I like it.

I thought that the Chickenhawks were as bare-bones as we were going to get today, but the Nearly Deads are so stripped down that they’re a duo- guitar and drums. They manage to make an ungodly roots rock racket anyway. The Royal Trux/ Knoxville Girls crowd are gonna eat these cats up.

Mike: Are you sure this is just two people?

Mike: we never get to choose what they play before we go on, but it’s usually Van Halen.

Clay: Once somebody asked us if they could play ‘Power-Age’ before we went on. That was cool.

Johnny: Maybe the Pistols.

Mike: But probably Van Halen.

Clay: We wouldn’t play this record before we went on, no.

Clay: I think I want to hear the next one.

These Swedes, or Germans, or whatever they are sound exactly like the Ramones, on purpose. I dunno why.

Mike: This record has the same problem, the hole’s too small. I’m gonna have to take it off with the spatula, so it gets points off.

Clay: What’s next? I already own this album. A couple of them. Rocket to Russia, Leave Home…

Swedish drag queens, with one real chick blowing the curve, pulling out all the stops on some 80’s glam revival, sounding a lot like the old Finnish Poison-wannabe’s Easy Action. I bet they have a confetti cannon.

Johnny: It’s KISS! It’s ‘Deuce’!

Mike: I can’t tell which one is the real chick. That’s it, no more shots for us.

Clay: I wish the vocals were a little more ballsy.

Mike: Yeah, I don’t really feel like she’s livin’ in a teenage wasteland.

Johnny: Make us feel it! Take us to the teenage wasteland!

Clay: Why do you always ask us about that? I told you, we’re already zombies.

Johnny: Yeah, but it would be nice if all five of us didn’t have to share the same mirror, though.

Ghoultown - Tales From the Dead West (Angry Planet) www.ghoultown.com

A wild mixture of cow-punk and spaghetti western music, creepy and cool. The pictures of the sultry goth chick bass player on the CD booklet proves terribly distracting to the Humanoids, however.

Mike: Before we even listen to this, I think we should all take a look at the cans on this girl.

Mike: What the fuck is a ‘Jonah Hex’?

Johnny: Alright, but did you see this guy’s jacket? With the bones on the sleeves? Fuck, that’s cool.

Clay: This is like ‘Day of the Dead’ music…Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Johnny: Normally, I don’t care for the horns, but it’s working for me here.

Joey: You know what’s working for me? This hot bass player. Maybe we could work together on something. "Flight of the Bumblebee 2’.

Joey: It’s the bass player from Manowar doing ‘Flight of the Bumblebee as a bass solo. It’s fucking great.

Mike: No, it’s fucking terrible.

Clay: I would like to see Ghoultown, they’re unique. I like it. I want to go down to the quarry with the bass player.

To be fair, these are just demos, but this power-poppy garage rock is just not delivering the goods, and we’re discussing the dubious merits of Iron Maiden before the first song has even bled itself dry.

Mike: The record says Chicago.

Joey: Chicago’s not in Canada, is it?

Mike: Do I look like I have a fucking map?

Johnny: These guys sound like they still need to be plugged in.

Polyplush Cats - Driving It Home www.polyplushcats.com

Kind of a dark, suburban glam sound with mainstream aspirations. Good luck.

Mike: This is weird, man. All the songs on this album are named after old hair metal bands. This one’s called ‘Skid row’.

Joey: ‘Cinderella’, ‘Warrant’. You know, I won a Warrant album once, in cub scouts, when I was 14.

After a bit of a dry spell that was starting to freak us out, Dead Sheriff arrive to save the day. Rip - snorting Norwegian action rock, every song an anthem extolling the glories of doing time in Rock City. These cats are bad asses.

Mike: These guys have a lot of songs with ‘Rock’ in the title. That’s always a good sign.

Clay: Two, so far. ‘Gamma Ray Rock’, and ‘Rock and Roll Feeling’.

Johnny: That’s our sexy song, you know, for the ladies.

Mike: If I ever have the money to buy a record again, this’ll be the one.

Blue Period reek of LA, churning out cliched glam metal, albeit with some new wave influences bubbling to the top. The singer, however, is a big problem. His voice is terribly fey, making every song sound like high camp, and the scenester worship lyrics don’t help any. But it’s this cat’s look that’s really disturbing. He looks like the hottest flat-chested chick you’ve ever seen. A concept none of us want to deal with.

Mike: That’s a dude? That’s not a dude… fuck, that’s a dude?

Clay: Uh, oh. This isn’t very good.

Johnny: Fuckin’ right. Somebody take this picture away from me, I don’t want to think about it anymore.

Clay: Next record, please.

The band name and song title would lead you to believe- well, I don’t know what, but something other than the way the Fairies sound. They sound like AC/DC on a fishing trip. Balls out rawk, sure, but relaxed somehow, like Mr. Clean with nothing to prove. The sound of muscles reclining.

All: No!

Johnny: But this one guy looks like Conan O’Brien, so they get bonus points.

Good lord. Sinis are from Texas, they’ll be no mistaking that. They sound like some Japanese monster movie version of ZZ Top, gigantic southern boogie metal. Insurrection rock.

Johnny: Remember the Alamo!

Clay: These guys are fucking great.

Johnny: Yeh, this is a success. And there’s a guy in the band named Johnny Thundernips, so that gets added points.

Joey: Totally. Slide guitar!

Mike: That was so right on.

Clay: that was fucking beautiful.

G12G add a little mountain-top twang to the standard riff-rock formula, back porch whiskey bottle lamentations gone electric.

Johnny: This reminds me of the Hookers.

Mike: Yeh. It’s no ‘Rock and roll Motherfucker’, though. But you know, it’s pretty rocking. I’d take it on a long drive with me. If I ever left the fuckin’ house.

Slim are a power trio of muscle-necked, tin can eating cowboy brawlers, like the Flesh Eaters welded onto Danzig’s fists. If these fuckers weren’t from Texas, they’d be in prison. This record is all about hammer-of God biker metal pummel played straight down the line.

Mike: These guys sound like they win a lot of fights.

Speedrock is right, as these cats tear a hole through the speakers with a blistering display of Motor City influenced Euro-scorch. Speedrock would fit in nicely with Speedealer, Zeke, and the Hookers at the caffeine rehab.

Mike: Please don’t tell me that we’re gonna listen to a band called ‘Peter Pan’.

Clay: Ok, they’re good. Tell Pete to bring us back some hash.

Mike: No butt-hole hash, though. We don’t want it if it’s been up his ass.

Clay: Yeah, we do.

Betty Blowtorch -‘Are You Man Enough?’ (www.bettyblowtorch.com) Hit after raunchy pop metal hit from these LA vets. What if Nashville Pussy were actually good? I mean, can you dig it?

"A strong girl is like an ocean."- Iggy Pop

Brothers and sisters, saints and sinners, those that would can’t cast no spell on me, because the Sleazegrinder, after 32 years of the struggle, has finally found his Rita Coolidge. Her name is Stacey, she like cartoons and hip British pop. She looks like a supermodel from the 70’s, with movie star hair and big green eyes. She laughs at my jokes, even when she doesn’t get them. And I love her terribly. So much so that I’m marrying her on October 12^th. Dimitri Monroe will, of course, be my best man. As you would expect, we are celebrating with a rock and roll blowout featuring all the bands that I expound on endlessly in these pages on Saturday, October 13^th at the historic Middle East club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You’re invited. I just want to thank Zodiac, Ian (Astbury and Adams), and Kris Kristofferson for helping me get this far. Long live rock and roll.