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Flash Cooney and the Deans of Discipline Horrorglittertransvestobilly
CBGB's Records, 1987 |
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“I’m really sick of tryin’, but I’m tryin’,
anyway” |
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The Deans’ sound borrowed heavily
from the Ramones and the New York Dolls, with lotsa gum-snappin’
bubblepunk riffs and choruses lifted from old Ronettes songs, only
amped-up with Flash Metal guitar
flourishes, and a few straight-up metalbilly (!) tracks. Mostly tho, they
were loud, sleazy rock n’ roll, and they wrote catchy, speed-glam tunes
about being exactly that- loud, sleazy rock n’ rollers. “Every girl I meet tonight is gonna think I’m a faggot, cuz my pants are too tight”. Flash and the boys knew there was somethin’ at least a LITTLE ridiculous about flame-jet drumsets- I mean, they were from NYC, f’r Chrissakes- so they played up the over-the-top arena-sleaze angle at every turn, most notably on the certified classick “Future Fox”, a tender rock n’ roll anthem about fucking 13 year old girls. |
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| “There’s only two things between us, and that’s a little pair of panties and about 20 years!” That kinda thing, ya know how it goes. Elsewhere, there’s songs about, uh, fucking drunk chicks (“Cute and Drunk”), fucking chicks on drugs (“Lovers on Drugs”), fucking chicks from Brooklyn - possibly drunk, druggy, under-aged ones - (“White Trash”), and being rushed to the hospital by Lux Interior (“Rockabilly Ambulance”). Oh, and just to prove that they could actually suck wildly if they wanted, they end with a ram-shackle speed-punk run-thru of the “Brady Bunch” theme. | |
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“Horrorglitter” was always one of my
fave rekkids of the era, because the thing about Flash and the Deans,
see, is they remembered that rock n’ roll was supposed to be FUN,
in the days when everybody was running around in stripy spandex and an
ozone hole’s worth of Aqua Net, and acting like it was their
fucking DAY JOB, like it was some kind of career choice, and having
NO FUN at all, which is insane. The Deans didn’t jockey to open
for Van Halen or to claw their way to the CB’s headline spot
on Saturday night, they just wanted to get laid and drink for free, man.
Which they did, night after night, for many years. Mission accomplished.
Of course, any party has gotta stop at some point, even the endless ones, and the Deans finally collapsed and headed straight for rehab by the early 90’s. Word is that they recorded on at least two more occasions since “Horrorglitter”, but said releases have yet to surface. |
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Flash and NYC punk legend Tommy
Dog have just recently announced a new, in-the-works “space rock” band
called (regrettably) Koon Dawg, and former Deans bass player
Nick Marden is now a member of hot-rod murderbilly band
Suicide King,
with former
Lunachicks drummer Chip English and 7-foot tall singer 4
Way. I’m sure there’s plenty more ex-Deans nonsense goin’ on,
but I ain’t been getting the memos. Anyway, great band, killer record, and Flash Metal Suicide? Well, suffice to say, Cooney ain’t no Jerry Lee. Ya can’t get on the radio writing love songs about 13 year olds, man. Oh, one more thing I should mention. On the cover of this album, a wrecked Flash stares out at the world, his wrists wrapped in spikes and sweatbands and whatever else. I picked up the look soon after, and I STILL have the SAME JUNK wrapped around my wrists 19 years later. Ask anybody. ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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-Sleazegrinder |
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One of
the original 70's punk bands in NYC, Flash Cooney and the
Deans of Discipline was formed in 1977 by a trio of rock’em
sock em party boys, the Benepes, who put the band together mostly
to have a semi-valid excuse for throwing weekend-long booze, coke, and
pussy parties. They had a revolving door line-up dictated mostly by who
was still standing during a show night, and over the years, counted
members of the Fuzztones, the Stimulators, the Sic Fucs,
and the Billy Idol band in their ranks. By the time they finally
got around to makin’ a record, guitarist Flash Cooney (Andrew
Benepe) was the last brother left in the band, and their sound had
developed from straight-ahead junk-punk to a dayglo stew of
flash metal, rockabilly, B-movie
weirdness, and glampunk, which pretty much explains the title of their
’87 album, “Horrorglittertransvestobilly”. The Deans were
all of those things at once, and they were also the wildest show in town,
with Plasmatics-style pyro, including a drumset equipped with flame
jets and exploding Marshall stacks. There were half-naked back-up singers,
there was spandex, there was mascara. It was like the early 80’s LA
glam metal debauchery circus had moved East and written some better tunes,
or somethin’.