The Culture Bunker
by William Ham
illustration by Robert Zammarchi
Up peristalsis. Of late, I have received several agitated missives from readers not quite as enamored of the contents of this litter column as are the heads of state and intellectual elite of our world. (You know that whole peace treaty thing between Israel and Saudi Arabia a while back? Yeah, I did that.) As always, I welcome constructive criticism of all kinds, even if a small (say, 99.5%) portion of it comes from folks just slightly more articulate than the average autistic slug. But no matter, I’m here for my public, and with the help of the noted Egyptologists and handwriting experts on my staff, we have managed to translate most of this correspondence into a reasonable facsimile of English. And the general gist appears to be, “Yeah, all your prattling about the imminent decline of civilization and all that is nice, but what about the local scene, duuude?” Thank you for your letters, friends, and I hope the medication kicks in soon. But we at the leaky dinghy that is Lollipop have a responsibility to our scene, even if many of my colleagues secretly opine that there hasn’t been a decent band ’round these parts since Emission of Derma or whatever they were called split. So we climbed into the Bunkermobile (actually a ’75 Ford Pinto with the steering wheel missing) and took a long, hard look around the region’s dank enclaves of cool, tallied our notes, and as a result are proud to bring you the first installment of our ongoing local scene report, “Bunkers by Nitelite.”
The benefit concert at Chateau Chien last Friday was a rousing success, with Bolero Vasectomy, Hisbiscus Spew and Shrug all turning in sets that could only be described as “smoking,” even if the electrical system hadn’t shorted out, sending fiery chunks of death down on the capacity crowd. The evening surpassed all expectations, eventually collecting over $75,000 to assist Shattered Fibula vocalist Nero Bucktooth’s valiant fight against a nasty head cold. On Saturday, Chateau Chien manager Harpo J presented Bucktooth with a bottle of Robitussin and three boxes of Puffs Plus bought with the proceeds. When a reporter for The Racket questioned J about the suspicious discrepancy, he indignantly replied, “What are you talking about? Do you know how expensive those damned tissues are? They’ve got lotion in ’em, for chrissakes!” Plans are now in the works for a compilation album, Red Hot and Congested, to further aid Bucktooth’s struggle and maybe buy him some of those tasty blackberry cough drops…
Coming soon; Wymyn’s Musyc Nyght at Club Sandwich on Thursday featuring Mucus Plug, Uncomfort-able Bloating U.K. and Ophelia Self, probably the area’s only all-girl band made up entirely of really wimpy guys… Hot up ‘n’ Comers Dept: Watch out for Wastrel Salad, the new band with the strongest buzz since Senator Kennedy’s inaugural kegger, described by pundits as “just like the Stooges, except with bagpipes”… Noted solo performer Kenmore Phipps has reportedly broken up, citing “creative differences”…
Oops Dept: Due to a pressing plant mix-up, the new album by local low-fi avatars Scared of Clams actually consists only of tape hiss. Still it has topped the junior college radio charts for the past eight weeks, The Illiterate Bostonian has it on its short list for Album of the Year, and it is scheduled to be distributed nationally by Toreador/Antarctic… New releases this week: Bhopal Sludge’s single “Give Me the Socket Wrench, Marge, Or I Will Kill You In A Shallow Grave Beside the Thoroughfare” (Cherrydisc) – their cover of the Bobby Sherman classic “Squealing Shrubs’ Yeast Free: Songs Not Written by Leonard Cohen (Emetic CD); and the as-yet-untitled debut from the all-disgruntled-ex-postman band, P.O. Box (Klunk 8-track)…
Local heroes Wastrel Salad celebrate the release of their new single, “New Single,” with a sold-out show at the Vole on Sunday… On TV this week, Test Pattern performs on You’re Probably Already Asleep with Skippy McTavish, followed by an indefinite run on Court TV (check listings)…
I forgot what I was going to put here…
TODAY’S TRIVIA QUESTION: If Tree played a gig in the forest and no one was there to hear it, would they still, like, rock?
ANSWER TO NEXT MONTH’S TRIVIA QUESTION: Once every three weeks, and only with a gherkin…
Corrections Dept: In a previous issue, we described Holy Shoehorn lead singer Bartolph Flinch as “an unsightly little barn-animal molester with the intellect of a garden weasel and the moral standards of an unneutered Rottweiler.” Flinch is, in fact, six foot two. We apologize for the error…
Wastrel Salad has swept the Regional Music Awards, winning an unprecedented 48 awards, the first time in RMA history that a band has won every single award, including those that they were not nominated for. At the post-awards party sponsored by WANK (“Don’t Touch That Dial Or You’ll Go Blind”) radio, Wastrel Salad rhythm glockenspielist Dirk Sirk, still clutching his Best New Female Country Artist statuette, told reporters: “Nobody is more surprised by this than us. I mean, we just started playing our instruments a week ago. Our guitarist is still trying to figure out which end of the instrument has the fretboard on it. This is truly an honor,” he said, before careening headfirst into the bleu cheese dip…
Local scenester Yancy “Monoped” Felton needs a lift. He’s the one standing on the corner of Granger and Billington wearing a chiffon burnoose and burnt sienna tube socks if you happen to be going that way…
More lineup changes for Tossing Bunions. Bass player Helen O’Troy is out, to be replaced by a rolltop desk to be named later…
The winner of this month’s Demo Dustbin is Haverhill’s Harry Vetch and the Chronic Scoliosis with their tape entitled Untitled. We haven’t bothered to listen to it or even open the tape case, but they sent us the largest cash bribe, so bravo, boys!…
Soundtrack news: Postcards to Isis, Kauterized, Burst Zipper and Jim Parcheesi are among the local acts featured on the soundtrack to the hotly-anticipated driver’s-ed. film, Intestines All Over the Underpass, to be released April 31st… Wastrel Salad have been signed to Erektra Records with an advance of six billion dollars. Their major-label debut is set to be released as soon as they figure out how to write songs…
R.I.P. dept: A sad farewell to Brent Nosferatu, lead yowler for local neo-Goth anti-heroes Scrofula With Cheese, who committed suicide on Wednesday after nineteen consecutive bad hair days. A memorial fund has been set up in his name to “aid those with really deep voices and high cheekbones with the purchase of black nail polish and Anne Rice books.” If you would like to make a contribution to this fund, you know where you can put it…
A couple more bad jokes, er, ah, new releases: Karen Ann Quinlan Unplugged and John Wayne Bobbitt’s debut CD, Don’t Go Off Half Cocked… A reminder from the Federal Bureau of Cheap Nostalgia and Easy Irony: At press time, the atomic retro-camp clock is up to May 16, 1981, 7:45 a.m., so break out those parachute pants and Ultravox records while you can…
More legal troubles for bombastic crooner Nick Notlob. A circuit-court judge has determined that Notlob’s 1993 hit, “Love is Like a Corkscrew in My Heart,” was plagiarized from local songwriter/chiropodist Al L. Rightsreserved’s unreleased “Love is Like a Corkscrew in the Heart.” In court, former club owner and current mail-order attorney Harpo J argued, “Sure, the music and the words are essentially the same. Maybe exactly the same. But it’s an original! Look! ‘A Corkscrew in My Heart!’ Not ‘The Heart!’ ‘My Heart!’ So you see, the two are completely different.”
Judge Lance Boyle disagreed, and gave Notlob a $700,000 fine and his lawyer a couple of clouts to the skull with his gavel…
And finally, following a vicious backlash in the alterna-press and a disastrous world tour, most dates of which ended with the entire band being burned in effigy by angry crowds, Wastrel Salad have called it quits. Citing disappointing sales of their debut, Our Debut, which was finally released 45 minutes ago, Erektra has ordered the entire pressing melted and reshaped into a bust of the band members hiding their faces in shame. At Erektra’s contract-torching party at the House of Socks in Los Angeles, drummer Gert Klapp said, “It’s kind of a shame, really. We had just about mastered the part about where the ‘on’ switch on the amplifiers was. But even though it was a whirlwind and we’re all in debt for the rest of our lives and we’re being sued by the entire readership of Maximumwrecknruin for sucking with malice aforethought, I can’t say it hasn’t been fun,” then collapsed face first into the guacamole dip.
