The Bulemics
Old Enough to Know Better (Junk)
by Jon Sarre
The crudest, raunchiest, sickest, dumbest rock band on the planet hails from Texas. No shit, you were expecting Delaware maybe? The group of troubled young men who can claim this title call themselves the Bulemics. Supposedly they’re so infamous in their hometown of Austin that they’ve been banned from most of the city’s clubs and all of the strip bars.
If there’s a bright side, it probably means they go out on the road a lot, so you can see these bottle-throwing cretins terrorize your town for an evening. Unless you’re the guy who has to clean up the next day, it’d be lotsa fun. Judgin’ by this Mike Mariconda produced hate letter bomb from the Lone Star state, which kicks off in high gear with “Harlot From Beyond” like they were the Dead Boys headlinin’ at the Carousel Club but tryin’ to be as cool as pre-Rollins Black Flag, the Bulemics’ll leave ya hunched over a frothing toilet bowl retchin’ out the night’s entertainment, yer ears ringin’ with Gerry Atric’s bedspinning snotty “fuck you”s and female voices in the background repeatedly chanting that the Bulemics “Make Me Sick.”
Call it moronic, call it shock-value hype, call it total trash and see who’s gonna argue. Mariconda’s “production” makes the record great, but also makes ya wonder about the band. Take the title track, for example: the bass is up way too high, the drums sound like shit, the guitars are buried all low until a mini solo bleeds up through the feedback, Atric relates the lyrics like someone just handed ’em to him moments before the session (or maybe like he studied method acting with Judd Nelson), the title is ripped off from heavy rotation at New Country 98.whatever. It’s goddamned perfect!
Other than “If I Only Had a Heart” (the version on the Can’t Keep It Down 7 inch is simply lots better), the whole record is great. There’s lotsa cheesy horror/sex flick inspired schlock to be had here, like “Snuff Queen,” sorta the recorded equivalent of the “Rape” issue of Jim Goad’s Answer Me! ‘zine, “Dial ‘M’ For Murder,” essentially “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” from the point of view of the client or the band’s salute to their favorite literary series, the double-entendre one-joke-beat-to-death, “Sweet Valley High.” For pure hate’s sake, “Die Tonight” is a fuckin’ punk classic, and by the time you get to the closer, “She Gets Around,” you’ll be desensitized to the point of needing to play it again.
(PO Box 1474 Cypress, CA 90630)
