The Bodies

Firepower Is Our Business (TKO)
by Scott Hefflon

The Bodies are a good garagey-sounding street/Oi! band from Sonoma, CA, and this is a reissue of the EP on Vulture Rock. They’re also caught in the middle of a pissing contest between MRR and TKO cuz MRR, in their infinite wisdom, refused to print The Bodies ad cuz it used a flag with “Firepower is Our Business” written on it and that made the ‘zine “uncomfortable.” So TKO pulled all advertising and isn’t sending CDs to those bastards anymore. So there. “Uncomfortable.” I didn’t think punk was supposed to be comfortable… The fact that it is should be the issue, not when it isn’t. Then again, I disagree with most of what MRR and various other punk and emo elitists “stand for.”

The Bodies, as mentioned, are quite good. I can’t get shit for info off the band’s, the label’s, or either publicity company’s websites, and the “bio” I got conveyed as much info as my opening sentence. But there’s an arty photo on the photocopied bio that seems to show the guys live with Misfitsy make-up on, and that’s just as Jersey as the Bouncing Souls reference I was gonna make. Lotsa group yells and kinda Misfitsy whoa-whoas, but not whoa-oh-oh!s, if ya know what I mean. This stuff is straight-up, energetic, patriotic (couple songs about flying flags and pro-US sentiment, and keep in mind this is a reissue of a ’00 EP before it was suddenly fashionable to be so outwardly pro-American), and gutsy (meaning it’s not the most cerebral shit in the world, but math rock can have the new slew of college geeks now that they’ve outgrown their Rush tee shirts, and there’s nothing wrong with a little dumb fun yelling whoa-whoa like ya mean it).
(4104 24th St. #103 San Francisco, CA 94114)