(out now on clenchedwrench)

This minimal, jazzy two-bass band (with no other instruments!) stars Mike Watt, but it was started by in the mid-80s by Kira Roessler (Twisted Roots, late-era Black Flag) as background music for taped bedtime stories for her nephews.  Four albums and 26 years later, there are songs on dos y dos that still hold the late-night feel of someone reading you a story, a story that comes from a safe place but may not always have a happy ending.  Mostly instrumental, these songs feel somber yet warm, like an old dog being petted.  And when Roessler does sing, her broken, flat, whispery voice sounds both motherly and like a warning—like on “Ties to Bind,” which may be a sinister description of the War on Terror but may mean something else, something utterly private.  Without any other instrumentation, these bass duets feel insular, not meant to impress anyone but the immediate members of their fan family.  Like any family, dos has been through death and divorce (Roessler and Watt they were married once, and rumor has it Watt is still in love), but over the course of the last 17 years since justamente tres, their last release, Roessler and Watt have somehow taken all those tragedies and wonders and turned them into these songs.  And you don’t have to listen if you don’t want—this album isn’t going anywhere.  But when it’s late and you’re alone, they invite you to sit, play dos y dos, and become a part of the quiet, melodic, throbbing conversation.

-Dan Collins

Middle Class is Mike Atta, Jeff Atta, Matt Simon and Mike Patton (no, not that Mike Patton). Depending on who you ask, you might be told they are the first ever hardcore band, or you might get kicked in the gut with a pre-scuffed Urban Outfitters combat boot. After a very long spell, the band reunited last year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Frontier Records—the label that put out Middle Class’ 1979 EP, “Out of Vogue.” Now they’re returning to the Echoplex to play a badass L.A. RECORD show with Kid Congo, the Urinals and Grant Hart. This interview by Jonny Bell.

Do you get confused with the other Mike Patton?
Mike Patton (bass): Yeah, when I was living in Santa Monica one time I got a phone call and it was a girl and she asked, ‘Is this Mike Patton?’ I go, ‘Yeah,’ and she just screamed. ‘Aahhhhhh!!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you must be thinking of that other guy …’
Mike Atta (guitar): Nobody’s ever screamed for me. People have screamed at me …
Do you ever get super fans coming into your vintage shop Out Of Vogue?
MA: I wouldn’t say super fans—they don’t scream or anything—but I get kids in here who will be standing over here by the records or by the guitars and they’ll be nudging each other and whispering, ‘That’s him.’ And I’m just like the slob behind the counter, and finally I’ll ask ’em, ‘Can I help you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Are you the guy?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, that depends. What guy?’ ‘The Middle Class?’ ‘Yeah I’m the guy.’
So tell me about The Sound of Music club in San Francisco …
MA: The club I remember best of all was the Deaf Club.
Matt Simon (drums): I remember very distinctly playing there, like an afternoon show with the Toiling Midgets where we were going to leave right after and come home. And I started coming on to the acid and I remember seeing all these people—rolling drunks and stuff—this is my Sound of Music story—and I see this old black guy who comes walking up and I was like, ‘Hey, you should be careful. You’re all drunk and I just saw these people rob this guy.’ So I sat and talked to him for like five or ten minutes. Then he said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and he opened his jacket and he had a badge and gun and everything, and I thought, Oh, Jesus Christ. I was just coming on to the acid.
MP: The Deaf Club was really cool, it was a club for deaf people and we played a show and the deaf people that were around were behind the amplifiers and a bunch of them were touching the bass amp and putting their heads against the walls to get into the vibrations. We played with the Bags and Patricia [Morrison] lost her bass after the show and I remember going into a room looking for it and asking if anyone had seen a bass. When no one turned around I yelled, ‘Hey! What are you all deaf?’
MA: I remember it being next door to a hotel where punk rockers lived and it was like one of those places where you walk in past the guy in the glass case and he hands you a towel. One of those kinds of places with heroin addicts and everything.
You guys were pretty interested in the San Francisco scene?
MA: I think we were more accepted up there by the scene and the kids and everything than we were in Los Angeles. I think at that time, when were playing with the Wounds and the Toiling Midgets—what would that have been 1980, 81?—I don’t think their scene was like the scene down here. The scene down here had become more hardcore with like the beach scene and everything, and they may have had hardcore elements up there but it wasn’t the same kind of thing. It seemed like they were open to more kinds of music.
Why do you think that the bands in San Francisco didn’t end up being quite so ‘legendary’ as a lot of the Southern California bands?
MA: Well, the Avengers and the Nuns and all those bands—they were all pretty big San Francisco bands and they could do pretty well in L.A., but I don’t think they did well with the crowd that was the crowd that liked TSOL and the Adolescents and all that kind of stuff.
MS: I think the L.A. punk scene was bigger too—there was more music industry stuff down here, more records put out.
MP: What was the Sound of Music’s or whatever’s fanzine? Oh, Search & Destroy. It was too intellectual —it was intellectual and party and L.A. was not.
MA: I would say San Francisco was more like the earlier parts of the L.A. scene, where you had a lot of people that were art school, you know like the Weirdos and X and all those bands that went to CalArts or whatever—poetry readings and all that.
What were some of your favorite bands growing up?
Jeff Atta (vocals): Leading up to the band, like before ’74-’75, me and Mike would go to Licorice Pizza in Santa Ana and they’d have all these weird imports and stuff like that, and we got into Eno and Roxy Music and stuff like that.
MP: When I was growing up, I didn’t listen to music. And when I met Jeff in high school he introduced me to Mott the Hoople and New York Dolls, and I kind of got introduced to rock ‘n’ roll when Jeff and I were hanging around. I remember Jeff had the English music magazines, and Creem magazine we used to read. Creem had this little article about this new thing in England called ‘punk rock,’ and they listed the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Buzzcocks—those three bands. And in high school people would ask you what bands you liked and I would say the Damned, and I didn’t even know what they sounded like.
MA: I think for me, at that time—I was about 14 when you guys were discovering all that other stuff—I was listening to stuff like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, anything that would go along with my pot-smoking at the time. And then I remember when I was 15 and a half, almost 16, I started playing guitar and everybody else that was playing guitar was trying to learn Aerosmith and stuff like that, and you guys had gotten like the Dictators and the Ramones in like ’76, and you said, ‘You should try playing this.’
MS: You guys covered a lot of Ramones songs when you first started right?
MA: Yeah, when we first started and it was me and Mike and a couple other people. We were doing Stones songs, Ramones songs …
MP: ‘Cause it was easy.
You started off playing a lot of cover songs?
MA: Yeah, just in our studio. We had a storage unit that was converted into a place for us to rehearse and that’s where we started playing that, and then writing some of our own stuff. But we were into writing songs like Wire and the Ramones. We just didn’t know how fast it was going to end up.
I know it’s a simple question, but why did you start playing so fast?
MA: It wasn’t premeditated—that’s for sure.
JA: I think we thought, ‘OK, punk is loud and it’s fast,’ so we just played as loud and fast as we could. We weren’t intentionally trying to play any faster than anyone else …
MP: And it wasn’t something we really noticed until people started saying, ‘Wow, you guys are really fast!’
MA: We didn’t know anything about the ‘rules’ of music. You know, all those bands like X and everybody, they were all based in blues—they all still had that ‘thing.’ We didn’t know anything about that. We didn’t know about relative minors. I’ve had people say, ‘You know that song “Introductory Rights”? Did you know that song is only one chord?’ [Laughs] Rob Ritter from 45 Grave, Gun Club and all that—he always recorded bands early on. He had a cassette recorder with him all the time, and he goes, ‘I was trying to figure out how to play your songs. What kind of alternative tuning do you use?’ And I go, ‘Alternative? I just tune to Mike.’ … On the speed thing, we recorded on the record that Frontier put out there a version of a song ‘You Belong’ that’s a half a minute longer than the 45 version—and it was just a six-month period till we got to the speed of the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. And like I said, it wasn’t intentional. I don’t know how we got there; it was just a lot of Dr. Pepper and Suzy Q’s. … I remember consciously drinking Dr. Pepper and being kind of like straight-edge after reading in Trouser Press magazine where they were first talking about ‘the punks’ and that they’re against all rock ‘n’ roll conventions, all what’s supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll—the drugs and all that. So we took that to mean that we weren’t supposed to get high, we were just supposed to play this music. It didn’t take long to find out that wasn’t true.
MP: Well, that was one of the reasons I think the L.A. people liked us—we were cute. We were from Orange County, we were straight, we were VERY straight.
MA: I smoked pot before Middle Class, and I quit once we started because I thought you weren’t supposed to do dope or anything like that. It wasn’t until later that I really started smoking a lot of pot. [Laughs]
JA: At that time we were living in Santa Ana, and later in Fullerton. That’s why we got so big up in L.A., because as far as we knew we were the only people in Orange County playing punk rock. Later we found out there were people in Fullerton, Huntington Beach, recording around the same time, but were totally isolated.
MA: At that time there really wasn’t a lot of bands coming out of Orange County at all. When we got interviewed for the Masque when Brendan Mullen was writing his book, he asked, ‘Was it hard? People always said that people in the L.A. scene wouldn’t allow bands from the South Bay and Orange County to come up and play?’ Well for us, it’s because that didn’t exist yet. Everybody that was in those early bands—those first waver bands—they were all from someplace else anyways. How many people were really from Hollywood? They were all glitter kids from the Valley or the Dils and the Zeros were from Carlsbad or San Diego. … Our first show, I just met the guys from the Zeros and asked if we could play; told ’em we had a band and they said, ‘Yeah, you can play next week.’ It was that simple. It was with the Bags, the Controllers and Skulls or something like that. Kind of a different time—that’s for sure.
Do you think there’ll ever be a scene as vibrant as the scene back then?
MA: I talk to a lot of the kids coming in here today. I talk to Audacity, and I ask them how they keep up and everybody’s in a band now—it’s easy for everyone to get their content out there. Before it was like you had no choice—if you wanted to be part of punk rock you had to be part of a little scene. I mean there are little scenes still. Burger Records has their little thing—
MS: —but it’s not underground. You can’t keep anything underground anymore; it’s very difficult in the computer age.
MA: It gets co-opted or whatever, and I don’t know, it’s just like fashion today—it’s just all taking parts of other things. … We never dressed like punk rockers; we dressed pretty much like what you see now, but in high school everybody had long hair and it was still an outcast kind of thing. … Now, you can go to any high school in the United States and you can’t tell what people are into because everybody looks hip or indie or whatever. Before, you could identify a person and be like, ‘That guy’s a loadie, that guys a surfer, that guy’s a punk rocker.’ Now it’s like the guys that are in bands like Mumford & Sons or whatever, look the same as the guys in Audacity! They’re all wearing flannel cowboy shirts, and these guys are playing songs about squirrels?
MS: When I got into punk, I just cut my hair and started wearing ties, and older people would say, ‘You’re a very nice young man. You’re thinking of joining the military?’ And people my age were like, ‘You’re just an idiot.’
MA: I just saw this posting from a friend of my wife’s son’s band and it’s called ‘post-hardcore,’ but they all have haircuts like Disney channel kids. But I guess that it’s ‘post-hardcore metal’, not ‘post-hardcore punk’ or something. I don’t know! … You know it’s interesting because in the original punk rock scene from L.A.—and I think S.F was the same—when you look at bands that were involved like Weirdos, Screamers, Middle Class … when you listen to these bands individually, they kind of sound like they shouldn’t be playing together. You got the Middle Class playing with the Screamers and when you listen to the Screamers now you hear them doing like bloop-beep—all that kind of stuff. I think they all fit together because it was all outcast things. Later on, when you had your hardcore punk scene, you could put four hardcore bands together and it was kind of a blur of music.
MP: And the problem with the hardcore scene was that it became very regimented, and there was a certain way you were supposed to look and a certain way you were supposed to be and it was completely the opposite of what punk started as.
MS: It was not a friendly scene! If you weren’t connected or dressed right you were in danger of getting hurt bad.
MA: I just remember when you played shows up to 1980 or so, you could look out into the crowd and there would be a bunch of girls in the audience. By 1981 you looked down there and everyone had a shaved head and no shirt on! I saw this amazing picture on this Mabuhay thing: Black Flag playing at Mabuhay Gardens and it was Henry Rollins and he was just like all tense and flexed and tight and everything, and there’s like four guys in the front and they all looked exactly the same.
It became like a church …
MA: Yeah exactly. I read this thing about our band and our relationship with hardcore and they wrote that if we would have just done our first single and kept with that music, that we would’ve been as popular as Black Flag. But we changed the formula.
MP: I remember when we played the Fleetwood, some guy came in with long hair while we were playing and got pummeled by the crowd because he wasn’t supposed to be there, and there was a real visceral reaction. I remember Jeff refused to play the first singles. We wouldn’t play them and we broke from that.
MA: I just remember you would start playing and everybody’s back was turned and they’d be all ready to start throwing down and stuff.
MS: I think the ratio of being hit to throwing punches must’ve been 50 to 1. We’ve been beaten up a lot more than we’ve beaten. [Laughs] It’s not a TSOL kind of thing where there are these four big guys who were like ass-kickers.
MP: The original punks were not jocks, you know—they were all losers. But then the jocks got into it and saw about an inch deep of what punk rock was. Didn’t get the whole concept of it. Put on the uniform, and there were jocks and assholes coming in, and now that was hardcore.
MA: We’re going to get beat up again, aren’t we?
Do you think ‘Out of Vogue’ was the first hardcore single?
MA: Some people that were in the original scene, Alice Bag or something, they’ll say it was proto-punk or the beginning of thrash punk or whatever, and I’ll take it, because it’s what gets us known and stuff. And people say this led to that, or Black Flag was a heavy metal band till they heard the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. People will argue that thing with the Bad Brains: ‘Look at the two records—Middle Class was ’78, Bad Brains was ’79.’ You know, I think that the arguments are pretty funny. A blog I was just reading yesterday was saying Black Flag was the first hardcore band. ‘Their single came out in ’76.’ I’m like, ‘What? Where did you get that from?’
JA: All that stuff is just a record collector thing. You have to pick something, somebody always had to be the first one. It’s just like the argument about who was the first ‘punk’ band, and somebody will say, ‘Oh, Iggy was.’
MA: No—Sonics!
MS: It was Charlie Parker!
MA: Next thing you know people are saying it was the Carter Family or something. I think [‘Out of Vogue’] was influential to a lot of people, and I’ll take that.
What do you think about all the old punk bands re-uniting?
MA: I find the whole thing kind of interesting that bands like ours, or bands like TSOL or whatever the bands are can actually play these shows, and they’ll be a mixture of young people and old people. I just remember being 19-20 years old and having absolutely no desire to see bands that had existed 30 years prior, you know what I mean?
MS: Yeah—like going to see the Coasters!
MA: I remember one time when we were about 23-24, and we went to go see Eric Burdon. We were fed up with punk rock so we were looking back at some of the old stuff like the Animals, doing something different. So we went to Eric Burdon at the Roxy and he looked all Vegas! Had his shirt open and all these gold chains on. And he did a medley of the Animals’ hits and we were all like, ‘Uhhhh …’
MS: I remember that and we were—I hate to say this—a little bit famous at the time and the guy was like, ‘Here, we’ve got seats for you right up front.’ After like the third song we were like, ‘Let’s get outta here!’ It was terrible. It was unbearable!
MA: I think it’s interesting that kids and people find inspiration in going to see these old bands and everything. I mean, I’m completely thrilled by it. I’m flattered that a 15-year-old kid would come in here and actually value my opinion on music and stuff, cuz I could tell you that when I was their age I could give a fuck about what somebody that was 30 or 40 years old thought about music. People will bring CDs in for me and ask, ‘Can you listen to this?’ and I’ll say, ‘You know, there’s nothing I can really do for you.’ [Laughs] It’s kind of cool that they care. With the Audacity kids I was like, ‘You guys wanna play behind my store?’ Haha!
MP: The fact that anybody cares is fucking awesome.
Watching you guys play was great, as opposed to maybe the Germs or something. You heard about what they’re doing now?
MA: Yeah, of course. We were going to try and get a guy from ER to take Jeff’s place if he wasn’t going to do the show. .. An actor! But anyways … they tried to get us to do the Germs return show a couple years ago. They said, ‘We got the Minutemen, we got the Germs.’ And I was like, ‘D. Boon’s dead, Darby’s dead. How are you guys doing that?’ Didn’t make any sense to me. … Maybe the actor is good, but to me it’s like going to see Wild Child as the Doors or Atomic Punks doing Van Halen. But, believe me, more people go to see that than the Middle Class!
MS: You know, like I watched the Adolescents and TSOL and they’ve obviously practiced all the way through and they’re tight and perfect, but to me that’s not really the most important thing. They’ve been playing the same set over and over again like for 20 years, but for us it’s a lot different, you know, cuz we’ve just started playing this stuff again this year.
MA: It’s kind of like Middle Class was before … The way we play and the way it is, all it takes is just one little thing to go wrong to throw it into a complete mess. You never know when the wheels are going to fly off and that’s what makes it kind of exciting. And you know with some of these other bands you can tell that it can be done in their sleep.
What’d you guys do in the thirty or so years since the band broke up?
MA: I was in a band with Alice from the Bags called Cambridge Apostles; I did that for a little bit. For a very short time I had a band with Ward Dotson from Gun Club, and for a while I didn’t do anything except for play with Matt’s band—he was in a band called the Pontiac Brothers. They discovered the Doll Hut here in Anaheim and started that thing.
MP: I played in Trotsky Icepick with Jack Grisham [of TSOL], then I was going to college and was in a couple bands—Breathe and Young Caucasians.
MA: Wait, you were in Breathe?
MP: Yeah, when I was going to Fullerton college. A different Breathe.
MA: Oh, there was a band Breath—
MS: —Bad Breath! They were the first hardcore uhhh …
MA: —Gingivitis band! Then you took over the Eddie empire—Eddie and the Subtitles.
MP: Yeah, when Eddie bailed, I presided over the crumbling empire—produced China White, Adolescents, Christian Death …
MA: Oh, I thought that was the other Mike Patton!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS THE MIDDLE CLASS WITH KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS, GRANT HART AND THE URINALS ON FRI., JUNE 24, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $16-$18 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE! VISIT THE MIDDLE CLASS AT FACEBOOK.COM/THEMIDDLECLASSOFFICIAL.

Download: Cerebral Ballzy “Insufficient Fare”

Brooklyn band Cerebral Ballzy play completely wrecked hardcore and destroyed our Valentine’s Day show in February. They will also destroy the Echo tomorrow. Singer Honor Titus speaks now on puke, cops, jail, jazz, yuppies and Cyndi Lauper. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

When you did the ‘Puke Song,’ you actually recorded a live puke. What is the best way to capture a puke in hi-fidelity?
Honor Titus (vocals): It was actually really fuckin’ funny, man. I tried to shotgun four beers in a row to puke on cue, I guess, and I totally missed the fuckin’ toilet and puked on the mic. We had to hide it from Joby from the Bronx—‘Ah, it’s all chill, dude.’ As I’m wiping down this mic all frantically. ‘Man, I hope he doesn’t see this!’
Does he know that happened?
I think he’ll find out in L.A. RECORD.
What else have you destroyed with the power of bodily functions?
The first time we were in London—last summer—shit was just stupid, man. It was just disgusting. I puked on a kid at a gig! Like on stage.
Was he into it?
I … don’t think so. He got pushed into the pit and … went away.
Like a washing machine? Was he cleaned by the rotational action of the circle pit?
That’s some vile shit!
Did you ever try the forbidden English drink called ‘the Snakebite’?
Abe took seven of ‘em in one night when we first got to London and supposedly … the story goes he was with some chick, and some dudes called the chick he was with a slut, and then the dude slapped Abe! And Abe totally whupped some dudes ass on seven snakebites. It was the first three days in London. And he almost got arrested because of CCTV. They show up within minutes! Big Brother’s watching, man. It’d be a good statistic on how many cameras are in London. I’m sure across England there’s millions. We’d be ducking into corners to do drugs and shit on the street.
Did you crawl into any dumpsters?
Exactly—that status. Find a weird nook and pull some dude’s apartment door and sneak into his corridor.
Didn’t someone get arrested in England?
Mason did. He got off cuz the kid pushed him first. I don’t know. Dude tried to step to Mason and our tour manager cracked the kid with a bottle. And they went to jail for the night, and Mason wouldn’t shut the fuck up about how England has the best fucking prison treatment in the world. Like you press a button and they bring you a cup of tea! And he woke up and had a better breakfast than we all had that fucking morning—a full English breakfast! I’d beg to go to jail in England. Sounds like the fuckin’ Days Inn.
Have you ever met any of those cops that used to be into punk and are totally stoked to talk about punk while they’re busting you?
There’s a ton of ‘em in New York. ‘Oh, man, fuckin’ Cro-Mags—fuckin’ Cro-Mags. I saw you pissin’ but Cro-Mags!’
Has that actually gotten you off of getting busted?
Yeah—it’s kinda obvious, man. We look like a fuckin’ crew of freaks at this point. Dudes are like, ‘Well, you’re obviously into something else … but Cro-Mags, bro! Cro-Mags!’
Does that work outside of New York City?
No. N-O no!
Do you ever do what Black Flag used to do and tell the cops you’re in a jazz band?
Totally. When we first started the band, we were CBC—Cerebral Ballzy Crew. So we go through mad checkpoints: ‘Oh, you’re a band?’ ‘Yeah, CBC!’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘City Boys for Christ, man!’
Are there any Cerebral Ballzy fans that terrify you?
Dude, there’s a few. Shit is gnarly. There’s one chick named … like Trashlee or something, something gnar. She has like tie-dye hair. But she’s kinda cute. And also … Trash Talk is the only other band I’ve seen get this. Dudes can’t contain themselves around us. It’s kind of gnarly. Dudes are just super-stoked. Like dudes in London say, ‘I’m not gay, mate, but you’re the only dude I’d fuck!’ Like … what the fuck are you talking about, dude?
Are you gonna do a solo pop album like Stiv Bators? That would really make people fall in love with you.
I’m working on it! How do you know? I’ve got a Stiv Bators tattoo, man.
Who’s in your tattoo roll call? Zombies, Beach Boys …
I got Ozzy Osbourne in a poncho playing guitar.
No slice of pizza tattoo?
I narrowly avoided the pizza tattoo, thank God. You know … food tattoos. ‘You dig food, man. Cool.’ It’s kinda suspect. ‘You really like soup, huh?’
That’d be great. A bowl and a spoon with little steam lines.
Add mashed potatoes and I’d fucking love it. I almost got ‘Time After Time’—the Cyndi Lauper song. She rules. She’s super-down. I’ve heard her weird demos. That shit’s rad. I’d bone Cyndi, dude. Put it out there. Is her hair still purple?
She has this platinum angel thing now.
I’d marry her and change my name to Lauper. I’d be Honor Lauper. That’s sick.
When is the record coming out?
July 25. We’re releasing it on Adult Swim in the States. Raymond Pettibon did the art. Shit’s gonna be nuts.
You gonna guest-spot on ‘Superjail’?
They’re gonna guest spot on Ballzy, man.
What would your opening cartoon credits be?
It’d be a no-comply on to a fuckin’ … deep thin-crust then a backflip on to a chick’s tits.
Do you really think aliens are taking over the Brooklyn Navy Yards?
I think so. An indigenous tribe called ‘the yuppies.’
You should check out the documentary They Live.
One thing you should check out … no, one thing you should NEVER check out … is 1992 to 1994 pop-punk bands.
Didn’t you play the Warped Tour with all those bands?
I love Vans and I love sixteen-year-old girls so we agreed to the terms. We didn’t read the fine print. And it’s OK. We made it. The awesomest band on the Warped Tour besides Cerebral Ballzy was the Casualties. And Keith Morris is a fucking god among men. I fucking love that dude.
How long would it take you to grow hair like Keith Morris?
Not til after I see ‘They Live.’ Maybe I’m the yuppie!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS CEREBRAL BALLZY WITH BASTARD AND RUPTURES ON TUE., JUNE 7, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 7 PM / $8 / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT CEREBRAL BALLZY AT CEREBRALBALLZY.COM.

Well, under normal circumstances, you can’t!  Unavailable in any distributed format for years, according to director David Markey, the film finally found a home on Vimeo not too long ago where slam-dancers of all ages could see it.  And then this happened:

Sorry! “”Reality 86′d” A film by David Markey” was deleted at 1:49:29 Mon May 23, 2011. Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Greg Ginn claiming that this material is infringing: “Reality 86′d” A film by David Markey. We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

We caught up with David Markey on Facebook this week and got his take on why he believes Ginn had the film “paralyzed”:

So… what did Greg Ginn do to your film, Reality 86’d?
He first refused to release the film when I offered it to him. He then refused to let me release the film. He then refused to let Henry release the film. 20 years pass. I post it to Vimeo for viewing purposes only and Ginn has it removed. Like clockwork.
Do you make him look bad in the movie?  Why would he do this?
The film was done with love and respect for Ginn and Black Flag, one of the world’s most important bands, still… even after all of this.  There is nothing in the film to make him look bad that we didn’t already see in Woodstock.
Isn’t this an important portrait-of-a-time film that everyone should see?
This particular era is not very under-represented, although oddly enough Greg did allow footage from this movie to be seen in American Hardcore.  I thought that was weird.
This is one of the few films with footage of Joe Cole, the famed Black Flag roadie whose death inspired songs by Sonic Youth, an album by Hole, and even two books by Henry Rollins.  Why would anyone want to diminish his legacy?
Beats me.  Joe saw the film before he was killed.  At least he got to see it.
Henry Rollins is in the film too.  Does he know what Greg’s done to the film?
Yes.  Very much so.  Henry wants it released. Dukowski wants it released. 5 other people in the film want it released. The fans want it released.
Now that I can’t see the film, it only makes me want to view it more.  What are my options?
I hear it’s all over the net already so perhaps the 20th century way of doing things is already irrelevant.
So, how are you going to make this right?  Will you shoot a third Lovedolls movie and cast Bob Moss as a villainous “Gagg Thin, head of STD Records?”
Probably not, not that it’s not a great idea…

-Dan Collins

Poly Styrene, AKA Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, died yesterday after a struggle with spinal and breast cancers. And I wish I shared in her spiritual Hare Krishna ethic. I wish I believed, as her website declares, that she had “won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places,” because all I feel is the loss. The tragedy is that with her new album, she was still showing an ability to take a sarcastic, objective look at everything from race to gender to internet dating. Had she lived, we might have had a real elder punk stateswoman on our hands, the likes of which we sorely need.

Of all the punk rock influences of my childhood, I’d be hard pressed to think of one more formative than Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex. Sure, the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and the Cramps all showed me sides of punk rock that drew a line in the sand that meant I could NEVER be an investment banker. But it was X-Ray Spex, and particularly Poly Styrene’s vocals and lyrics, that showed me rebellion could be smart, poetic, both beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

In fact, I was inspired by X-Ray Spex before I could even HEAR them. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I devoured the few Ramones and Stooges cassettes I could get, but I could only read about Poly Styrene’s braces and sheet-metal blasting voice in old rock magazines at the Central Library. I had to wait until a debate team excursion to Chicago to go to an actual record store and pick up Germ Free Adolescents—I still remember pulling out the cassette from its case and being excited that it was dayglo orange!

And that shit did not disappoint. I spent a couple years devouring and living these lyrics, even if I had a hard time figuring out what Weetabix was. I mean, driving “a polypropylene car on wheels of sponge?” And addressing not the cops, as Black Flag had done, or the Queen, as the Sex Pistols had done, but consumer culture directly? I probably wasn’t even ready for those lessons, and focused more on the personal identity confusion of a mind “like a switchboard, with crossed and tangled lines.” And of course, she name-checked Richard Hell in “Let’s Submerge,” which made my pogo-plumped brain quite pleased listening in my bedroom.

I thought I had placed X-Ray Spex into a healthy spot in my punk rock and musical canon, but looking back, clearly I was obsessed. I got a rather expensive saxophone, which I never fully learned to play. I carved the word “cliché” into my chest with a razorblade and took a bunch of photos, partially inspired by their song, “I Am a Cliche.” And this may be the reason I hung out so much with Marta Estirado, singer of Tulsa’s Lepers (who also died too soon), because she looked and acted just like Poly Styrene. Maybe she was obsessed too.

Anyway, like all things youthful, I moved on, and while I never stopped loving that band, I was skeptical of their latter-day reunion recordings, and anyway, I’m far less 77-era punk now than I was then (I even have a moustache). That’s why it’s so tragic that her new album, Generation Indigo, seems like it could have been just the thing to get me back on the Poly Styrene bus. Now that she’s gone, I’ll never get to see her live, never get to hear her new recordings, and never get to have the levity and wit of her talented mind. I hope she’s moved on to a better realm. Even in the short time she was here, she’s definitely made this realm better for me.

—Dan Collins

Download: Scott H. Biram “Time Flies”

(from Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever out now on Bloodshot)

Scott H. Biram is an American hollerer with a bunch of room to himself between David Allan Coe and Jack Oblivian. He likes Black Flag but sometimes he gets weird and reedy like Dock Boggs, and he decides here that he is probably not going to take shrooms again for a little bit. This interview by Sarah Bennett.

Do you still have your ’65 Ranchero?
Scott H. Biram: I’m sitting in it now. It was pretty beat up when I got it but I had it redone and they kinda ripped me off and didn’t do as good a job as they should have. But my cousin builds hot rods and works at this badass shop and he had it for three weeks and fixed it all up and it’s badass.
Do you collect old cars?
Scott H. Biram: No, this was actually my uncle’s—he died in ’99 and I bought it from my aunt. It was just sitting in the carport for five or six years. He was only the second owner and the old man, Mr. McCoy, who owned it before—my grandfather says he remembers when that old man bought the car brand new and drove it into town and no one had ever seen anything like it before.
What town was that?
Scott H. Biram: Until I was 10, I lived in a small town called Prairie Lee—population 100 people. There was a schoolhouse with grades kindergarten through twelfth grade all in one big building. There were fourteen kids in my class. I moved to San Marcos, Texas, when I was 10—a college town—and I grew up there. Plus I did a lot of traveling with the folks too, so I didn’t get the whole hick thing.
You’ve openly attacked the ‘hick’ stereotype. You have an art degree, right?
Scott H. Biram: Some people just automatically think I’m some kind of dumb redneck because of my moustache, but no—I went to college at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. It’s a state university now. David Yow—the singer for Jesus Lizard—is also from there. He was quite a bit older than me, but we still had the same art teacher who did a couple of Jesus Lizard album covers and he just did my most recent one, too.
Do you still do any visual art?
Scott H. Biram: No, I got burned out in college and didn’t want to do any more art after that. I still do T-shirt designs, but that’s about as far as that goes. I was a painting major and I did collage—weird collage. I made some little tiny roasted turkeys one time.
Where did music come in? I read that you got into Stevie Wonder first and demanded a Casio keyboard for Christmas.
Scott H. Biram: I don’t know where I would have said that, but yeah. When I was a little kid I heard ‘Superstitious’ and I was like, ‘What is that?’ It didn’t sound like a keyboard and my mom told me it was a synthesizer and I said, ‘I want one of those.’ So, yeah—I started playing keyboards first.
You’ve been in a lot of physical accidents—including the Great French Gas Station Leg Break of ’09. Does your pain tolerance ever improve?
Scott H. Biram: Nah, I don’t like pain. Most of the stuff happened to me back in 2003 with my big wreck when I broke every limb in my body except for my left arm. It was pretty wild. And so in February, I broke my other leg and they put rods in that one. Now I’m like the bionic redneck or something.
How much metal is in your body? How much does it weigh?
Scott H. Biram: It’s titanium so it’s not really heavy, but I have a rod through the center of the bone of my right lower leg and a plate in my left knee with about eight screws. I have a titanium rod through my right leg through the center of my right femur and another plate on my forearm with more screws in it. But as far as pain goes, my tolerance for Vicodin is way high now. I took one the other night and it didn’t do anything to me.
What about morphine?
Scott H. Biram: They didn’t give me any this last time, but when I was in the first time, they had me on so much morphine for the first week that I thought I was locked in a feed store behind enemy lines. I was in a military hospital, too, so everyone had their fatigues on.
You recovered alone this time, right?
Scott H. Biram: I’m always alone. I’m like stir-crazy in my own head. My dog thinks I’m crazy because I’ve been whispering to myself. I’ll be thinking something then I’ll whisper it and my dog will look at me like, ‘What are you doing?’
Is it hard to adjust to the inherent social aspects of going on tour?
Scott H. Biram: When I go out by myself in regular situations not playing music, I can get nervous. I don’t like to be around people—meeting their families and stuff like that—it just makes me nervous. But when I’m on the road, it’s like having a birthday party for you every night. You’re the guest of honor and they’re giving you food and beer and showing me their titties and stuff.
Do you believe that bad things happen to you because you were a bad person in a past life?
Scott H. Biram: No. I just feel like I have shit luck. I’m not a clumsy person. When I slipped in France, it was because the gas company makes their pumps with tile flooring on it so they’re slippery as fuck.
If you did have a past life who do you think you’d be?
Scott H. Biram: Not a truck driver; probably a carpenter. I’m good at building things. If I was somebody else before, I would be just an anybody that didn’t stand out too much—a person living a humble life. I just don’t feel any extraordinary background coming to me from any past life. But I’ve been told I have an old soul.
Do you agree with the statement that ‘America in 2009 is a place and time when it isn’t hard to have the blues’?
Scott H. Biram: I’ve been having a little bit of trouble writing lately, but I started recording a new record just a couple of weeks ago. It was three years between my last two records, so if I can finish this one in the next seven or eight months, I’ll be doing good. I’m feeling a little punk rock again. I’ve been trying to write some minute punk songs—just straight-up punk rock hollerin’. It goes with my lack of inspiration somehow. If I just yell some words out and play some really Black Flag-sounding shit, I could write a shitload of those songs. I know there are a few people who miss the wild and crazy me because the last record had a lot of ballad songs on there. They say, ‘We miss the rowdy, grind-y style,’ so I don’t mind showing them it’s still there—and then throwing a couple of lonely ones in there too. The one I already recorded for the new album is kind of like a lonely, driving-across-the-desert-at-night song.
Do the ballads come from recording alone in your home studio?
Scott H. Biram: No. It’s because I’m depressed. I’m depressed as fuck. I’ve been depressed forever. I’m jaded too. I have no love interests at all and that’s a little depressing too, that I’ve given up on that shit.
You could try not spending so much time alone? Your dog can’t help you meet people.
Scott H. Biram: That’s why I’m taking acting classes. I’ve been filming a demo for a horror movie that’s coming out where I’m a serial killer truck driver.
Joyride?
Scott H. Biram: It’ll be more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre but where I’m a truck driver. I went to Nashville to film this scene and in 16-degree weather I hung a girl by some hooks in a barn. I’ve been thinking I really want to get into this acting thing—get my mind off of music for a little bit—so I’ve been looking into these classes at the city college here in town. And I think I can meet people in a setting that’s not at a bar.
But then you’re meeting actresses who are really good at faking things.
Scott H. Biram: Yeah, well, I’m good at faking shit too. But, really, I like girls who are actresses because they have a career idea and they want to do something with their lives.
They also tend to take care of their bodies more because it might end up on camera.
Scott H. Biram: That’s awesome.
You could go to the titty bar to meet women.
Scott H. Biram: It’s not that you can’t pick up chicks at a titty bar—unless you got coke—but it’s just a waste of money. We hit one once every tour because we’re bored.
You’re in Austin now, but are there any other cities you would consider living in?
Scott H. Biram: I love San Francisco. I like the way it looks. I like coming over one of those hills and seeing the bay down below. It’s one place I feel like I can breathe; when I’m home or in other cities, I feel like I’m not taking as deep of breaths as I should. I drove through Louisiana once where all the refineries are and my nose started bleeding.
How does L.A. stack up?
Scott H. Biram: I like going to L.A. I don’t want to live in L.A. I don’t like the traffic. Every friend I know who moves there within two months is wearing a spiked belt.
What’s one way someone from L.A. could not look so out-of-place in the South?
Scott H. Biram: Well, I can’t speak for the South because Texas is not the South.
The United States of Texas?
Scott H. Biram: It’s just such a big place and there’s so many different places and different kinds of people in Texas. I’m not all about that ‘seceding from the Union’ bullshit, but it is its own entity. To me, there’s the South, Texas, the Southwest and the West. If you want to blend in in Austin, you just have to have a bunch of tattoos.
What job did you have to quit to do music full-time?
Scott H. Biram: I was a cook at the Town Square Deli in Wimberley, Texas. My last job was Christmas Eve, 2001. I was supposed to get off two hours early and I got off two hours late and I looked into the restaurant and everyone was gone except the owners and their friends drinking mimosas and having a good old time and I was back there washing dishes and late for my Christmas Eve at my parent’s house. So I said I quit without my two weeks. Told them that they wouldn’t like the way I’m going to act the next two weeks if I stay here.
Was that the worst job you ever had?
Scott H. Biram: The worst job I had would either be the pawn shop or the Goodwill. At Goodwill, I sorted through all the shit that gets donated. It’s all dirty from people’s garages and I have this thing when my hands get dust on them, I feel weird—like this claustrophobic feeling. I don’t mind oil or gasoline on them, but if they get some kind of dry stuff, it makes me freak out. They told me I needed to clean the men’s restroom and I just walked out.
What about the pawn shop?
Scott H. Biram: That was just depressing. There was this crazy guy in my art class and he got crazier and crazier and one time he came into the pawn shop and he pawned a bunch of guns and I was like, ‘This guy does not need to have guns.’
Do you still get inspiration from the CB radio?
Scott H. Biram: Well, I haven’t had my CB in a while, but five minutes of listening to it, there’s something that’s worth it. That’s where I got the title of the last record. ‘Lost Forever’ came from this trucker saying, ‘We’re gonna be lost forever!’ and the ‘Something’s Wrong’ comes from when me and my friends were on mushrooms in high school and my friend’s curled up in a ball screaming, ‘Something’s wrong!’
Which is better—LSD or shrooms?
Scott H. Biram: Well, after last Halloween, I don’t know if I’ll take shrooms again. The mushrooms freaked me out. I played this festival. There were a thousand people there and I came by myself and I didn’t know anybody. Somebody gave me some shrooms and we went to this campfire—it was a campout festival. There were all these hippies and there were people playing drums and shit. I had just played but I didn’t know anybody and I kept hearing my name being called. When I tried to find my van I got lost in the woods. I should have seen it coming—me coming alone and getting lost in the woods on mushrooms. I also locked myself in a porta-potty for half an hour to try and get my shit together.
No more psychedelics?
Scott H. Biram: I’ll drop some acid again, but I smoke pot and drink and that’s about it. Except for New Year’s Eve—that’s another story. Last year we were in New Orleans. A quarter-hit of acid, a party in a mansion and I got really drunk and started walking through the Garden District and wandered into some bars where I stayed until the sun came up.
You seem to end up on a lot of solo adventures.
Scott H. Biram: Sometimes I put myself in these places to make myself do things so that I’ll have stories to tell. I’m a really good storyteller. I remember little details and things from when I was 3 all the way up through high school and college. And I like to tell stories and I can’t shut up.
Good thing you can write songs about them.
Scott H. Biram: Yeah, but then I tell more stories between songs and people yell at me to shut up and play. It’s funnier in France where they have no idea what I’m saying.

SCOTT H. BIRAM WITH THE DIRT DAUBERS ON SAT., FEB. 6, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVER LAKE. 8:30 PM / $8-$10 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. SCOTT H. BIRAM’S SOMETHING’S WRONG/LOST FOREVER IS OUT NOW ON BLOODSHOT. VISIT SCOTT H. BIRAM AT SCOTTBIRAM.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/SCOTTHBIRAM.

Download: Saint Vitus “Look Behind You”

(from Heavier Than Thou available from SST)

Saint Vitus has held a special place in my heart since I first heard ‘Look Behind You’ on the eclectic and inexpensive SST compilation The Blasting Concept Vol. 2. The song is a paranoid trip through hell—an immediate stand-out. It rocked like Black Sabbath—who, thanks to my older brother, I had loved since before I got a real skateboard—and it also had a palpable DIY pulse like Black Flag, who were of increased interest to me after I got a real skateboard. They had a killer logo and made even cooler records while unknowingly creating the sound of a genre of heavy metal that had yet to be named. I spoke with Saint Vitus guitarist and founding member Dave Chandler from his home in New Orleans prior to Saint Vitus’ return to the city where they started. We talked about heavy tunes, getting stoned, punkers, an Obsessed tape I’d like to hear and two-year-old headbangers. Dave Chandler is also not only a forefather of the entire genre of doom metal, he is also one of the happiest guys having the most fun playing it—often with his teeth. This interview by Kurt Midness.

Perhaps you are familiar with the debate among blues dudes about whether or not one must have lived a hard life to play the blues. Must someone be bummed out to play doom metal?
Dave Chandler (guitar): Not necessarily. It kinda helps with lyrics to be angry or depressed. I’m happy now. When I was writing for Saint Vitus, I was more pissed and bummed or wrote songs about being fucked up. I’m writing new stuff now and I’m really happy—but people will probably still see it as being pissed off and bummed out. I do believe bands should have to pay their dues and do it yourself. Every band should have to live in a van for a year. Bands shouldn’t just get a career in music handed to them, which seems to be the way it works now.
Should one be stoned in order to play stoner rock?
Dave Chandler: Nah. Not necessarily. To me that is a vague term. ‘Stoner rock’ to me—that is just rock. I think someone thought they were clever when they coined that term. I do think all music sounds better when you’re stoned, but that’s just me. With me getting stoned helped out, but not necessarily to play doom. Some people get stoned and play jazz. Getting stoned opens your mind and you become more creative. Some people will argue that. Most people I know that play doom metal get stoned—not a lot of straight edgers.
There are a lot of different names describing a lot of different musical genres these days. What do you call Saint Vitus?
Dave Chandler: Doom metal—definitely. We played for years and never heard of that. Then I heard us referred to as ‘doom metal’ in Europe and I thought, ‘Yeah, that fits.’ My mom used to call it funeral music. I think if you didn’t know anything about Saint Vitus, but were told that we are doom metal, you’d have an idea how we sound.
Now that Saint Vitus are seen as progenitors—and masters—of an old school doom metal sound, have you ever thought that the old Saint Vitus credo of ‘born too late’ should actually be changed to ‘born too early’?
Dave Chandler: No, not really—we’re still born too late. We’ve just outlasted everybody. The few fans we had from back then grew up and had kids and now their kids are listening to Saint Vitus and listening with their friends. And there are a lot of new fans that come to the shows. I’ve literally seen a two-year-old at a show with little earplugs giving me the metal horns hand sign.
Is now a better time to be in a doom metal band?
Dave Chandler: I guess I’m not sure. Doom metal to me is an underground genre, but the underground is a lot bigger than it used to be. Here in New Orleans, doom metal is extremely popular, but you go somewhere else and people aren’t into it at all, so it depends on where you are. There is really only one band to play doom metal at an arena-sized level and that’s Black Sabbath.
Having cribbed the name Saint Vitus from the song ‘St. Vitus Dance,’ I’d think Black Sabbath was obviously an early influence. What other heavy shit were you into when you started the band?
Dave Chandler: I was really into Judas Priest, but everybody was into different stuff. [Drummer] Armando [Acosta] was really into Rush, [bassist] Mark [Adams] was really into Lynyrd Skynyrd and I was really into Judas Priest and Mahogany Rush… Alice Cooper, Blue Cheer. That’s how you would get together back then. If you were into that kind of rock, you would hang out. Mark and I have been friends since high school listening to this stuff, so we started a band. When I was real young it was different stuff that got me interested in music—stuff like the Monkees made me want to be a musician. When I started playing guitar, the first group that really inspired me was Alice Cooper. I was already listening to Black Sabbath, but it was Alice Cooper that made me really want to start a band.
Did you identify Saint Vitus as a metal band when you started?
Dave Chandler: Pretty much—back then there was just heavy metal and that was it. Otherwise you were a hard rock or blues band or a pop band or something else. When we hooked up with the punk scene in L.A., we called it hardcore metal. Back then there weren’t a lot of bands that you would call metal. Bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest were called heavy metal, but a band like Montrose or Led Zeppelin was considered hard rock or hard rock blues. There were only a couple bands you’d call heavy metal.
Would you say that Saint Vitus—like Metallica—didn’t find a lot to like or support about the L.A. metal scene back then?
Dave Chandler: As soon as we played our first show, we knew we didn’t fit in. We knew we didn’t want to do the whole Hollywood hair metal bullshit. They didn’t want anything to do with us either, so we stopped playing in L.A. You end up playing where people want you to play.
How did you get involved with Greg Ginn and SST?
Dave Chandler: Early on we would play anywhere that would book us. In those days bands did everything themselves. You would make your own flyers and pass them out at other bands’ shows to try to get people to come to your show. There was a band called Overkill that was on SST. They were one of the first metal-punk crossover bands. They were handing out flyers at one of our shows and they asked us to open one of their shows. I asked if they could get the dudes in Black Flag to check us out because I was real into Black Flag. Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski came to the show and they liked us. Greg asked if we wanted to do a record for SST and we were like, ‘Yeah!’ and it went from there.
How did the punk scene in L.A. respond to Saint Vitus? Did you bum out folks that came to pogo and slam dance?
Dave Chandler: At the first show they basically ignored us. They couldn’t care less. Mark did something that pissed them off and they did the typical punk thing and started trashing us. I think the punkers thought of us as a typical LA metal band. We confused them, though, when we played the really slow stuff because they were used to hearing fast music. We gained their respect eventually because we never stopped playing when they hated us. It kinda turned around and eventually we played only punk shows in L.A. Heavy metal people in L.A. never liked us.
Is Wino the new guy in the band again?
Dave Chandler: No—actually, we have a new drummer. Henry Vasquez. [Vocalist] Wino’s an old man like the rest of us.
Did you know about the Obsessed when Wino joined the band?
Dave Chandler: We had a mutual friend that gave us a tape and we thought he’d work out. We liked his voice for sure, so it was just a matter of whether or not we would get along.
Are you an L.A. native?
Dave Chandler: I grew up in Lomita which is near San Pedro. That’s where Mark still lives.
How did you end up in New Orleans?
Dave Chandler: I met a girl that was living in Los Angeles temporarily who’s from here. I’d been wanting to get out of Los Angeles, so we moved out here and got married.
What does your dentist have to say about you playing guitar with your teeth?
Dave Chandler: It was really funny when I chipped my tooth one time. He told me it files down your teeth, so after a while you have to get caps. I chipped one he had worked on and he said, ‘What happened to my tooth?’ I was like, ‘That was my tooth.’ Then I told him what happened and he was like, ‘Jeez!’
What made you want to add that to your repertoire?
Dave Chandler: I’ve never been the greatest classic guitar player. I couldn’t just play something like Steve Howe, so I started doing as many tricks as I could. It looks good and it’s fun to do. The audience really likes it when I do it. That’s the main thing—it’s fun.
Is it easier on the teeth if you tune down?
Dave Chandler: No, I didn’t notice a difference. We tune down a half step because Wino’s voice is a little deeper. It’s hard as hell to do, but it’s a lot of fun. I got to learn it all over again to play these shows—but we wouldn’t be doing this at all now if we weren’t having fun.

SAINT VITUS (WITH WINO) WITH SAVIOURS, TOTIMOSHI, ANCESTORS AND CROWNED BY FIRE ON THUR., JAN. 28, AT THE ULTRAVIOLET SOCIAL CLUB, 2684 LACY ST., LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / $29.50 / ALL AGES. ULTRAVIOLETSOCIALCLUB.COM. VISIT SAINT VITUS AT SAINTVITUSREUNION.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/STVITUS.

Download: Mika Miko “I Got a Lot (New New New)”

(off We Be Xuxa out now on PPM)

It’s hard to think of We Be Xuxa as a “sophomore album,” since Mika Miko have been sharing their music on 7” and cassette since the days when George W. Bush could still get reelected—everybody and their dad has seen Mika Miko play the Smell a billion times and probably stumbled into one of their sets at a college campus, warehouse, or SXSW showcase. Though at first they kinda filled the ecological niche abandoned by the Sharp Ease, Mika Miko’s fame and goodwill has shot far past that—and past anything we expected. They’ve proven to be unstoppable juggernauts of three-chord joy equally at home on a stage with metal hardcore punkers, noise bands, electro hip-hop brats, pop bands, smoke machines and smoky barbecues bursting with Tofurky beer brats.

And what I’d like to do with We Be Xuxa is sculpt a little narrative about musical arcs, and where this album fits into Mika Miko’s happy lifespan, and how it shows a progression or should be showing a progression or has too many extras or not enough. But Mika Miko stands gleefully outside of the spotlight of conventional criticism, as they continue to bang out the most fun-rockin’ sounds of these Smell-y times. They think of themselves as a live band, with recordings being more documentary than sound-crafting, so who am I to even judge? I wouldn’t want to immortalize myself poo-pooing a band whose t-shirts will still be worn thirty years from now by kids in Austin and Greece, but if I write a praise-piece, I may be stroking this generation’s Leaving Trains. (Never head of ‘em? Just ask an Angeleno aged 40-46 and prepare for some teary-eyed adulation).

So fuck history and fuck the scene. This album is really really fun to listen to, and never gives me dry mouth the way, say, bands like No Age sometimes do. (There, I said it!) Whereas so many acts who have “broken out” of the Smell excel at noisy dissonance and minimalist sound, Mika Miko remains minimal in the tried-and-true ways of their forefathers/mothers—three chords, screams and shouts, and short songs that sound nothing like Sonic Youth funneling Steve Reich and so much the better for it. On the surface, We Be Xuxa almost seems like a retread of old school American punk, but actually it evokes without constant copying—it’s fresh-faced punk, yet my heart hears Born Innocent-era Redd Kross in their sisterly choruses, and early early Black Flag or even Ramones in their strumming (minus Greg Ginn’s noodling) and Wipers downturns on the chords, and a Darby Crash-like insistence on writing lyrics too self-referential and profound to sing straight into the microphone. And there’s even a Urinals cover!?! And there’s a Beach Blvd-esque melodicism to Jessie Clavin’s bass lines, one that perfectly matches their Descendants-like love of making up pragmatic gerunds such as “Totion.”

A lot of reviewers have said these gals (et dude) sound like X-Ray Spex, but that is a lazy lie! Jenna Thornhill only seriously plays sax on one song, “Sex Jazz,” and that’s more of a death disco stomp—like Public Image Limited’s “Annalisa” as covered by Suburban Lawns. If I were to compare her to a punker dead, I would say that when Thornhill really sings, and has room to stretch out a bit past the Kipper Kid mongoloid voice she affects, she strongly evokes Mia Zapata’s womanly growl from the old Gits albums. She’s got some seriously untapped talent playing hide and seek with Jennifer Clavin on dueling phone-vocals. But when you hear the chemistry on call-and-response cryptic craziness like “Turkey Sandwich,” you can’t blame them for not exploring new skills when the old ones still work so well.

And the best part of the album is something that I have to admit I have NOT heard yet! Though L.A. RECORD always promises me free vinyl, the most I’ve gotten so far is a Halloween Swim Team single I could have scammed anyway. Ergo, I’ve only heard We Be Xuxa in its digital format, so haven’t been able to replicate the sweet secret I’ve been told exists on the end of the album—namely, that the final groove of the final song never terminates, and that your record player will just keep spinning it over and over again in a sonic loop-de-loop of delight. If that’s true, that puts We Be Xuxa on the par with vintage vinyl such as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and another PiL song, “The Cowboy Song.” Perhaps this attention to detail, plus the piano plinks on punk-perfect “Beat the Rush” and the bomb drops on “On the Rise,” prove that Mika Miko care more about crafting studio albums than they care to admit. No matter—Mika Miko is a band enjoying a well-deserved rocket ride to fame and good cheer, and We Be Xuxa is a perfect transmission back to home base that will still sound good thirty years from now, even if I’m just blasting it on my way to the latest hip all-ages venue in Culver City.

—Dan Collins

The public demands and Cinefamily provides! A second showing of Joe Rees’ Target Video presentation (co-presented by L.A. RECORD and featuring never-before-seen-except-at-the-7:30-pm-showing clips of first-wave punk bands like the Plugz, the Suburban Lawns and many more!) has been added and will begin at 11 PM tonight! Tickets are available ONLY at the Cinefamily box office. Cinefamily is located at 611 N. Fairfax Ave. (just south of Melrose and just north of Canter’s) and you can visit online at cinefamily.org or call at (323) 655-2510. Read our interview here to find out what wild things you’re in for!