“Dear God: I knew you would eventually punish music geeks my age for the garage-rockabilly-retro faddism we have committed, and I was ready for the lash. Still, don’t you think turning the music underground into one long flashback to the junior-high dance is laying it on a little thick?” On the other side of the Abbey Pub’s bathroom door, the pitiless DJ pitched another 80s pop smash into my fiery pit. He was a very old-school DJ: he seemed to believe “mixing” still means “when one recording ends, put on another and start cheering for it.”
I was there for headliners Gravy Train!!!!, a dancing, rapping, synth-banging quartet of personas named Chunx, Funx, Drunx, and Hunx, who hid backstage throughout the openers. Though they’re fond of fishnet and ass boogies and averse to instruments of string and skin (dead skin, anyway), they’re a real band all right; the only song among the poppy treats on these sleazebags’ album, Hello Doctor, that they didn’t write from scratch is a parody of karaoke-as-art. Their merch guys, thirtysomethings who joked that they’d heard the same ten songs every night of the tour, insisted that Gravy Train!!!! ain’t electroclash: “They’re just lumped in with the scene.”
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I had been enjoying Hello Doctor just fine in the sanatorium of my apartment, where plenty of work wanted attention. So why was I here? Morbid curiosity, of course, plus a hypocritical good-sport spirit born solely of my reluctance to admit that “those damn kids” may no longer be a phrase that applies to me. Most important, the album backs up the merch guys’ claim: Gravy Train!!!! ain’t electroclash. They’re punk rock. And the best time to see a punk rock band is when you’re infatuated with their debut platter.
By reactionary I don’t mean “smash an immigrant with your Les Paul,” of course, I mean “don’t fix what ain’t broke.” The Ramones’ achievement wasn’t daring to say “fuck the man”–they’d have needed a Tardis to beat Ben Franklin to the punch in bringing rebellion to American pop culture. The Ramones shone rather in their wussy intuition that the Shirelles had it right already: keep it simple, stupid, both musically and politically. The idea’s practical (a simple song structure works better than a puzzler because more people can understand it) and Zen: If you try to write a great song about a political issue, you’ll express only desire to write a great song about a political issue. Furrow your brow instead over the rock-song format, and any personal rage against the machine will erupt organically, since playing hard music is a perfect physical vent for hostility. If you’re an angry bastard, what comes out may not be Maoist but skinhead or Screeching Weasel; if you aren’t full of p ‘n’ v after all, you might as well generate genuine fun.
As I’d hoped, the band played most of the synth lines in real time onstage, accurately reproducing the manic stoopid polish of the album while thickening the sound. And as a front man Chunx has all the suck-me Catholic-girl charisma of Holly Vincent without the coy power-pop preciousness. Better still the gang rotates duties, dancing, humping, singing, and pounding out chords; freakishly tall Hunx or blond amazon Drunx will lean over Funx (the comparatively mousy lead keyboardist) to play a duet with her like they’re a bunch of monkeys all trying to hide behind the same tree. The lewd interpretive dances share the deceptive looseness of the music: the players seem as wasted and horny as their characters, but they hit their marks together. Ironically Drunx–who has almost no track credits on the album and sucks at a beer bottle for the duration of the show–stands out though she rarely says a word. If she’s half as pissed-up as her shtick suggests, the way she still nails beats and poses inspires a twisted admiration.
The last seems important, and Gravy Train!!!! nail it: the Onion preview I read of this show sounded hopeful that the stage performance would carry the songs, which, the reviewer complained, are all about sex and food. How’s that for a simpleton pose to fool the squares? Yes, the lyrics are about food, of which all mammals must consume obscene amounts, and sex, to which most humans at least aspire. Trivialities or universal themes? If he still cared, Richard Meltzer would have a field day with that one. I say they swim the river Punk. What’s more, they add a ripple as they go beyond obliterating the distinction between boy and girl bands to hacking away at the one between het punk and queercore. I guess these kids have something like sexual preferences, but their stage personas are eager to molest anybody cute and willing to spread.
