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Dickins/Tin
Moth
Room710, October 8, 2003
I have
to admit I have a soft spot for industrial music, especially
for guitar ridden industrial. When NiN’s Broken was
released way back in 199somethinorother, I listened to it
daily. So I was at Room 710 and saw Tin Moth, a one-man guitar
playing industrial band complete with sequenced bass and drums
and bizarre couture. Dressed in duct taped pants and obligatory
ripped black shirt, Tin Moth played heavy riffs over mechanical
bass and drum tracks singing lyrics of doom. The music was
pretty good, the hard metal hooks catching on the lynchpin
rhythm tracks. The only real weak points about Tin Moth are
the lack of human accompaniment on bass and drums and a serious
Trent-wish.
The
Dickins were up next, a local four piece punk outfit consisting
of Mike Dickins on throat and six string, Justin on bass,
J Scum on drums, and Justin on geetar. Dressed as everyday
rock guys, the Dickins played a set of mostly metal tinged
punk to a small but appreciative crowd. The third song they
played was called “Burning Flag”, I liked it,
it had a good rhythm guitar wise and strong bottom end. The
Dickins’ set as a whole was rockin’, sometimes
unconfident vocal delivery being the only flaw that makes
this diamond real. I got to see the Dickins play again the
next night at 710, and that set was definitely more punkish
than the set the night before. They played a little looser,
a bit of inconsistency that will undoubtedly be worked out
in the course of this six-month-old bands’ near future.
-James
E
Crow/Egypt/
Speedealer
Room
710, October 16, 2003
This
consistent delivery of quality, mind-blowing-heavy music at
Room 710 is unprecedented in my experience. It restores a
degree of faith in humanity. This was the Dollar-Lone-Star
Night we were all corralled to the trough in beer-slugging
rock-n-roll comraderie, when Crow ripped out the most appropriate
local anthem a band could come up with: "Lone Star! All
I need right now is Lone Star!" It was a great song,
and feed at the trough we did.
Dude!
CROW. How much ass can two guys kick? It was their third show
as the newly-sworn dynamic duo, and Crow beat so much ass to
a bloody pulp it's beyond a worthy description. Singing, screaming,
sweating bullets and strumming a fuzzy, full-band sound on bass
guitar, it's Paul Crow of Agony Column fame. On drums it's Glenn
Benavides who's also been terrorizing Austin for 20 years. Their
sound is thick and warm and heavy. It pushes, powerful and steady
like a steam engine, not overly punk/funk so as to lose the
weight. It's an original style that one guy compared to Morphine
-- probably because of the line-up more than the sound, I'd
say. They're more heavy and grungey and manly than Morphine.
I heard elements of Beck, and
other great artists that might go unrecognized in a hard-rock/metal
crowd. Most impressive to me, they have SONGS - defined, coherent
and driving, with a satisfying variety in speed, groove and
mood. With a perfect balance between diversity and consistency,
they achieve the big picture: their sound as a whole is distinct,
and never gets lost. This is what I've been bitching about.
STYLE. Crow has it. If you heard them on the radio, you'd know
it was them. I was so fascinated and inspired, I just had to
butt heads with these sonic super heroes...
 INTERVIEW
with CROW:
R&R: Man, you guys slaughter! Meet me
in my office.
Crow: OK.
R&R: So. If you were the interviewer,
what would you ask yourself?
Paul: I don't know.
R&R: Put it this way, after all these
years of rocking out, what would you want to tell the people?
Glenn: It's weird to be better and smarter
than everyone. Ha ha, just kidding.
R&R:
No, I think it might be true. You guys did a bad-ass cover
of that song, "Don't you know that it's different for
girls" - and nobody in the bar could tell me who wrote
it. I was thinking Elvis Costello but I knew that was wrong.
Paul: It was Joe Jackson, off his "I'm
The Man" album. We listen to all kinds of music and we
like doing all kinds of covers -- Jigsaw, Oasis, Nirvana...
R&R: But you do them so heavy and you
really make them your own. Hardly anyone would realize they're
covers. You got an unbelievably heavy, cool sound for just
drums and bass. Where did you get that crazy flying-V bass
you were playing?
Paul: I designed it when I was a kid, around
15, and took it to this guy Steve Wise, who built it for me.
It took me a few years to pay for it. I finally got it when
I was like 18.
R&R: How did you guys meet up, you and
Glenn?
Paul: We've known each other for a long time.
Glenn was playing in Doctor's Mob and I came to a show and
breathed fire. I don't do it anymore 'cuz I lit too many people
on fire. When Elysium used to be the Cave Club, I set all
their lights on fire.
R&R: Good job. Speaking of caves, you've
been around for a million years -- you played with Agony Column
at The Cave, my warehouse in San Francisco. That was like
13 years ago. It's really cool to see someone from the old
days still walking around, and still ripping! So many people
have dropped out or just died. What about the punk rock days?
 Glenn:
One time I dressed up as Sgt. Pepper and got my ass kicked
by punk rock slam dancers!
Paul: It's cool to have played all around
the world and then come back to your roots. We're still just
punks.
R&R: Now you got it down to two guys.
That must be a lot easier than the 5-way pain in the ass...
Paul: Yeah, being in a band is a pain in the
ass. Two guys is easier when you gotta pay a mortgage and
all that. And when people buy shots for the band, four shots
go a lot farther between two guys.
R&R: You guys have great solid song structure.
It sounds like you put some effort into your songwriting.
Paul: Well... I have a 15-minute rule: if
it takes more than 15 minutes to write a song, it's probably
not worth a shit. It's really just a stupid waste of time.
The whole business is about selling T-shirts.
In conclusion, I really need to get me a Crow
T-shirt.
EGYPT is evil. E-V-I-L grave-robbing Heavy
Metal. Anyone who knows me as Black Sabbath Beky, or hey beeotch,
or anything else, knows that I am the number one Egypt fan.
This was an especially thrilling show from the emperors of
geek-metal, because (1) I was already so hopped up on Crow,
(2) I was bombed cuz it was dollar-beer night, and (3) they
didn't fuck up their songs for once. Well put it this way:
I didn't notice it. The Egyptian curse is put upon us, their
small but fierce pack of groveling Metal trolls. For all eternity
we are damned to starve between shows, writhing and craving
for the particularly evil formula of Stupid-Heavy Punk-Ass
Metal that can be sucked only from the poisonous, cracked
and sagging tit of
Egypt. MORE... MORE... MORE....
SPEEDEALER
was the perfect antidote to slap me out of my Egyptian coma.
After all, nothing cures an addiction like a new addiction.
Harder, faster, and just as evil, I have to say, due to their
lead singer who absolutely shripped the newest layer of scabbed
flesh off my skull. A damn chummy bunch of barbaric blokes
from Dallas, Speedealer lives up to their name by dealing
out an absolutely relentless onslaught of full-speed-ahead
homocidal southern-thrash mayhem that actually has a twang
of its own. Somewhere between a speeded-up Fu Man Chu and
Nashville Pussy, with Black Flag in the back seat, Speedealer
cracked the whip that left a hundred stinging welts on my
proverbial arse. I can't say enough about how much I liked
these guys on a personal level. They were just smashing. Thanks
for the kick-ass CD's,
Eric! I 'specially like the twisted, whiney wankin' guitar
riffs. Speedealer says hello to Wendy, who no doubt would
have been there stalking the stage in her usual front-and-center
position, had she not been called
away on tour-documentation duty the night before. So much
rock, so little time. If only there were ten copies of each
of us wenches, maybe we could get around.
-
Beky Hayes
Pocket
Fishrmen/Free Range Bastards
Room 710, October 10, 2003
SO…Where
the fuck were you the night of October 10, 2003? You shoulda
been at Room 710 for a night of kick ass Rock and Roll. I
got downtown at about 11:00pm or so. I got a damn good parking
space for that time on a Friday night, up on Eighth St. only
a block and half or so away from the club. I got to the show
at about 11pm and the ‘Bastards were already playing,
I missed about five songs, and the FRB were kicking some major
musical ass on stage. Just Rockin’ and a Rollin’.
Maybe it was the fact that they were playing a show with the
Pocket Fishrmen, but they were fully wired. They played Agony
Column’s “GGG,” a metal beast of a tune
that gets me “right here man”(hand over heart,
tear in eye). “ALL HAIL SKULL CRUSHING PALM MUTE”
The Pocket
Fishrmen were up next and I eagerly awaited their presence
on stage. I got near the front of the stage as the members
of the PF filed onto the floor dressed as Star Wars characters,
Jason and Chris in stormtrooper outfits, Branton in Princess
Leia drag and He-Who-Shall-Be-Nameless in Boba Fett attire.
The crowd hooted and hollered as the band took their places.
From the first note the Fishrmen were on fire. The near capacity
crowd was treated to the splendiferous sounds of Real Rock
and Roll as seen through the collectively perverted eyes of
the Pocket Fishrmen.
As the
PF’s set unfolded, the small contingent of Slam Dancers
and Fist Raisers grew, sucking in those around them. They
played all their classics (heck what song of theirs is not
a classic?) including “One Hand Job, One Blow Job, One
Vagina”, “Go out Smokin’”, and my
personal fave “We Kill Evil” during which I got
baptized by the pre-requisite-for-a-Rockshow flying beer spewing
forth from multiple upraised and crazily gyrating bottles
of Lonestar. The band left the stage and then returned after
the wholly appreciative crowd clamored for more. Bless you
boys.
-James
E.
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