"We're in Green Bay, home of the Packers!" shouts
Kim Shattuck, The Muffs" enthusiastic lead guitarist
and vocalist. Touring with the Didjits, Shattuck (the one
with the yellow and black streaked hair) told how these
punks from LA are staying above water in the Midwest."
Both Shattuck and Melanie Vammen, who plays
rhythm guitar, are LA natives, while drummer Jim
Laspesa is from Buffalo, New York, and Ronnie Barnett,
who plays bass, is from Houston, Texas
"It's the best tour I've ever been on, personally."
Shattuck continues. "It's more places that we want to
play-like punk clubs, with punk kids and people who
appreciate music more. It's none of that bad metal
ethic that you hit when you go through the country."
Jabbering about bizarro tour experiences, Shattuck
recalls one particular incident, "This guy had a bid lap
and wanted us to sign a zillion things. So we just got him
to sign us instead. And all of the sudden he started grab
bing at me, trying to sign my her on the blond streaks.
I was like, 'Get away from mee was a total freak!
"Once, our old drummer stuck a beer bottle up his
butt and gave himself a beer enema" says Shattuck. "He
got rid of himself, because he had better things to do.
When it comes to audience variety, the Muffs have
plenty "We attract a little bit of everyone, Shattuck
says. "Probably because the music is melodic--but it's
loud. We also put on a chaotic show."-Sara Tassione
the
Forget about Fosters
being Australian for beer,
Cosmic Psychos bassist/
vocalist Robbie Knights
says that anybody who
believes that crock is deep
in the brown, which is
Australian for up shit creek
In a barbed wire canoe.
"The best Australian
beer is my home brew,"
says Knights. "But to buy
one from the shops, I like
Cooper & Sons Sparkling
Ale. It's got all natural
ingredients brewed in the
bottle. It's really strong. I
call it Thunder Ale. It's
got all the shit there float-
ing around in the bottom
of it. Fosters is definitely
the worst, that's why we
export it."
And he should know.
The Cosmic Psychos not
only play hard, they drink
hard. There isn't that
much else to do on the
outback. "See, everyone
is lazy in Australia,"
Knights explains. "You
never do what you can do
today if you can do it next
week. And until next
week, you might as well
go to the pub."
Between getting pissed
as a maggot at the local
bar and playing ready
steady down and dirty
punk, Ross owns a cattle
farm and an earth moving
business (that's his terrible
tractor on the cover of
PSYCHOS
the Psychos' first Lp, Go
The Hack. "You've got to
go broke somehow," he
says. "I'd rather drive a
bulldozer than a desk."
The Psychos have a def
inite working class appeal.
Underneath the scream
ing driving insanity they
really are Blokes You Can
Trust. The sixth release in
the Psycho's platitude of
punk perfection is a slab
called Palomino Pizza. The
Ep contains three true to
the bone Psycho originals
and three raging covers of
obscure Ozzie pub rock
from the seventies, with
cuts by Buffalo with Peter
Wells, the guitar player for
Rose Tattoo, Lobby Lloyd
and the Colored Balls, as
well as Billy Thorpe and
the Aztecs. "We're much
in the same vein as they
are," Knights explains.
"They're real beer swill-
ing, show your bum, sort
of daggy Australian rock
bands that never really
got to be as big as what
they should have been,
and we picked out a cou-
ple of songs that we liked
when we were younger
blokes and did them."
The Cosmic Psychos
play what they feel, their
music comes from down
under in their Aussie
hearts. "We just did it for
something to do, really,
and that's the only reason
we still do it," Knights
says. "We all work, we
can't make a living out of
the band. I suppose it's
nearly every young boy
or girl's dream at one
stage to play guitar or
something. I've played
many a show with a tennis
racket or a cricket bat
when I was a kid. Now, you
get the opportunity to do
it, you might as well take
it. I could be married with
six kids. I'm sure that
would've kept me busy
too. I think touring might
be a little bit better than
that, but I don't know."
-Brian Brannon
FREESTYLE
FELLOWSHIP ACETONE
Every once in a while, along comes a record that defines a style and sets a stan
dard that is immediately recognized within the industry. Freestyle Fellowship's
Innercity Griots is such a record. It dropped with a boom and everyone who heard
it knew that once again, things would never be the same. Hip hop was set on its ear
by complex jazz arrangements meshed with improvised stream of consciousness
vocals delivered with mind-bending microphone skills
MCs Mikah Nine, Aceyalone, Self Jupiter, and PeAce, are out to represent the
West Coast in the fullest. Backed by the Underground Railroad Band and the pro-
duction team of the Earthquake Brothers, this record slams like the doors on the intro
of Get Smart. Mikah
Nine calls the record a cerebral audio
"a cerebral audio ex-
perience, an emancipation of
pre-conceived ideas and experience, an
notions. Innercity
Griots is an explo emancipation of
ration of styles within
hip hop that remains dedicat-
tracks were unorthodox," says
ed to its music. "A lot of the pre-conceived
Mikah Nine, "and they were all experiment ideas and
but people know where the beat's at."
Coming strong out of LA, the Fellowship immediately
squashed any idea of a lingering East Coast versus Weet notions
Coast mentality. With encyclopedic knowledge of the
history and construction of Black music, the Fellowship opened shop and taught class
to any suckers who tried to step. Representing the the City of Angels in the highest
degree, Freestyle Fellowship will drop lyrics over a live jazz band or the sparse thump
of an 808 bass with a beatbox and make either rhyme drip juice.
The Fellowship takes nods from all the jazz greats, and injects those influences
into their own grooves. On songs like "Park Bench People," a free flow about the
homeless, Mikah Nine trips and skips his voice like a hom soloist for Count Basie.
"There's always been a sense of musicianship at the ultimate level, and freestyling
represents, in the hip hop arena, the equivalent of an improvised solo in a jazz arena,"
muses Mikah Nine. If this is true, the track "Heavyweights" is like watching Monk,
Mingus, Miles, Coltrane and Bird tear the shit down after midnight.
With subjects running from the benefits of self-awareness to tributes to all the
styles that have come before them, the Fellowship covers a lot of ground, and it all
sounds fatter than Jabba the Hut before he found Jenny Craig. They don't claim to
be reinventing hip-hop, they see themselves as keeping it alive by knowing its his-
tory and making that part of its present. It is an understanding of the past that
allows us to create the future, and with their knowledge of musical history, Free-
style Fellowship will cut fresh jams well into the twenty-first century. Jamie Reilly
THE DEBUT ALBUM CINDY OUT NOW
produced by Acetone 01993 Vemon Yard Recordings
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