KILL
DOZER
KILL-PO
Madel
If you want big, we're
talking monumental. The
big as all outdoors voice of
Killdozer is back and ready
to conquer the world.
The ingredients for Killdozer
include the magnanimous
Michael Gerald, who plays bass
and growls like a nitro-burning
pick-up truck leaping over fifteen
cars. The ambient overdose pro-
vided by the rest of the band con-
sists of Dan Hobson, who thinks
Armageddon is upon us so he must
play the drums to save our souls, and
Paul "more powerful than a squealing
pig" Zagores, who replaced the other
Hobson on guitar. Rumor has it he left
the band to become a movie star.
Killdozer's long-awaited new album,
Uncompromising War on Art under the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, proves that
America is just as communist as it is every-
thing else. The liner notes are even footnot-
ed for further references. With everything
from an action-packed rendition of EMF's
"Unbelievable" to the heart-wrenching tale of
"Knuckles the Dog," Killdozer belts it out like
nobody's biscuits.
-Andrew Fitzpatrick
love
& special sauce
Raiding his parents' liquor cabinet
for a powerful enough conglomeration
of assorted rot-gut to waylay a charg
ing rhinoceros, G Love and his sidekick
Nick came up with the name Special
Sauce to christen their concoction.
Then, when Love founded a group
based on an even more potent blend
of downhome blues, rap stylings and
straight-up white-boy garage rock, the
name fit the funky fusion contusions
they laid down as well.
While giving a nod to KRS-One, De
La Soul, Tribe Called Quest and The
Pharcyde, G Love says he wishes the
hip hop scene today relied less on pre-
recorded tunes and featured more live
instruments. "Where hip hop is now,
it's less of a live thing." he says. "It's
studio music, it's the art of production.
I've got problems with that, because
here's three musicians right here, we're
all trying to get gigs, and ever since
the seventies when disco came in,
there's no more musicians playing the
strip joints, there's no more musicians
playing live. It's all just club music."
Though hip hop was definitely a part
of his growing up, Love says the blues
is the greatest influence on his music.
"I listened to a lot of Jimmy Reed,
Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and
John Hammond," he says. "Now I
can't sound like John Lee Hooker, so I
developed my own singing style. I
wouldn't call us a hip hop band at all,
we're playing our own form of blues."
As a young kid pushing around the
streets of Philadelphia, Love penned
an as-yet unreleased song called "The
Skateboard Blues." He sung it back-
stage at a recent gig at Slim's in SF:
"Ain't gonna walk not take a bus/
A cab costs too much/Flat tire on my
bike/That I don't like/I'm on my skate-
board/l ride around/Ride around/
Ridin' around/So smooth/Don't do no
tricks on my stick/Except a 360 I could
lick/Sidewalk surfing past the curb/
You're in my way but don't mean to
disturb/Mister cop tryin' to catch
me/But I'm too fast/For his fat ass..."
G Love & Special Sauce let it all hang
out. Their ragamop fusion is incompa-
rable and they play all their instru-
ments live. It's doubtful anyone could
ever successfully imitate their sound,
but there ain't nothin' wrong if it pro-
vides a little soulful inspiration.
-Brian Brannon
Motocaster
Frantic fuzz and overdriven amplifi-
cation can't quite obscure the lack
of talent that too many bands have
today, but when Motocaster plays
it ain't just a bunch of noise. With a
new album called Stay Loaded, this
trio from Raleigh, North Carolina,
with Brain Sliwa on bass/vox, Jon
Heames on drums, and Bo Taylor
on guitar/vox, prove that when it
comes to their music, less is more.
-Brian Brannon
What do you like about a trio?
Jon: There's a lot more air you can
fill up with your instrument. With the
kind of approach that we have, it
would've been a real cluttered mess
if we had five people. It's fun too,
because when there's three people,
the interaction between those three
is a lot more immediate than if
there's four, because we can all sort
of take-off on a tangent, and follow
each other and then come back to
where we need to be in the song.
What are some of your dislikes?
Jon: Bad music that's very popular,
stuff you have to hear over and over,
and wonder why people are buying
it. It must be because they just are
told to like it. There's certainly a lot
of music out there today that's ques-
tionable as to why it's platinum.
What, if anything, makes you guys
different from those bands?
Jon: There's no pretension about it.
and there's not much, if any, empha-
sis on attitude or image. The empha-
sis is really more on just our playing.
Bo: I think we have a good way of
sounding trashy but at the same
time being tight and structured.
Do ever have dreams about flying?
Bo: I used to dream I had a rocket
that you held onto and went wherev
er you pointed it. It'd fly all over and
the fuel never ran out.
Brian: I've had some dreams lately
where Ernest Borgnine made some
guest appearances. In one, he was
running around outside a strip bar
shooting people with a shotgun.
Jon: Most, if not all my dreams, are
of sexual content. My flying experi-
ences are floating ones, not flying.
Kind of like the weightlessness
chamber at NASA, like I'm just kind
of floating around my house, go over
to the stereo, turn the stereo on and
float into the kitchen. I have this
dream a lot, so now I've decided
that when I'm extremely wealthy, I'm
going to build a little party room in
my house that has a weightless
chamber so we can all go in there
and float around for a little while. ■■
Perpetual pessimist and crooner Keith Caputo
believes no matter how you slice it, life is agony. "I
think you're born unhappy and when happy times
come you should take advantage of it," says he
These are good times for Brooklyn's Life of
Agony, who currently hold the mantle of "Band
that Matters" in their hometown (a title pre-
viously held by the likes of Biohazard,
Sick of It All and Agnostic Front).
"This world is hell," Caputo says.
"I'm convinced. My family situation
sucks. When I come back from
tour, I ain't got nowhere to go. I
got a Maytag box on the corner.
My father's in jail, my mother over-
dosed on drugs. And me, I'm tryin' to make a liv-
ing. People think we're so successful, but there's
vultures all over the place, fuckin' thieves. You
don't know who to trust. Everybody's a phoney."
But it can't be all bad with Life of Agony's sold
out tours and their new Lp River Runs Red. Caputo
says, "It looks a little more promising, but I expect
the worst all the time. You're always let down for
something no matter what."
Don't worry about Keith, his friends are looking
after him (bassist/songwriter Alan Robert, drum-
mer Sal Abruscato and his cousin, guitarist Joey
Z), but if you'd like to offer him a little encourage-
ment, go see his band the next time they play
your town.
-Morgan Walker
LIFE OF AGONY