notes from
the underground
ust because J. Robbins has spent
more time behind the mixing
table over the past few years as
the producer for Texas is the Reason
and the Promise Ring doesn't mean
he's through working behind the micro-
phone. While Jay's last band, the post-
punk patriarchs Jawbox, dissolved fol-
lowing the group's fourth full-length
release, Robbins is back with a not-so-
new crop of recruits. In his new band
Burning Airlines, Robbins teams with
old friends Bill Barbot (Jawbox's for-
mer guitarist currently playing bass)
and drummer Pete Moffett, who
played with Robbins in the legendary
late eighties outfit Government Issue.
Additionally, the venerable Kim
Coletta, Jawbox's former bassist and
apparently a hell of softball player,
put out the band's DeSoto Records
debut Mission: Control! Coletta and
Barbot (who run DeSoto) also recently
released My Scrapbook of Fatal Accident,
a collection of Jawbox singles and rare
tracks. While not a huge departure from
the complex changes and razor-sharp
lyrics of Robbins' past projects,
Burning Airlines is like a combination of
Jawbox and Tae Bo: enough power and
aggression to make you sweat, with
equal doses of catchy pop and lyrical
charm. While Jawbox's drummers
(Adam Wade and Zach Barocas)
were both technically savvy, Moffett's
chops are simply relentless and just as
sophisticated. Meanwhile, Robbins has
continued to refine his songwriting,
making him rich man's Bob Mould.
Clearly, all that work behind the knobs
has paid off. -Joseph Epstein...Starting
off small, Zen Guerrilla has put out a
5" picture disc with a seriously huge
sound. Definitely a dose of Detroit soul-
powered RAWK, they tackle a Little
Richard song and seriously kick out
the jams while kicking your
ass...Moving up a size, The Candy
Snatchers have a new 7" on Get Hip
entitled Ugly on the Inside. Looks like
they added another guitarist (and threw
in some keyboard for the b-side) and it
does nothing to change the fact that
these guys play some of the best balls-
out punk going...Next up is a split 7"
from Bend Sinister and Me, Kellie,
and the Kent 3. Me is Holden Payne
(ex-Holden Payne and the Agonies,
to name one...), Kellie is his wife and ex-
Wedgwood Bombers, and no I don't
really expect that you've heard of either
of these two fine bands, but you'd bet-
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES
"PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME IF PUNK ROCK WILL
EVER COME BACK. OF COURSE NOT. NO ONE HAS
CAPTURED WHAT WAS DONE IN THE EARLY '80S.
SUICIDAL KILLED THAT SCENE. THERE WAS AN
ARTICLE THAT SAID SUICIDAL WAS THE BAND THAT
GOT MOST PEOPLE INTO AND OUT OF PUNK ROCK.
BACK THEN EVEN THE NERDS HAD LONG HAIR. IF
YOU HAD SHORT HAIR, YOU STUCK OUT. YOU
COULD BE STANDING ON A CORNER AND A GROUP
OF PEOPLE IN A VAN WOULD STOP AND BEAT YOU
UP FOR BEING A PUNK ROCKER. NOW, YOU'VE GOT
MOMS TAKING THEIR KIDS TO GET THEIR HAIR CUT
AND HAVE DYE PUT IN IT."-Mike Muir
Is Suicidal back for good?
Yep. We've got a new record due out
May 18th called Freedumb.
Were you working towards any musi-
cal goal with this new album?
We try to learn from the past, then go
forward. A lot of people might equate it
with the first record, but rather than going
back and trying for 1983 punk rock-
which I wish a lot of people would do
because they still don't have it right-we
decided to do 2005. We've done some-
thing that when the kids who are fourteen
hear it, they'll be like, "Fuck, who is that?"
Were you trying to be the "punk/metal
crossover band"?
We didn't see it that way. We definite-
13
ly weren't accepted into the punk scene,
and metal at the time was straight span-
dex and makeup. It wasn't anything we
could relate to. If somebody tried to dress
like that down in Venice, they'd have a
short life. We were more into shaved
heads, doing your own thing, not dressing
up for other people.
Were listening mostly to punk
you
back then?
My two things have always been
punk and funk. Back then, my two
favorite bands were Parliament and
The Sex Pistols. You could tell with
both those bands, when they were in
the studio, they were doing what they
wanted: not giving a fuck. They
ter have heard
of the Kent 3, or
you're fucking
nowheresville.
Their
songs
rule, and Bend
Sinister? Well,
they're definitely
pretty spasmodic... The Metros must
be the latest teen sensation over at the
Rip Off Records stables, or maybe
they're not even teens at all. Anyway,
they play trashed-out garage punk
that's faster than the usual, and I swear.
I hear a hint of the Fallouts in the mix.
Check their new-wave looking single
"Hot Wired"...Zoning in to the 12"
range, the Hellacopters have released
their third LP, entitled Grande Rock, on
Sub Pop. Sure, maybe they've left most
of what was ever punk about them
behind, but they are still by far the best
and most energetic rock band out
there...Wesley Willis is "indie-rock's"
adopted son, but so what, some
shit still rules. How to describe him
you've never heard of him? Well, I
guess he's clinically schizophrenic, and
a lot of his songs sound the same musi-
cally, but he writes some of the funniest
shit out there. Alternative Tentacles has
just put out a Greatest Hits Vol. II CD (is
there vinyl?), and with à ongs like "The
Vultures Ate My Dead Ass Up," "They
Threw Me Out Of Church," "Fuck You,"
"Feel the Power of Rock and Roll," and
even a Duran Duran cover ("Girls On
Film"), you cannot go wrong...Another
Meters reissue has found its way to the
his
record racks at stores cool
enough to stock this stuff. It's a
self-titled LP (their debut LP? I'm not
sure...), and just as Look-Ka Py Py
did, this one brings you a seriously
funky miracle. You've probably
heard half of this stuff sampled, but
I'm tellin' ya, nothing plays like the
original... Finally, on the under-
ground video tip, check for Justice II
at better skate shops near you.
Seriously packed with killer footage
from around the globe (Europe,
Brazil) it is a nonstop barrage of
tricktacular skateboard stuntman-
ship from start to finish, without any
sort of pretentions about trying
sell you on something like some
videos may. -Wez Lundry...A
plethora of producers conspired
with Nas to create I am...., his third
solo album. Unfortunately, this
attempt to rekindle the magic of
Illmatic while keeping his glamsta
rap cohorts happy falls a little short
of the mark. As he says on one of
the album's weaker tracks, Nas has
"moved on to big things," but it was
the little things, like hunger and
attention to detail, that made him
great in the first place. A couple of
Bay Area MCs who still have the
hunger are gnawing their way into
the industry with tasty new platters-
-Blackalicious' Gift of Gab and
L'Roneous have both been on the
scene for a few years, but their new
releases, a self-titled Blackalicious
EP and Imaginarium respectively,
establish them as worthy candidates
for em-b-boyment. Both are obvi-
ously in love with words and twist
them around their tongues with pro-
ficiency, but while
L'Roneous takes a cryptic
approach, Gift of Gab is
more direct and distinct.
The standout cut is "A2G,"
with Cut Chemist's signa-
ture production bouncing
Gift of Gab's alliterative
verses around an institu-
tional voice that instructs
us about the alphabet like
an inner-city schoolhouse
rock. True 54
ST
weren't like, "Hmm... let's put a little
harmony here, and this chorus might
be more radio friendly..."
When was the last time you skated
a pool?
Probably before I got my leg ripped open
ten years ago and had to get 147 stitch-
es. It wasn't from skating, though.
do it?
How did you
We were in Mexico, running across the
highway, and they have these asphalt
center dividers. The guy I was with had
just bought a bottle of tequila. We were
running back across the border. I saw the
divider and jumped over it, but he didn't
see it and he fell right in front of me. I got
I caught on his legs, the bottle broke, I
landed on the base of it, the
glass shattered, and a piece
got stuck in my leg.
Now you've got Dogtown.
back in the fourth or fifth
coming. Is your brother
heading up the whole deal this time?
Yeah. Right now we're getting the team
going. It's pretty exciting. We do every-
thing here, the whole family thing. My
brother's done it
it before with different
people in different incarnations, and now.
he's heading up the whole thing himself.
We want to do something that we're
proud of and something that takes from
our heritage, which is very important.
The whole Dogtown scene-those were
the original innovators of skateboarding.
We're doing our own thing; same with
the band. If people like it, cool. If they
don't, then they're missing out.
-Ryan Henry
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