The Spits are already as ingrained in modern punk music as possible, yet still manage to devour the rip-offs and influence the youth of today without even looking like they are trying.
Going strong now for over fifteenyears, smashing the windows and tearing down the walls of our minds everytime they roll through town, these truly vicious visionaries have cooked punk down to its most powerful base form, crawling like Neanderthals through the muck, and creating a flaming trail of hits that´ll take quite a fit of dementia to ever forget.
A perfect distillation of punk´s original open-ended weirdness, and modern music´s serrated salvation, The Spits have proven themselves to be no one to fuck with, over and over again. True headliners, never to be followed and for good reason. With an ingenious amalgamation of DEVO´s early synth work in tandem with the absolute best Thug-Punk grunt the Ramones could ever maliciously muster, The Spits never try to reinvent anything, they just rip it´s head off and drive it home time and time again.
The Spits | Cha Cha Love
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=n-ipRN0e0vg
They´ve always been one of the most original bands of the twenty-first century, yet it never really seemed like they weren´t doing anything too experimental, save their signature, yet refreshingly just-ahead-of-their-time, synth/drum machine noise they forced the fickle punk crowds to gladly swallow. When we finally caught wind of them, the demonic void that they filled was utterly too much to handle, and hence became the number one band everyone wanted to see.
Hunx and His Punx might be the first ever “girl group ” fronted by a flamboyant gay male whose dream in life is to sound like a girl. They have created a unique new sound they refer to as “Young Oldies, “a mixture of 50s teenage rock ‘n’ roll, 60s girl groups and bubblegum pop.
Hunx and his Punx | You don’t like Rock’n’Roll
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=iyv4bPwUJws
Hunx is that boy you just wanna kiss—maybe after sharing a triple scoop ice cream cone, then roller skating with the Shangri-Las and Redd Kross rotating on a never-ending loop. He’s the boy in that picture from your high school yearbook—the one you pasted sparkly red heart stickers all over, then taped inside your locker. He’s the boy you fantasize about because he always saves you from your broken heart. You’ve never met him—but you love him… because you know he believes in love.
People tend to have scandalous ideas about Seth “Hunx” Bogart. This can happen when you try to French kiss the entire front row at one of your shows, pose for photographs nude or bare everything in the video for “Lust For Life” by the band Girls. But behind all of this is a sweet and somewhat innocent entertainer who knows how to put on a show.
Despite the innocence there is also plenty of heartbreak and some dark moments. One might think, at first glance, that the final track, “Blow Me Away” is a winking nod to fellatio. “It’s a song about my father who killed himself when I was a teenager,” says Hunx, somehow proving that the album’s title, Too Young To Be In Love, might be selling Bogart a little short. He has never been “too young.” And he really does believe in love.
The crass and degenerate recent LP from THE BLACK JASPERS completely nails a certain sub-slice of the punk rock ecosystem, one that’s a little hard to define – but here goes. Picture a mop-haired greaseball with a leather jacket and a couple of missing teeth. He’s got a bullet belt and lots of acne. He might be what is commonly called a “guido”.
The Black Jaspers | Scum of the Moon
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=uEpBpJ61Ilc
When he writes a song, he likes to trot out well-worn rock and roll clichés like “in the city”, “c’mon baby” and rhyming just about everything with the word “brain”. Now add another guy like that, crank up the fuzz and static, foul up the language a bit, insert tongue deeply into cheek, and you’ve got THE BLACK JASPERS and one of my favorite records of the year.
Turns out it was actually recorded back in 2001, probably as the dumb-punk Killed By Death wave was cresting big time. The now-“legendary” KING KHAN of King Khan BBQ, King Khan The Shrines and multiple other bands formed this joke duo with another fella from a garage band called The Moorat Fingers, and then sat on the recordings til this year, when IN THE RED realized that a desperate public was in need for some palookaville punk rock.
You can approach it on a couple of levels. If you just want to laugh, there’s plenty of mocking of greaser punk wankery to laugh at (they even use the word “wanker” a few times, like no North American I’ve ever met), though not a ton of out-and-out jokes.
It’s an attitude that you’re either on board with or not (and oh how most people will hate this stuff). It’s also totally roaring musically. It has been compared to late 70s Chicago punk band THE MENTALLY ILL, and you’ve ever heard the masterpiece single that band put out, you’ll know why.
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The Spits, Hunx and his Punx & The Black Jaspers LIVE
presented by Digital in Berlin, Noisey, Berlin Unlike, Festsaal & Blitzgigs
Djs: Lobotomy & Frank Freshness
Wednesday, 23 May 2012 | 20:00 CET
Festsaal Kreuzberg | Skalitzer Str. 130 | 10999 Berlin/Kreuzberg
myspace.com/thespits | myspace.com/hunxsolo | myspace.com/theblackjaspers | festsaal-kreuzberg.de
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