By Jim Testa

     The  Reverb Motherfuckers play it,  record labels avoid  it, 
fanzines  love it,  the Lismar Lounge books it,  and Mykel  Board 
says he named it.  What're we talking about?
     We're talking scum.
     Scum  Rock.   Catchy little moniker,  ain't it?   Of course, 
like most labels,  nobody's really sure what it means. The term's 
been floating around for a while,  although it really started  to 
catch  on  when  Mykel Board profiled the  New York  "Scum  Rock" 
scene last summer in "Downtown" magazine.
     You could define it geographically:  Scum Rock bands play in 
the  Bermuda  Triangle  of Manhattan  clubland  bordered  by  the 
Pyramid Club to the east, Downtown Beirut II on Houston Street to 
the  south,  and venerable CBGB to the west.   The fact that  the 
Bowery  is  as  close as any of these bands ever get  to  midtown 
should tell you something right away.
     All of these clubs - and let's not forget the Lismar Lounge, 
Nightingale's  Bar,  or  little unmarked  holes-in-the-wall  like 
Chameleon, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut or ABC No Rio while we're at it 
- live up to most people's expectations of scumminess.  The bands 
that play these places by and large can't get gigs anywhere else, 
and  most of them don't want to.   It's not that Scum bands don't 
take their music seriously; just that,  more often than not, they 
don't  take  themselves very seriously at all.   Like the  Reverb 
Motherfuckers,  who  take off their clothes and cover  themselves 
with bar-b-q sauce, or Porno Dracula, who do a credible Iggy Goes 
Las Vegas thing.  We are not talking careerism,  here, that's for 
sure. 
     Scum  Rock  bands don't have any set  sound,  unless  "LOUD" 
qualifies as a genre unto itself these days.  Lots of these bands 
stoke  the  flames of the 70's  revival  (cf.  Sub-Pop,  Seattle, 
Raging Slab,  and Das Damen for more on  that).    Freaks,  whose 
day-glo   orange  presskits  and  comic-book  caricature   flyers 
suggest a trippy,  Roger Corman Acid Rock thing, tend to flounder 
once John Fay starts cranking out the 15th or 16th grungey Led-en 
solo  of their set,  but they have their moments.   The Ex-Lovers 
(formerly  Traci Lord's Ex-Lovers) don't even  look  scummy,  and 
their  sound  is as sweet as chocolate syrup mixed with  seltzer. 
This band makes a yummy egg cream kind of sound .  Chris  Parrish 
of  Holy Crow looks (and sounds) like Joan Jett and her band  has 
this great Ramones Go To Hell grunge-punk kick,  while the  runty 
guys  in Hammerbrain,  with their spikey hair and  tattoos,  look 
like  they're  gonna  gob on ya while they're spewing  out  their 
angry, fiery punktoons.
     "At  this  point," says Mykel Board,  the dean of Scum  Rock 
critics, "Scum Rock has to be any band that won't deny it."  See, 
most of these combos - including the ones I just mentioned - hate 
being  called  Scum  Rock. 
     The  biggest  problem  is  that  in  Board's  original  Scum 
article,  he  intimated  that most scum bands  don't  play  their 
instruments  very  well or sing in tune or write  good  songs,  a 
notion that the bulk of the scum scene denies vehemently.
     
     "I'm  too  young  to  remember,  but it  seems  to  me  that 
everything they used to say about Punk,  they're saying now about 
Scum," says Jon Ment, a sometime-college student, fanzine editor, 
as well as bassist/singer for the  band Slugfest.   "I agree that 
there is a scum scene and I wouldn't deny we're a Scum Rock band, 
but  I  don't agree with the stuff Mykel Board wrote  about  scum 
bands not being very talented."  
     Frankly,  I think Ment is exactly right.  Scum bands may  be 
casual about re-tuning between every song,  but they are far from 
untalented  - and it's exactly the same sort of reverse  snobbism 
that  plagued the Punk  scene of the late '70's.   In defense  of 
punk  rock,  I need only point out that the biggest selling album 
of  1976 (the year in which Never Mind The Bollocks...Here's  The 
Sex   Pistols  was  released)  was  Frampton  Comes   Alive!,   a 
masterpiece  of well-tuned guitar playing and in-key vocals.  And 
I  don't really have to point out which record is still  listened 
to 13 years later, do I? 
     Some  of the other cool bands making the scum scene  include 
the Unsane (not to be confused with the 8 or 9 other bands called 
The Unsane going around nowadays, including a really sucky one on 
New Renaissance Records).  Gerard Cosloy picked the NYC Unsane as 
Best  New  Live  Thrash/Fusion Band (or something)  in  the  last 
Flipside  poll,  and  he's right.  They're real  good.  Not  your 
typical 3-piece death thrash combo, these guys are loud and shit, 
but  tuneful  too,  and  good  lookin'.   You  can  tell  they're 
Thrash/Fusion 'cos they all look so different from one another  - 
the drummer is a blond hippie type, the lead singer/gtr is a tall 
skinny  dude  in a baseball cap,  and the bassist is a  skinhead. 
(How  come  if there's a skinhead or a girl  in  the  band,  it's 
always the bassist?)  
     Another  excellent if scummy band to watch for is The Thing, 
fronted  by  Jesse Ostbaum,  who's been kicking around  New  York 
looking  for a band to be magnificent in for about 5  years  now. 
Well, he finally found it.  Between shooting off firecrackers and 
smoke bombs and screaming his lungs out and waving his long curly 
hair at the crowd, Jesse gets to listen to his pal Sal Canzonieri 
wail out some immensely thick harmonic guitar. These guys got the 
psychokiller  melodramatics  of the Buttholes,  the killer  punk-
crunch  of White Zombie,  and the post-psychedelic drone  of  the 
Velvet Monkeys at their most possessed.
     The Thing swears they're not Scum Rock either.
     Bands  like  Pussy Galore,  the  Buttholes,  B.A.L.L.  (with 
Shimmydisc's Mark Kramer on bass and Velvet Monkey Don Fleming on 
guitar),  and  Sharkey's Machine helped influence and create  the 
Scum  Rock scene - but most of those bands have released  albums, 
toured,  and play nicer clubs.  Call them Scum Alumni.   GWAR are 
Viking  Scum.   (Any band on Shimmydisc has at least one foot  in 
the  slime,  by the way.  The label's trademark horseshit  guitar 
sound  and  Manny's  Garage-caliber production  make  almost  any 
Shimmydisc  release at least part Scummy.)  Ed Gein's  Car  plays 
out with the scum bands an awful lot; they're scum-by-association 
(and,  as  a  New  York hardcore band  that's  neither  teenaged, 
positive,  straightedge or on Buy Our Records,  they have no real 
constituency of their own anyway.)  
     Last, and probably even least, nothing on Scum Rock would be 
complete  without  some  mention to Letch Patrol.   If  you  read 
Maximum Rock 'N Roll,  you probably already know the name  - they 
hold  the record for most consecutive mentions in a Scene Report. 
In fact, self-promotion is what they do best.  Lead singer Harris 
Pankin (who,  more than any other human being,  sums up the  word 
SCUM in everything he does) even turned the Thompkins Square Park 
police riot in a Letch Patrol media circus, turning up repeatedly 
on  the  evening news and talk shows in a Letch  Patrol  t-shirt, 
making  sure  to mention the band in between showing off a  nasty 
scalp   wound   (courtesy  of  some  out-of-control   NYC   cop's 
nightstick).   Unfortunately, Letch Patrol keeps falling apart at 
the  seams,  losing  and finding new members.  Without  a  viable 
lineup for 1989's Scum Fest at CBGB, they did the next best thing 
- took the stage,  made an elaborate show of tuning up for  about 
15 minutes, and then lip-synched their single.  
     Letch Patrol really epitomizes what Scum Rock is all about - 
making  do at the bottom rung of the rock 'n roll ladder,  coping 
with a dying club scene and an indifferent public,  finding  ways 
to make music and have fun.  And if you can throw a few pies into 
the face of proper society while you're at it, all the better.]


Scum Rock's Greatest Shit         

"On The Rag Compilation"
w/ Hammerbrain, Roadkill, Ex-Lovers
(Urban Rag Records)

Letch Patrol
"Love Is Blind"/"Axe To Grind" 45

Honeymoon Killers
"You Turn Me On" EP
Buy Our Records

The Thing
6 Sick Songs Cassette


Reverb Motherfuckers
"Route 666" lp


Bands Only A Mutha Could Love
Compilation CD
Mutha Records

 
 
 





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