After a few mentions of the greatness of the Japanese at making what seems to be marketed as music (Ruins, Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, Green Milk from the Planet Orange, Melt-Banana, Keiji Haino, let alone the earlier school of bands like Boredoms and that girl-pop band Sonic Youth liked), I thought to myself, “WHAT THIS BLOG NEEDS IS A TRIBUTE TO THE BEST JAP BAND EVER.” And I’m not considering “Loudness.”So I’m not going out tonight. Well, I am. I’m actually going to the store to get pie crusts to make a few pies and putting the final touches on the cork flooring (seriously; four coats of polyurethane is going to be fine). But this means that I am missing Wood Roses (again), with The Ants (with Jason Beers). Jason called me in a conniption tonight about some CD he found of some Eastern European British Invasion band, but he told me the name and it had far too many words. He is playing saw or something with The Ants tonight, which proves to be worth the drive. The way he describes The Ants, I think I’d like them a lot, but then when he re-describes them, it sounds like I might hate them. This is at The Brick, and I doubt I am welcome there.The reason I missed WoodIl trucco nel play blackjack http://www.casinosuperba.com/generale-roulette-in-linea-strategia.html e’ piu’ classico e’ quello di contare le carte che sono uscite e in base alle probabilita’ decidere se chiamare carta o stare. Roses the other night is because JUST as I arrived, I got a text from the BabyMama that she had fallen and broken her kneecap. It may not be broken after all, but it did make me miss doing that to which I looked forward (to). The second text begged for immediate help and a hospital visit, and when I showed up to rescue her, I got to watch her guzzle wine and swear off doctors with bags of frozen cauliflower as a substitute. That was hell. We went the next day for X-rays, and if it turns out that it ain’t broken, it will be shortly after the news arrives.Back to the Japanese. At The Jackpot, I’m missing The Hot IQs, about whom I’ve heard good things from my Denver connections. They get compared to bands I like plenty fine (Archers of Loaf), and they have a dark-haired woman playing drums who looks like she may be Asian and pretty (so she may be Japanese, therefor fitting into this post quite nicely), but I can’t tell from the two pictures I’ve seen. And if you have a pretty Asian woman in the band, I think you try to make an issue of it, so she is either not Asian, not a woman, or not pretty. She plays drums plenty fine (or Pro Tools does), so what can I say? I do know that when I listen to them, I hear NO Archers of Loaf, but I do hear pop music mixed with a band I saw on Letterman recently that was so horrible I wanted to scratch out my frontal lobe. The vocals sound JUST like that band (maybe The Killers? I get them all mixed up), and hearing them is kind of like hearing the voice that raped you, so I’m not heading out.
Back to people I am certain fit the Japanese theme here. In January of 1997, I got an e-mail from a strange address with the subject FUCK YOU. Upon opening it, it read as follows:
hi …my name is mike webber and im the singer of that old crappy band nip drivers and i took acid tonight and i love you in a biblical sense …thanks for mentioning my band …im with the artist that drew all the record covers and were both in screwed by every record company in the land hell …and im proud to have been fucked in the ass by them all … cover artist …mike g.email = dead70785…mike webber in mindora nomans land …race cars next…hi …fast …love …pike …kiss.. pier… judy…love…
Uhhhh, Okay, Mike.I don’t know the guy, but I do know who he is. His band was on a list of bands I loved that I put on the net in 1996 or something for my band’s website. He is the guy who sings what may be the best cover song in the history of music; a cover of Fox on the Run by Sweet from the soundtrack to Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. The singer is Darby Crash if Darby would have REALLY done drugs and REALLY been sassy, and the song is the purest form of rock and roll I’ve yet to hear outside of The Stooges. Seriously. If you can’t fall in love with this song and this singer from this version, you should just fucking stop.
Nip Drivers — Fox on the Run (The Sweet)Seriously. Download that and listen to it and tell me it doesn’t make the Rolling Stones seem like NSYNC.I know about the Nip Drivers because I dated a gal named Cindy for a long-assed-time, starting in 1985. My High School buddy Jason Willis would constantly whine, “Waiting … I’m just waiting for CYEYEYYEYEEINDEEEEEEEEEEEE” until forcing me to take on the first Nip Drivers E.P., “Destroy Whitey,” as my new favorite record. And MAN was it amazing.
Nip Drivers — CindyNip Drivers — Nip DriverOkay, so the Nip Drivers were neither Nips nor was Cindy their best song. But if you are wondering who the fuck they are, then you also don’t know about Nig Heist, Cheater, Alter Boys, SWA, etc. Your bad. Red Cross (cum Redd Kross) was pretty much the only other band who survived that scene with a sense of pop and subversiveness and sass, but I truly believe that Nip Drivers did so with the most verve and swagger, without the breakout success. Even so, you can credit them alongside Redd Kross with the tricks of the We Got Power folks — ironic yet reverent covers, 70’s infatuation, etc.Nip Drivers — Have You Never Been Mellow (Olivia Newton John)Nip Drivers — Rio (Duran Duran)Nip Drivers — Under My Thumb (Rolling Stones)Nip Drivers — You Need Us (The Honeybees - from a Gilligan’s Island Episode)Early on, Kurt Schellenbach was the punk on the guitar, but later the band seemed to become Webber and whomever was in the room that day. I really loved the Schellenbach fellah, but it was truly Webber’s weird voice inflection and kooky songwriting that kept me a fan. He still puts shit out as Nip Drivers, which is amazing considering that requires that he has survived.Schellenbach continued with Webber on “Oh Blessed Freak Show” in late 1985 (take that, Huskers!). And EP and an LP in the same year? 30 songs? Goodness. Then they disappeared. For, oh, a decade. But Freak Show had some monsters. And some sillies. But the monsters were blistering:
Nip Drivers — New Meiji TakeoverNip Drivers — Bad TripNip Drivers — Talk About CarsTalk About Cars is probably my fav, but the line, “It is Saturday night and I’m gonna fry, goin’ down to my dealer’s gonna drop it in my eye,” kind of wraps up that e-mail pretty nicely.So, to my glee (horror?), Nip Drivers showed back up in 1993 with a 7″ called “Pretty Face” or “Pasttime,” depending on from whom you bought it. The glory of this 7″ was that they play a Paul Roessler song. Paul Roessler is Kira’s brother. Kira dated Dez Cadena from Black Flag, and later played bass for Black Flag. She played for Black Flag on the tours I saw, and the rumors at the time suggested she was the chick voice on “Slip it In,” which was pretty exciting for a 16-year-old. She married and divorced Mike Watt, all the while co-writing for both Minutemen and Firehose. But Paul Roessler was far cooler. Paul Roessler was in some SST bands, and early punk-rock bands from So Cal, most notably The Screamers (you don’t know them either, but they are “important”), 45 Grave, DC3, Nina Hagen, and he played on Dead Kennedy’s “Fresh Fruit” and Redd Kross’s “Neurotica.” But if you are me (which you aren’t), you will know him forever for his touching Nip Drivers contribution: Never Was.
Nip Drivers — PasttimeNip Drivers — Never WasShortly after, Nip Drivers reappeared for their final (so far) release, the “Dirt My Hole” 7″. They really desperately miss the out-of-tune and out-of-control guitar of Kurt Schellenbach, but they manage some glory with the poppy “D.J. Sissy” and the slightly Black Flag-ish “Dirt My Hole.” Nothing that totally rocks my ass, though.
Nip Drivers — D.J. SissyNip Drivers — Dirt My HoleSo to wrap up, I love Japanese bands, even when they are white boys from Southern California. And if The Hot IQs would have advertised made it clear whether or not that gal playing drums was Asian, I probably would have gone.Or not.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT:
I shit you not; after writing this blog, I did a search for “Nip Drivers” and “Blog” and found a MySpace page that claims that Mike Webber died sometime during the past two days. No confirmation yet, but that is uncanny. All of the “RIP Mike” posts start on the 13th (yesterday). And on FRIDAY I started working on this to fulfill my “Japanese Related Music Post” I wrote about on Friday.I’m breaking my rule, and linking to MySpace.Man, people. Quit dying. My best to the friends and family.EDIT 15 NOV 2006: Word has come in from someone close that Webber had heart surgery earlier in the week and died on Saturday. Live healthy, folks. Fucking seriously.———-Shows I may or may not go see. Chances can be influence upwards by whether I am “on the list”:
- Topeka Ascension Ork’ester, This is My Condition as special guest, 17 Nov; Grace Episcopal Cathedral (89% chance)
- Gay Beast / This is My Condition / Witch & Hare 29 Nov; Jackpot Saloon (94% chance)
- Split Lip Rayfield, 01 Dec; Liberty Hall (74% chance)
- Leslie and the Lys, 11 Dec; The Record Bar (45% chance — that response made me sour)
