WISE BLOOD IN WING TIPS
The Country Teasers shock and awe at the Smell
By Cole Coonce
"I know it's late on a Sunday night, but since tomorrow is a holiday, do you think we'll get a good turnout?" It is, in fact, a Sunday night (January 18), and members of the Country Teasers are killing time in a downtown L.A. taqueria, washing down carnitas with cerveza and lime, and cerebrally tuning up for their concert an hour or so later at the hole in the wall affectionately monikered the Smell. Coincidentally, my pal Tottenham and I are doing more or less the same, sitting down at the counter and drinking Mexican beer.
Tottenham, a Brit like most of the Teasers themselves, chimes in: "I don't know, pal. The only people who get off for Martin Luther King Day are clerks employed by banks, and government workers. Every other punter has to punch a clock tomorrow morning."
"Perhaps we'll get a nice crowd of bank tellers and government workers, then."
"Government workers are the last thing you want at a Country Teasers show," I tell him.
"What makes you say that?"
"For fuck's sake, man! You have albums titled Destroy All Human Life. And that's one of the nicer things you say. I don't know if you guys are completely misanthropic or merely misogynistic. Regardless, you guys are one big hate crime against music. Government workers won't be able to tell if you are taking the piss or if you really mean it."
"Mean what?"
"You're gonna make me recite your own lyrics? 'I like the swastika/I like the Jew/I like the Negro/And the KKK too'?"
"Oh, well, that's the obvious one, now isn't it?" Tottenham sniffs.
"People don't know when they are being sent up, do they?" the Teaser asks.
"Look," I say. "I know you guys are the lo-fidelity, Luddite Flannery O'Connor of r'n'roll, which, not to speak for Tottenham necessarily, but I think that is a great concept."
"Not me, pal," Tottenham says. "Fucking Flannery O'Connor is a tosser. I always hated that bastard."
*****
The Smell is Dante's reverb chamber, rectangular in shape and lined with dense brick and concrete so relentlessly reflective that the sound swirls and bounces like a fire hose in a parking garage. The acoustics are every bit as confrontational as the Teasers themselves. Just before midnight, the Teasers, garbed in wing tips, dress slacks, and sports coats, turn on their amps and present a united front of L-O-U-D guitar ballistics - three axe men and a bassist, whose arsenal is complemented by a steady-as-a-six-pack 2/4 shuffle beat and occasional cannonballs of cheap synthesizer noise. The synth is controlled by the guy who had been sitting next to us at the taqueria, and he toggles the micro-synth's switches and twirls its plastic potentiometers as voltage-controlled filters open and a plague of locusts dive-bomb out of the P.A. system to attack the hapless assembled.
There aren't many government workers at the show, nor bank tellers neither, but a half-empty/half-full smattering of indie-rock kids and a couple of grumpy old hipsters. Lead singer B.R. Wallers somehow manages to sound just like he does on his recordings, a narrow mid-range of pure id, wanton libido, and spiritual paranoia, pulling from a body of work such as Satan Is Real Again, Science Hat Artistic Cube Moral Nosebleed Empire, and the latest collection, Secret Weapon Revealed at Last (released by L.A.-based indie label In the Red).
"Anna Kournikova was 13 years old/When she entered the world of sex ... I mean success," wollers Wallers on "Success," and the other guitar dads saw one string at a time at extreme opposite ends on their vintage guitars' necks. The moment is not atypical of the entire performance.
At one point, the bass player breaks a string and fumbles in the dark for a replacement, and the Teasers sojourn on without him. They sound a little different, but not much. Soon he straps his bass back on and rejoins the fray. Later, the lads hit their one-fret-at-a-time chromatic-scale jam, "Prettiest Slave on the Barge," and the Country Teasers are in a punishing, stomping waltz. The treble speakers on the right side of the Smell's sound system blow up, melt, and fry, and the Teasers don't sound much different. They certainly don't sound any more distorted. I don't think anybody even noticed.Published: 01/22/2004
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