AMERICAN IDOLATRY “There’s no difference between Jesus Christ, Santa Claus, and the Devil. To me, they’re just images, just characters,” says Groovie Mann (left, with Pepper Somerset and Buzz McCoy). |
Subcultures all need their touchstones: entities that over time — for their hand in defining the æsthetic, or taking up the mantle of time-honored traditions — assume the stature of full-fledged institutions. In the late ’80s and ’90s, Tiger Beat bubblegum had New Kids on the Block, tabla drumming had Aloke Dutta, and goth-industrial dance had (among others) My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.
“It was me and Buzz, and the other people involved were friends of ours, so it was like a cult of bartenders and club people that were, say, non-star types,” TKK’s Groovie Mann explains about the group’s early years as he sits on a fire escape somewhere in Los Angeles. “It was more about people being who they really are instead of showcasing their egos or personality.”
Groovie goes on, “I’m a performer. I went out seven nights a week, got drunk and danced to the Vibrators and the Sex Pistols and all that. Somebody asked me to sing in their band and that’s how I went after it. Don’t say I’m a singer. I didn’t start out being, like, ‘I’m a singer and I’m looking for a band.’ ”
Matter of fact, the TKK project wasn’t even supposed to be a band. When Groovie (who functions as a kind of ringmaster in TKK and, uh, actually does sing quite a bit) met Buzz McCoy (who pens music, plays keyboards, produces, tour-manages, books shows, and occasionally sleeps) in Chicago in ’87, they set to work collaborating on a horror film. Somehow, the importance of the project was eclipsed by its soundtrack.
“It [the circumstances of the band’s formation] was one of those moments that no one can really understand until the record company turns it into some kind of hype,” says Groovie, who claims that someday they’ll get around to finishing the TKK movie. If they don’t, we shan’t be wanting for hedonism, Satan, drugs, and disco as seen through TKK’s ominous looking glass. For two decades, our supplies of throbbing backbeats, Groovie’s slithering encouragements to get down with our bad selves, and samples of B-movie dialogue repeating like incantations have been steadily expanding.
Although the urge to churn out a replica of their most successful record once every two years is too seductive for many veterans to resist, TKK have toyed with techno, tossed in horns, and dabbled in surf rock. But for this, the 20th-anniversary tour, their set will comprise their tenure on Wax Trax Records — tunes from I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits (1989), Confessions of a Knife (1990), and Sexplosion (1991). For consistency, the stage spectacle will be compacted to its original format: two singers and two keyboards (no back-up from singer/dancer Pepper Somerset this trip). What’s different from the Sexplosion tour in ’91: no one is scheduled to simulate fellatio of a faux Jesus during the performance.
“It’s a celebration of 20 years,” says Buzz McCoy, who also resides in Los Angeles. “We thought we’d do stuff that people first fell in love with us for.”
So perhaps fuzzy-wuzzy nostalgia is part of TKK’s motivation for reaffirming their commitment to vice. Both Groovie and McCoy describe the direction on their next record (working title: Death Threat) as revisiting the murky, slightly unsettling sleaze from the bad old days. Dubious? Check out “Invasion,” a new track on the Internet. Still, I detect a hint of social responsibility behind this resurgence of semi-retro-wickedness.
“We started out with the imagery of Satan and drugs and everything because America was so conservative at the time,” recalls McCoy, who grew up on Cape Cod. “The PMRC and all this stuff was going on 20 years ago, and 20 years later, it’s getting all conservative again, or at least half of the country is.“
Adds Groovie, “There’s no difference between Jesus Christ, Santa Claus, and the Devil. To me, they’re just images, just characters. There’s no shock there. It’s all for fun. I like exploiting everything and not caring, and breaking rules, because that’s what rules are for. Even 20 years later, I look at things people are afraid of. How ridiculous. Live!”
MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT + PROVOCATEUR + THUNDER BROTHERS | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | September 25 at 8 pm | $15 advance/$17 doors | 617.864.EAST orwww.mideastclub.com
