If you Google female rock vox, you’ll find bands like Heart, Paramore, Evanescence, Garbage, The Pretenders and Metric. If you Google female punk vox, you’ll find Siouxsie, The Donnas, L7, Blondie, the Slits and yes, even Courtney Love. When you dig a little deeper, you find references to the Riot Grrrl bands of the late 90’s and lots of discussion about feminism and political movements and such.
It’s difficult to really research bands with female “frontmen” because inevitably, you end up reading a bunch of nonsense about how despite being female, they overcame the stereo types (The Pretenders) or how she played harder and better than her male counterparts (Janis Joplin). And you have to read half way down most articles before you start to find out anything about the music they create based on its merit alone.
Scary Cherry and the Bang Bangs (SCABBs) is a group with a female “frontman”. But, before you damage your brains trying to categorize them because of that, take a listen to what I can only describe as a punk party in my pants. Drummer, Ayo came up with a better description when I asked the band how they’d categorize their sound, “neo glitter slam pop girl punk”.
I’ve been to two SCABBs shows and had the privilege of interviewing the band about a week ago when I sat down with all six of them at The Londoner in Addison to talk music, relationships, success and labels. I became even more perplexed about what to write about this band.
SCABBs is the love child of Mario Tremaine (Minx the Jinx) and Alan Ayo, (formerly of 102.1 The Edge and currently with CNN radio).
“I remember the first MySpace emails that Mario returned to me and it was like, by the way, this is just a fun side-thing that we’re doing. I know it looks kind of weird and silly, but it’s just something that we’re f*cking around with. And that’s how it started” according to Ayo.
“It’s been a strange ride. After the very first gig, I wanted it to keep going, but I wasn’t sure it was going to”, Minx added “It didn’t take very long to realize that it was something special”
The heart and soul of the band belongs to Scary aka Lezlie Deane (of Nightmare on Elm street- The Final Nightmare fame) and Tony Coke. According to Scary, “Tony’s guitar playing brings the passion out”, which counterbalances her in your face, but still feminine style. “The sound is sonic. If I was a pussy, I’d be run over by these guys”, she added.
Julie Brooks (Cold E) and Andrew Harrison (Meatpie) balance the ensemble by mastering the business side of SCABBs. And it’s obvious that this group is run like a business. With an amazing website, laden with info on contests, MP3s, merch, upcoming shows, giveaways and charities, SCABBs is linked into everything. They have over 16,000 MySpace fans, close to 600 twitter followers and I got up to 27 pages of relevance by Googling Scary Cherry and the Bang Bangs before anything aside from them showed up.
“The only way you are going to make it is if you climb to the highest tree and f*cking shout it to the world and as far as I’m concerned, I’m climbing to the highest tree and shouting it until everyone notices us.” Minx explained.
Scary added, “It’s a new business model for bands. You have to get money however you can. And being an internet band right now, that’s how we’ve made close to $7K”, referring in part to their Grand Prize winnings from the MTVPartner’s “Our Stage” competition, which ended in April of this year.
The band is banking the cash and raising additional funds for their upcoming East Coast Tour scheduled this summer.
Hoping to add to the loot, they are currently competing in Guitar Center’s Your Next Record with Slash, competition. Grand prize there includes a 3 song EP, a $10K guitar center gift card, a $10K Earnie Ball gift card and an opening slot on the Monster Tour.
The Guitar Center competition relies on votes and driving internet traffic to the website. Despite the frustration that goes along with these competitions and the endless promotions, the band continues to work these angles in an effort to raise funds and gain exposure. “We don’t like it, but you’ve got to play their game”, Mario explained. It’s all a means to an end. “…sometimes people are afraid to admit they want success. I’m not afraid to admit that.” Scary added.
And when I asked the band what success means to SCABBs, Ayo immediately responded, “I’m there already. What I wanted was happiness out of it. And I got it. Anything we get beyond this is a bonus to me.” Bands used to define success as getting signed to a label. Ayo continued, “Who gives a f*ck about getting signed anymore?”
Meatpie added, “you hear [people call themselves] group or ensemble cast…we really are. Everyone puts in something”.
“Work hard play hard, leave your f*cking heart in the club/ on the stage” Scary emphasized,” If we do that, we’re successful.”
The band described their relationships with one another as a marriage. “It’s very incestuous already. We have a strange relationship. We’re all really in love with one another. I mean in a platonic way. We have weird marriage spats” Mario explained. And Ayo added, “Scary and I have one that’s very strong on a musical level. When she’s not at practice, I sound different”
On stage you can tell that the band is serious about what they do. They are a finely compressed unit focused on hitting all the right notes at all the right times while keeping control of the audience and maintaining their characters.
Their sound is more melodic that traditional punk music and while they haven’t compromised on a category, you could easily call them a punk band, even though they don’t want to be limited by the definition.
“The music is very important to us. She [Scary] let’s us concentrate on the music, and put all of our energy into it.” Meatpie told me.
Scary doesn’t just engage the crowd; she pulls you inside of herself, showing you her rawness and bareness. She’s not afraid to expose herself because she sees right through you into the naked dirty parts. But you like it. “I suck it all in and regurgitate it all back out”, she tells me. She’s hostile and aggressive, but safe. She’s gorgeous and frightening and although you know she could probably kick your ass, you still want to share a beer with her and maybe try to beat her at arm wrestling.
In the end they aren’t asking for much. Maybe to “tour the world, pay a mortgage and have some residual income from doing this”, as Tony Coke said. “I think we are going to make it. I think we are absolutely on our way” Mario added.
Scary Cherry and the Bang Bangs is a band with an unforgettable name, an addictive sound and a heart pounding live performance. For those of you who have been asking yourselves what’s next for music, pay attention to this band. You can find them playing many venues in the DFW are. Check their website for schedules and upcoming road shows. Don’t miss your chance to become a fan at their next show in Dallas at Trees on June 2nd.
Scarry Cherry and the Bang Bangs are:
Scary Cherry aka Lezlie Deane
Bang Bangs:
Tony Coke aka Tony Coke
MinxtheJinx aka Mario Tremaine
Ayo aka Alan Ayo
Meatpie aka Andrew Harrison
Cold E / Julie12 aka Julie Brooks
Links:
www.scarycherry.com
www.ourstage.com/winners
http://www.yournextrecord.com/contest.php?sid=181&aid=61796&mid=47652&mtype=1
www.myspace.com/scarycherryandthebangbangs
twitter.com/SCABBS
Comments