For every band like
Nirvana and the
White Stripes that broke out of the 90s punk and garage rock underground and wound up playing huge outdoor festivals while selling millions, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of other amazing artists slugging it out nightly the same scene who never made it out their Econolines. Thinking back, the most incredible rock 'n' roll shows I witnessed over the decade never involved major label acts and they certainly didn't happen in enormous sports arenas packed with thousands of screaming fans. Nope, they usually went down in small scuzzy bars littered with a handful of woozy regulars who didn't plan on having their drinking night interrupted by a menacing bunch of malnourished miscreants thrashing away at beat up guitars.
Since these weren't the sort of places where you'd expect to find music journalists sniffing for the next big thing or news photographers snapping shots, many of the most mind-roasting moments of the era were never adequately documented let alone reported to the general public. Consequently many incredible bands like the
Mummies, Dwarves, Lazy Cowgirls, Devil Dogs, Supersuckers, Halo Of Flies, Untamed Youth, Cheater Slicks, Teengenerate, Compulsive Gamblers, Oblivians, Gories, Lord High Fixers, Black Top, Jack O' Fire, the Make-Up, Sugar Shack, Motards, Fatal Flying Guilloteens, etc. never got the attention they deserved, until
Eric Davidson decided to write a book about them called
We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001 (Backbeat Books).
And really, who better to chronicle the terrifying-but-true tales of these 90s no-counts than a certified shit-disturber like Davidson who was often right there in the middle of the mayhem? Before he became an eminently competent
Village Voice,
CMJ and
SF Bay Guardian contributor, Davidison was better known as the comically confrontational frontman of the mighty
New Bomb Turks, probably the greatest band ever to come out of Columbus, Ohio. I vividly remember the first time I saw the Turk's, it was at
CBGBs sometime after 3 am following the rousing New York debut of
Guided By Voices. Despite the fact that there was only about 15 people left in the place – the members of
Sonic Youth,
Pussy Galore,
Mike D and various employees of
Matador and
Nasty Little Man who'd come to find out what the all the GBV fuss was about had split hours earlier – the Turks put on a ferocious attack led by the incessantly mugging Davidson who spent half the set dangling from light fixtures and air vents to the astonishment of Ottawa-based photographer
Shawn Scallen,
Matt Galloway, myself and
Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell who just wanted everyone to leave so he could go back to sleep. Clearly this Davidson hombre knows his shit.
Rather than a dry, scholarly study of the era, Davidson instead assembled as more of a series of hilarious, sometimes horrifying yet historically relevant reports from the frontline, letting the key players tell their wild-ass stories in their own words. The interview bits and pieces that didn't make the final cut (see my pal
Allyson Baker's fond recollection of meeting the Dwarves below), which Davidson has regularly been posting on his site (weneverlearnbook.com), should be indication enough that you need to pre-order a copy on the double. The street date for We Never Learn is June 1 and it should be noted that Amazon.com is momentarily offering it at the discounted rate of $13.59 US
here. Once you get it, you can use your code to grab a copy of the 20-track compilation Davidson has put together as a companion MP3 download right
here.
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That rockin’ gal in the flier is TCC guitarist Allyson Baker. She kindly let us crash at her parents' swanky suburban pad once, and walking past the paneled walls and fine furniture, we get to her section of the house, and her bathroom was covered floor to ceiling in red/white checkerboard tiles and her bedroom was plastered with Dwarves and other deviants posters. We all crashed in her basement, which I have since found out was liberally puked upon by members of the Dirtys…but that’s another story.
The story below is one Allyson gave me for We Never Learn; once again it was to be one of the “sidebars” I wanted to pepper throughout the book, but got cut in the end.
Oh, and Allyson is currently living in Cali and is married to that Aesop Rock guy. Go figure.
Eric Davidson
The Dwarves & Me by Allyson Baker
I was fresh out of Hebrew school, just started high school, and had recently acquired my first guitar. The word “grunge” was slowly starting to leave my vocabulary, though thanks to Kurt Cobain I was now learning about bands like the Melvins, the Meat Puppets, and Black Flag. Another of Cobain’s faves, Flipper, was coming to Toronto, so I was delighted as shit. Since it was my first time seeing a band at a small club I figured I’d better get there at least four hours early since I imagined there would be a mob of people outside, at the very least there’d be dozens of other 14-year old Nirvana-worshiping girls I’d have to elbow out of my way to get a good spot on the floor.
I got to the venue at 3pm with two other girlfriends who were more scared than I was. We sat outside the doors cross-legged for a few hours before this gangly looking dude in a dirty t-shirt approached us. It was Blag Dahlia, singer of the Dwarves. Blag took one look at us and started laughing. The site of us three girls, one with a mouthful of braces and the other with an emergency pack of Melba Toast in her front pocket, was comedy waiting to happen.
Blag invited us to come in the venue with him, which we immediately declined as we thought there was a small chance we’d be taken under the stage and molested. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so after a quick huddle we agreed to join him, deciding that if we all wound up somehow losing our virginity to the Dwarves that night, at least we’d all be together. Blag toted us around all night and introduced us to his band, Flipper, the roadies, the sound guy, the promoter, and even the college radio guy who kept trying to get a good interview from Blag, but wound up leaving with a tape of us talking about why our math teacher is fat and stupid.
The Dwarves finished their sound check and took us to a pizza place nearby. We all sat around eating pizza, talking about why 90210 was the greatest show ever. At this point we’d really warmed up to them and thought that these guys were real decent guys who just liked to play music and watch 90210, just like us!
The Dwarves opened the show, and we sat on the side of the stage very excited to see our new friends perform. The song starts, bottles go flying, Blag throws himself at the audience, and we took off at top speed running to the other end of the club, scared shitless. I was so terrified after watching them onstage for less than a minute that it made me want to jump into the arms of the strung-out guy from Flipper. We decided that we couldn’t hang out with the Dwarves any longer as they had suddenly turned into scary insane dudes.
At the end of the night Blag invited us to an after-party with Flipper, but with the visual of Blag grinding his pelvis into a chick’s forehead on stage fresh in our minds—not to mention the story we’d just heard about the drummer’s indiscretions with a quadriplegic from the night before—that we thought it might be best to just go home. Blag asked us what we were going to do, so we made up some bullshit about going to get food, to which he replied “Great! We’ll join you!” Slightly fearful, we piled in the van and headed to Golden Griddle, an all-night pancake house. We got to the restaurant and wound up having a great time hanging out and listening to these guy’s crazy stories of chicks, drugs, and being on tour.
At one point during the meal, Blag took me to the pay phone by the bathroom and played me dirty messages of some chick moaning and panting on his voicemail. I remember Blag and I with our ears up to the phone giggling at the sound of her having an orgasm into his answering machine. At around 5am, it was time to wrap it up. We said our goodbyes and Blag gave us all CDs and posters that the band signed—and it’s still up on my wall.
I didn’t sleep when I got home that night. I was completely hooked. I wanted every single night from then on to be like that, and so began my mission to make that happen. I started practicing guitar everyday so that I could start a band ASAP and make that my life.
Here's the schedule for Eric Davidson's upcoming book tour:
June 11 - Brooklyn, NY -
Academy Record Annex
- pre-Nobunny/Spits show soiree! 7pm
June 26 - Brooklyn, NY -
Bell House
- NEW BOMB TURKS reunion gig, featuring LiveFastDie
Early show! Reading, 6:30; bands, 8
June 29 - Seattle, WA
- Easy Street Records, book signing, 3pm
-
Snoose Part Deux (in Greenwood), reading/DVD showing, 8pm
July 1 - San Francisco, CA -
Hemlock Tavern
- Happy hour pre-Eddy Current Suppression Ring/Thee Oh Sees party
July 7 - Los Angeles, CA -
Stories
July 9 - Columbus, OH -
Wexner Center
- After-party DJ jive at
Café Bourbon St.
July 10 - Columbus, OH -
Surly Girl Parking Lot Blow-Out
- New Bomb Turks gig plus - get this - the Gibson Bros. and Scrawl!!! (More bands TBA)
July 13 - Chicago -
Museum of Contemporary Art
