By Jimmy Draper

'THIS GUY TOLD Brian that he wanted to chew Brian's dick off and shit it out! Chew it, eat it, and shit it out," Andrey Netboy says, laughing. Three floors above South Van Ness Avenue, Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes are seated around a kitchen table as they recount the reactions they received on their recent two-week West Coast tour. Netboy continues, incredulous, "And that was the guy's response to being called a homophobe!"

"That's how the tour started out, actually – a fight the very first night," Jasmine Lixx Caperton says of the Eureka show. "We were like, 'All right, here it comes ...' "

Not that anyone, least the band, should've been surprised by the road bumps. With infamously unhinged performances that include mix 'n' match, over-the-top stage getups, nudity-prone dance-offs, and some seriously impressive sleaze rock, Veronica Lipgloss embody, for many, the freaky, anything-goes spirit unique to this city. So when the band – vocalist-bassist Rhani Remedes, drummer Netboy, guitarist-saxophonist Caperton, and synth-bassist Krispy Pickles, along with their chaotic crew of dancers (Sarah Ball, Brontez, Kiddiy Dropwn, and Brian Schultz) – left the cozy confines of the Bay Area's underground, it makes sense that they encountered responses ranging from acceptance and hostility to flat-out bewilderment.

"Mostly people were like, 'Oh my God. We don't normally see that type of thing,' " Brontez says.

"Yeah, we got that a lot – 'You guys aren't from here, are you?' " Netboy proudly adds. "Like, 'We've never seen anything like you guys before.' "

Decadent bent

Formed in the wake of various collaborations between Remedes and other local musicians, including Sugar Fixx of the Deepthroats and Von Iva's Elizabeth Davis-Simpson, Veronica Lipgloss played their first show in the fall of 2001 at the Clarion Alley Block Party. A year and a half later – plus or minus a few members – they've evolved into a decadent, trash-disco ensemble that's one of this city's best reasons to stay out late and fuck shit up.

"It started off basically because we all had similar ideas that we wanted to hear musically," Remedes says, explaining the band's recent transition from a rather trad guitar-bass-drums trio into a chaotic, synth-augmented rock ensemble featuring a cast of dancers. "Actually, I didn't know that this is what I wanted – having a group like this – but then it just made sense."

The band's recent, self-titled debut on Scuzzy Bitch Records is what Remedes aptly refers to as "old-school Veronica Lipgloss." Recorded last December, when the band featured only Remedes, Netboy, and former guitarist Neil Revenga – Caperton, Pickles, and the dancers joined this spring – the four-song EP is a great if not fully accurate introduction to the group's current sound. "New Day" and the brilliantly titled "Deep Interactions on Peoples' Lips" throb as deeply and ominously as anything else they've done, but it's only the darkly sinister "Disco" that truly captures the frenzied, infinitely danceable momentum of their live shows. Over a propulsive, live-wire bass line, Remedes repeatedly shout-shrieks what might be the band's most unnerving, telling lyrics: "I've got this fucked-up feeling, and I don't know what it is!"

Open lips

Live, Veronica Lipgloss invoke many gloriously fucked-up feelings. While their house party performances inevitably inspire kids to strip to their skivvies and take to tabletops, the band's Balazo/Mission Badlands Gallery record-release show in April illustrated just how unbridled their hedonism can get. As a naked, glitter-covered Brontez crowd-surfed over lip-locked boys on the dance floor, others shed their clothes, scaled the walls, and traded blow jobs beneath the keyboards. And with the tiny room transformed into a giant sea of sweaty, surging impulsion, it became nearly impossible to decipher who was and wasn't in the band – something Remedes claims the group strives for.

"[The dancers] move out into the audience to disrupt, interrogate, and integrate the space between audience versus entertainer," she says. "It's more fun when everyone is dancing or moving or freaking out or barfing or breaking their stilettos. The performances act as an ideal of how we want to live in our daily lives – open, wildful, artful, passionate, and loveful."

By refusing to separate themselves from their community, Veronica Lipgloss take a refreshingly open-armed approach to their music. Not only are they adamant that they not be isolated from their radical artist-peers in San Francisco's "slutty underground," constantly giving shout-outs to bands like the Mutilated Mannequins, but they also hope to create a space where people feel free to be their freaky selves.

"People, basically, are not allowed to do what they wanna do," Ball says. "Whether you wanna be accepted or be naked or live a normal life or whatever, you always have to do a lot of things you don't really wanna do. So when people see others doing what they wanna do, it's almost like a new idea. Like, if a person doesn't normally dance, then they might come to our show and feel like, 'Wow, maybe I can dance now.' "