Anti-reunion blues
All hail Frosty, a band too great and too freaky to be revived.

By Mike McGuirk

MISSION OF BURMA are coming to town soon to play a show. Weren't they just here a year or two ago? I seem to remember all these people salivating at the prospect of a Mission of Burma reunion show at the Fillmore or somewhere. Now they have a new record and are coming back. These guys are, like, 50. –Apparently the last time Mission of Burma came through they "totally kicked ass." Or maybe they sucked, I have no idea. The event was a blip to me. Not a whole lot different from someone telling me they were totally psyched because Styx and REO Speedwagon were finally touring together again. I distinctly remember people my age being incensed that I wasn't interested in seeing Mission of Burma play. I don't know – I'm as old as anyone practically, and I remember when "Academy Fight Song" and "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" basically saved rock music for us all in the Metro Boston area, but man, it's been, like, 10 years since any of those songs sounded good. The shit is boring. Have you ever tried turning those records up loud? They sound awful. That's the real sin, if you ask me. Like much of the four-tracked garbage from the mid '80s, if you play it loud it just gets muddy. I guess the whole DIY nature of early indie rock dictated that things would be recorded poorly, since the kids were eschewing accepted "studio" rock. But hell, they recorded Little Richard and 5,000 other people and bands with one microphone and the drummer two rooms away in a bathroom, and the shit all sounds amazing.

I'll tell you, if there's one band I would be psyched to see reunite and tour again, and whose music actually has some relevance today, it's this band nobody cares about from Miami called Frosty. It's not gonna happen, though, because Frosty were so fucked-up and insane they self-destructed years ago. Judging from conversations with the band's former bassist, Syd Garon, the members are lucky to be alive and a reunion would be ludicrous.

Frosty were a part of the To Live and Shave in L.A. and Harry Pussy scene destroying everything in Florida in the mid '90s, but for some reason not a whole lot of people have heard of them. One review described them as "the third prong in Florida's hate-rock triumvirate." They released one record on Menlo Park called Liquor Drink and a pair of 7-inches. The members of the band were singer Lance Williams, Andres Solar on drums, Ben Wolcot (of To Live and Shave) on guitar, Lisa Perriloux on acoustic guitar, and Garon on bass.

Less of a free-form freak-out than To Live and Shave and Harry Pussy, Frosty were, however, just as capable of creating chaos. Their live shows regularly featured Williams humping various members of the audience, attacking innocent bystanders, and wearing a tuxedo top and rubber shorts.

Says Garon, "Lance had this habit of finding someone who was uncomfortable with the show and then directing the whole show at them. There'd be an elderly couple drinking at the bar, and he would jump off the stage and just scream these things in their face until they left. The stage was right next to the door, and he would position his leg across the door, so when people tried to leave they would have go under his crotch." Describing his last days with the band, Garon adds, "I had secured this practice space in a kids' classroom. It was totally illegal for us to be in there. Lance came in, and outside someone had just been mugged, and Lance had found this purse. Inside the purse were all these drugs, not like drugs to get high but old person's drugs. He took all the drugs without reading the labels, emptied this asthma inhaler, and Lisa the guitar player was wearing her purse upside down, and she was covered in cocaine. It was everywhere, all over this kids' classroom, and I quit the band then and there. I don't even know how she was wearing her purse that way. It was totally bizarre. Once while playing a show in Georgia, she passed out on her amp while playing, and I had to turn her off and finish the show without a guitar player."

Liquor Drink rules. Half-retarded garage punk with serious noise damage, it has flat-out great lyrics covering such essential subjects as alcohol, drugs, getting cruised by drive-through fast-food employees, alcohol, and drugs. Williams introduces "Drag" with "This one's for the kids that don't make the band, the days they wake up and wish they were dead / This one's for the ones that don't go to school and smoke and drink and think they're cool / This one's for the STDs that like to kill one out of three / This one's for just you and me / Spread your legs baby, then we'll see." What follows is one of the filthiest breaks into a chorus ever recorded, thanks to Williams's chicken wire-gargling yell. The guy also says, "I don't give a fuck" better than any other vocalist I ever heard.

I am grateful to Mission of Burma, I really am, for those two above-mentioned songs changed my life when I heard them. But they led me down dark roads. Roads littered with Superchunk and Volcano Suns records, a willingness to accept Daydream Nation as anything less than total garbage, the Replacements and all that indie rock that literally made me hate everyone and everything associated with "underground" music for years until I finally heard the Brainbombs and "Kill Them All" one day in 1997 or '98.

What is the difference between Mission of Burma (and all these other "alternative" bands: X, the Pixies, Morrissey) rising up from the murk and some MGD-sponsored Styx tour, anyway?

I suppose it's the "alternative" thing, right? Because these bands were really breaking the rules and paving the way for indie rock, they need to be given some kind of respect. I don't think so. I think Mission of Burma are as responsible for watered-down punk/rock music (White Stripes, the Darkness, the rest) being on the radio as Styx are responsible for AOR existing as a genre of music (not the root of AOR but culpable just the same). They, and some others, opened the door for all that shit. Maybe not the bands specifically, because really they were just college kids writing songs. The ones to blame are the marketing ninjas who invented the term "alternative music" and shoved it down everyone's throats. But what was alternative about that music? There really wasn't anything all that challenging there. Frosty had an openly gay singer who championed the joys of truck stop bathrooms and shoved his scrotum in Floridian faces. Their music came from how completely fucked-up they all were – the harshness of its sound translated that perfectly. Nobody paid attention to their record because it was too much for people to handle. To me this is what makes something good.

The whole indie credo was defined by selling out or not selling out, supposedly. And in the end it all just became product. Now these bands are trying to recapture the glory, and the music they've spawned is so subpar it makes people start calling the Darkness saviors of rock music. As attempts at some large-scale breaking of the "noise rock" scene continue to occur – or whatever the hell is happening when Thurston Moore is putting out Total Shutdown's new record and Wolf Eyes are going on tour with Lollapalooza – freaked-out little bands like Frosty seem to take on a larger significance. Maybe it means that the antisocial nature of Frosty's music (one of the best elements) will get diluted, eventually, and maddeningly noisy music will be accepted by even the most mainstream listener. That could be bad, I guess. I mean, I used to really like the Stooges. Now they aren't that far from Mission of Burma. They're even touring now too. See? It's all bullshit.

Frosty aren't on tour right now, but To Live and Shave In L.A. are back together and playing shows with Andrew W.K. on drums. More bullshit? I don't even know anymore.