Music

ERIC BAUER IS a goddamn evil genius, and this city's weirdo music community would be dead without him. There recently was talk of him moving to that pit of hell, New York City, for good, and all through "the scene" rippled a major feeling of abandonment and fear of the future. What would happen without Bauer here? Lameness. Lameness would prevail. Not that it hasn't already in spite of his contribution, but that's an article the SF Weekly will probably run next week.

What has been Bauer's contribution? Well, he started Crack: We Are Rock, for one. The band came out of "Crack" T-shirts – made as part of his multimedia merchandise business and label Fcute (short for Future Cute or Fucking Cute) – and went through innumerable changes before hitting on the death drug disco they nail these days, without him (he left the group earlier this year). Among his other bands, Bauer has been a part of DJ Shitbird and the Ultimate Party Machine (also a shirt before it became a band), Aerobics King (a group fronted by an insane ballet dancer), and totally demented blues rockers Big Techno Werewolves, as well as Dessert and MindWave, a dancehall group with Crack's Jason Stamberger, Erase Errata's Bianca and Eli, and Gold Chains on vocals. Fcute has also put out 12-inches by Crack: WAR and Wolf Eyes; releases by Aerobics King, Metalux, and Angelblood are in the works.

Bauer's bands work in an aesthetic that, at times, seems like a lost art – meaning there's a level of not so much incompetence as of genuine unprofessionalism. Maybe in the olden days it was called DIY, and in the indie days it was described as lo-fi, and then the talent-free rosters of Bulb Records and BlackJack Records emerged. Today people in bands seem to be really good at playing their instruments, which can be fun and has its place. But to see Bauer's Big Techno Werewolves careening through some totally fucked marriage of Delta blues, rock 'n' roll, and ugly noises is a thing of beauty. Crack was the same way in the beginning. And DJ Shitbird was about the most pointlessly chaotic band in San Francisco. It was like a circus.

Bauer's explanation for the chaos is interesting. "When it comes to the music, it's totally improvised," he says. "Even in practice, I never play the same thing twice. Everybody cuts me slack there, like, 'Don't worry. When we play live, Eric will do fine.' It doesn't really come through until I get in front of people. I don't put much thought into the music. It just comes out. I put more thought behind the concept or idea of what I want to do, and then I go backwards."

Judging from Bauer's live performances, this is quite true. With Big Techno Werewolves, things are almost always one second away from total disaster. Bauer's vocals are incoherent and blast through with sublanguage pain.

Big Techno bandmate Petey Dammit explains: "All his stuff is pretty fuckin' out there. Especially for not knowing how to play, he seems to pull it together immensely well – even when he's singing. Even when he doesn't know the words, the words just come out." (Mike McGuirk)