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| November 5, 2002 | |||||
| It's
like that: Jam Master Jay Let's
talk about sex Rolling (the 20-sided die) with
Lil' Pocketknife Return
to a Savage Republic Chapter
two Uneasy
listening Punctum Correct
Techniques 
|
Let's talk about sex
By Jimmy Draper'IT WAS AWFUL !" mock-huffs Hunx, Gravy Train!!!!'s boy-toy extraordinaire, who's in a skintight, hot-pink T-shirt with "Nasty Girls" emblazoned across the chest. "After seeing like a thousand leather daddy butts, I just got nauseous. I like leather daddies, but that was too many – I like 'em five at a time, not five million." It's happy hour at Oakland's White Horse, and the East Bay's raunchiest Casio-rap act is downing whiskey Cokes and mudslides, discussing their gig at the previous weekend's Folsom Street Fair. A near debacle that included malfunctioning keyboards, a missing band member, and an audience that was clearly bewildered by the hilariously sick-shit stage antics, the group's 15-minute set would've been declared an all-out failure by most any other band. Not so for the four early-twenty-somethings in Gravy Train!!!!, who took the performance in stride. "You know, I have fun at every show," Funx, the musical progenitor of the group, says with a shrug. "Once I'm onstage and the shows start, it's like I'm in the Gravy Zone. But the fact that stage dancer Drunx wasn't there put a damper on band morale. We were all really stressed out about it and weren't quite up to par. Plus, we weren't nearly drunk enough." "I had to start drinking at 11 when I woke up!" laments MC Chunx, who donned a giant hamburger hat for the mid-afternoon set. This evening she's wearing a shirt with an iron-on image of her mentor, David Lee Roth. "But it was a good time 'cause we always have a few freaks in the audience. Even though everyone else was just standing around and didn't know how to deal with us, there were three totally crazy people that were total sickos who were like, 'Yes! We love you!' " And as a group that enjoys performing for "the seedy underbelly of music fans," Gravy Train!!!! wouldn't have it any other way. Formed in the summer of 2001 when all four members – Chunx, Drunx, Funx, and Hunx – worked at the same East Bay telemarketing company, Gravy Train!!!! began during an afternoon in front of the boob tube. "One day we were on the couch watching Oprah, and Chunx was making up rhymes about her guy troubles, so I whipped out the keyboard and played some crazy beats," Funx says. "Then Drunx and Hunx heard the songs, and their bodies started moving in all sorts of perverted, gyrating motions." Countless hours of choreography, wardrobe selection, keyboardin', and rhyme writin' followed, and that July, Gravy Train!!!! made their live debut at a Berkeley house show. The response, according to the band, was either love 'em or loathe 'em. "We knew it was gonna be pretty controversial, and there were definitely people turned off and offended by it," Funx continues, describing how the crowd reacted to the group's uproariously pervy, almost-synchronized dance routines and sex-obsessed rhymes. "Some people – like the musicians who are more 'serious' or whatever – didn't take us seriously and thought we were a novelty or a joke or a waste of time, I guess. But we didn't mind that some people didn't like us. We really enjoyed getting looks of disgust – it made us even more set in our perversion." With down 'n' dirty dance moves that make Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted" video look like an elementary school dance recital, it's not hard to understand why the humorless and faint-of-heart might find the band's onstage high jinks off-putting. Over Funx and Hunx's hella catchy, tin-can Casio beats, Chunx spins stories of hardly hung dudez and coochie-crazed ladiez while everyone partakes in some seriously X-rated bump 'n' grind. "There was always a really big drive for it to be performance art – not shock value but really in your face," Funx says about their stage show, which manages to find a remarkably entertaining middle ground between 2 Live Crew and the B-52's. "The original vision was synchronized fly girls with a perverted edge, like weird moves focused on the crotch area." Chunx says the group's hypersexualized performances "attract slutty people, really obsessive people. So if we don't put out onstage, it's not gonna be fair to the people that wanna go see a slutty show that's gonna get 'em horny." So much for the party poopers' accusations that Gravy Train!!!! don't take their job seriously. In October 2001 the group headed into the studio and emerged with the porntastic mini-masterpiece The "Menz" (SPAM). A defiantly simplistic record that owes as much to JJ Fad and L'Trimm as it does to the riot grrrl ethos that technical skills can come second to sheer enthusiasm, the four-song EP might be the catchiest, campiest ode to sexual conquests and the aphrodisiac qualities of hamburgers ever recorded. It might also be the only one. While "Hella Nervous" and "Sippin' 40z" are the obvious, rudimentary dance floor anthems, it's the call 'n' response slapstick of "You Made Me Gay" and "Heart Attack," wherein Chunx gets off on "thoughts of burger patties [and] burger-fucking leather daddies," that have gained the group the most attention. It's silly, goofy, and more than slightly tongue-in-cheek, sure, but the only people who'd call Gravy Train!!!! a gag band are those who consider L'Trimm's "Cars with the Boom" or Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It" to be nothing more than novelties. On Hello, Doctor, their full-length debut due in March on Olympia, Wash.-based Kill Rock Stars, Gravy Train!!!! are bigger, better, and filthier than ever. Thankfully, they aren't abandoning their endearingly amateurish approach. "It's still pretty janky," Funx says. "None of us are very profesh or skillful, but we had more tools, more things to spice up the sound, so that was cool. The songs are just a little more well-rounded, more stimulating – auditorily speaking, that is." Recorded in the "perfect little recording booth" that is Hunx's bedroom closet, the 11-song sexfest was coproduced by Jon Nikki (Prima Donnas, Sarah Dougher) and Ikey Owens (De Facto, ex-Mars Volta). Along with a spruced-up "You Made Me Gay" and "Hella Nervous" making return appearances from the EP, the album's track list includes such soon-to-be classics as "Cottonmouth Blowjob," "Titties Bounce (Catholic School)," "Gutter Butter," the instructional "Pussy Thrust," and "Double Decker Supreme," wherein Hunx and Chunx trade off rhymes as they double-team a guy. It's "Burger Baby," however, that's sure to become Hello, Doctor's insta-crowd fave. On that John Waters-worthy ode to the carnivorous side of life, Chunx is impregnated by a hamburger and must decide whether to keep the baby. "Burger abortion! I don't ask it – I demand it," she shrieks early in the song, before deciding to keep the child. "It's a really touching song, actually," Chunx explains. "See, I get knocked up by this burger, and I'm all pissed 'cause I don't wanna be a freak and give birth to a burger. But then I decide that I love the burger baby, and I'm gonna keep it, so it's all happy ending. It's really sweet." It's also really demented, catchy as fuck, and utterly, utterly hilarious. Not that Hello, Doctor will ever get the band on MTV or mag covers, but Gravy Train!!!! couldn't care less. "The people who 'get it' – if they're sick and horny – they're awesome. That's who counts," Chunx says, before heading to the bar for another whiskey. "Those are the kinda people we wanna hang out with." Hunx adds, "And the people who don't 'get it' – who gives a shit?" Gravy Train play with the Cuts, Dec. 14, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $5. (415) 923-0923. GRAVY TRAIN STAT BOXESName: Funx Name: Chunx Name: Hunx Turnoff: Perm solution Name: Drunx
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| Design by Rhatia Carr |