issue #02 pdf - Razorcake

A SHORT ANATOMY OF FANDOM
How Leatherface and Hot Water Music
helped change the way I listen to music.
What is this I'm writing? Fine question. I'm not too sure. It's a little
too detailed to be a live review, but the following was inspired by the
three dates I got to see Leatherface and Hot Water Music in San Diego,
Pomona, and Hollywood. It got me to thinking, that's all.
I'm not going into this stating that either
band is the end-all, be-all of existence, but
they're in my top ten. What's particularly
great is both bands are still creating, still
churning, still coming out with new and
exciting material. What I do contend is that
both bands have affected me in no small
way; have shifted how I listen to music as a
whole. They maintain purchase in a very
real musical universe that I hold dear, and
continue to strike both mental
and musical chords.
Both bands should be dead.
In December 1993, lead singer
of Leatherface, Frankie Norman
Warsaw Stubbs, to a befuddled
audience and even more
shocked band, announced that
he was quitting. In 1998, at The
Hardback Café, to an estimated
700 people, Hot Water Music
played their "last show." In their
set was a cover by a littleknown
English band,
Leatherface.
Both bands are infinitely stronger
because they didn't give in when it looked
like the only logical conclusion was to quit.
I can relate to that.
Lighten up, Retodd. It's just music.
But it's more than just music. Tell a religious
person it's just an elephant with eight
arms or a bleeding guy nailed to a cross.
Tell a greaser Mopar's just a car. Tell a doctor
that surgery's just a bunch of slicing.
Tell yourself it's just money.
From the back, I can hear someone say,
"But, man, those guys suck. I tried listening
to them, but they did nothing for me." Five
years ago, I would have fought you on it,
tried to explain it away. Now, I could care
less. You see, I've found something empowering,
that rings true to me, and I want to
share it. If you want nothing of it, fine. I'd
love to hear about bands that you dig
beyond "they rule, dude" or "you don't
know anything if you don't worship (fill in
the blank).”
A word of caution. If you're fully convinced
it's all been done before, and better,
either join a historical society, start a reissue
label, or get on the porch and join the
rest of rocking chair critics who don't get
56 out of their seats but haven't
found the off switch to their megaphones of
bitching, either
Neither of these bands go for the easy.
A new rock is being built - a grain at a
time, under extreme weight.
"You're a very small drop in the middle
of a big sea of high and mighty things."
-Leatherface, "Springtime"
Although Leatherface is
from Sunderland, England and
Hot Water Music is from
Gainesville, Florida, both
bands were formed by working
class members, their days
spent doing things they'd rather
not do that caused calluses,
their nights spent in clubs,
sawing away at songs that
came as a direct result of an
attempt to burn in something
new. Leatherface formed in
1988, Hot Water Music in
1994.
The most obvious aspect to both bands'
music is that their voices are gruff. Shouts.
Yells. Burlap tracheas. And if you listen to
the lyrics for more than a minute, there's
sorrow. Honey-drenched, huckleberryscented
sorrow. Knife-licking, tetanus sorrow.
What's not slap-in-the-face obvious is
that both bands exist as wholly unique
enterprises, wholly unique sounds. Sure,
there are predecessors, but just as a sling
shot was the template for the Titan missile,
developments have been made beyond old
comparisons to Jawbreaker (pre-"Dear
You"), "Margin Walker"-era Fugazi, or
Husker Du (in that period between pure
thrash and the album where they don't have
any shoes on).
Well, that, and they're not writing smash
pop hits of the kind the world is used to
hearing, and that both of them have had previously
terrible luck when signing to labels.
(1)
LEATHERFACE
"Like a bowl of flies, we've a very short
life." -Leatherface
In the grand scheme of things, the world
is topsy turvy. I'm sure weirder things have
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY RETODD
happened to Hot Water Music than to have
had a band they admire take the opening
slot for their national tour. Twice. I know it
eats Hot Water Music up to know that if
Leatherface was last on the bill, that a bulk
of HWM's fans would leave before
Leatherface came on. But that's just how it
is.
It's not exactly castor oil. It's not exactly,
"Here's something that tastes bad to make
you feel better." Leatherface's music is like
slowing down a video tape so you can see
how some of Hot Water Music's quicker
magic tricks are done and how they learned
to play for themselves and not just their
audience.
Leatherface isn't an easy first listen. You
can't really shake your fist to them. There
are anthems, but few chants. You can't really
do a gainer off a speaker stack to them.
They're very rumbly. They're almost like a
pop band, but not quite. They're almost like
an experimental band, but not quite. They're
almost like a lot of things, but not quite. It's
that "not quite" that separates them from
being solely great to being... beatable only
by themselves. But all it takes is that one
listen when the gates open up and a little bit
of drool comes off your bottom lip because
you've just been heavily awed when you
should be folding your laundry and thinking
about dinner. It's like figuring out a new
alphabet or a taste that you could never get
your tongue around. It becomes a specific
craving.
I did a lot of thinking based on a simple
question. "Who does Leatherface sound
like?" Every answer I came up with was
simply chrome adornments to a well built
monster of a car. To be sure, there are
bright, silvery flashes of Motorhead
(Frankie sounds like he's singing with a broken
bottle in his mouth), Snuff (complex,
fast, wank-free pop), Wat Tyler (the cover
of "Hops and Barley." Lore has it that
Frankie bought the song from Simon
Tucker for six quid because Simon wanted
to drink.), and fifteen other bands that live
further down in obscurity. Yet, to mistake
the obvious, extraneous, flash pieces for the
dented, well-oiled, and darkened inner
workings of Leatherface's vicious, popping
machine would be a disservice. There's too
much going on to reference them away.