by JOHNSON CUMMINS

“Whatever you do, don’t call us a new wave band,” says synth player Fritz M. Static as I pull him away from his American Thanksgiving dinner. That’s kind of a hard one, as the Epoxies definitely look like a dollar-store version of Missing Persons, and their tuneful, upbeat punk rock smacks more than just a bit of the glory years of the Rezillos, X Ray Specs, the Buzzcocks and the Undertones—with the odd Devo derailment thrown in for good measure. So if the skinny tie fits...

The turkey and cranberry sauce will just have to wait while Static squirms out of this one. “The term ‘new wave’ was coined by [Sire Records president] Seymour Stein to sell punk rock to the straights in middle America,” he explains. “It was applied to bands like Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, and then went on to describe bands like Steel Pulse and people like Brian Eno. We don’t sound like any of those bands because our main influences come from 1975 to 1981.”

Given such histrionics, it would be a gross misjudgement to simply peg these Portland punkers as just another retro ’80s band. Having said that, it would be safe to state that they have borrowed the blueprint from one of punk’s most unsung bands, the Rezillos, and taken that popular ’70s catchphrase “Fuck art, let’s dance,” gussied it up with properly-placed duct tape and hyper-energized it.

“When we started, there were a lot of really serious bands in Portland, and we wanted to start a really fun band that wasn’t that and wouldn’t take themselves too seriously, because I guess at heart we really are contrarians. Of course, it didn’t work, because instead of people hating us, they ended up liking us pretty quickly. Maybe it was because we are really serious about not taking ourselves too seriously.”

In an effort to stick out from the black-clad, Bush-bashing punkers spoonfed on Discharge, the Epoxies decided to bring their party message home with a host of trials and errors, including misfiring bubble machines and poor costume ideas. “When we started, we wore cardboard boxes with dryer hoses coming out the sides for arms and then found we couldn’t play an instrument in them. Some other poor choices were bundling ourselves in video tape and then having the tape cut us to ribbons, or breaking open glow sticks and rubbing that stuff all over our bodies, only to find out that glow stuff is full of broken glass. Right now, we’ve broken two bubble machines and have to buy a third one.

“Probably our worst on-stage apparatus was a feather-blowing machine, where we hooked a fan up to a tube, and then we were going to break open a feather pillow, put it against the fan and let it blow feathers over the audience. We had everything set up and it came to the part in the show where we started it up. We were all looking at it, then all of a sudden four feathers just drop out two feet from the end. That was actually cooler than if it actually did work.”

With Against Me!, Smoke or Fire and Soviettes at Club Soda on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., $16.50, all ages

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