by JOHNSON CUMMINS

M.O.T.O. could be one of the best pop-fuelled punk rawk bands you’ve never heard. Quick, to the point, catchy as hell and rarely ever reaching out to the elusive fourth chord—in other words, power pop done to perfection.

M.O.T.O.’s main man has always been songwriter/singer/guitarist Paul Caporino, who started putting out cassette-only releases of his four-track recordings in 1985. Here’s the facts: Caporino got a taste for hitting the stage in 1976 when he played guitar—and blow-dried his hair to windswept curls—in what has to be one of the worst-named bands ever, Blaise (pronounced “blaze”), and bored audiences senseless with renditions of ’70s FM-radio fodder like “Still the One” by Orleans and “You Are the Woman” by Firefall. Thankfully, Caporino got swept up by the punk explosion in 1979, began chiselling out two-and-a-half-minute pop punk gems and hasn’t looked back since.

So, with almost 1,000 songs released in various formats and a small yet rabid fanbase, why hasn’t M.O.T.O. moved beyond cult status? Perhaps because outside of writing songs, Caporino seems to not give a toss about anything else.

When I call him at his Chicago apartment at our allotted interview time, Caporino takes almost 10 minutes to awake from his nap and come to the phone. Despite his attempts to reschedule the interview so he can continue sawing logs, my deadline prevails.

“Sorry, I’m just really tired,” yawns Caporino. “I just got back from work at the record store and Christmas season is just nuts. My brain doesn’t seem to be sloshing as quick as I would like it right now.”

Caporino’s juvenile, lowbrow lyrics about getting drunk, breaking up with girls, dick jokes and falling asleep listening to jazz piano on the radio seem, at least upon first listen, to be merely tossed off as an afterthought. When wrapped around his infectious melodies, though, they prove to be perfect bedfellows to his lo-fi sound.

Take the song “Crystalize my Penis,” from 1988. “It’s a pretty stupid song that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” admits Caporino. “My friend left town and gave me this cat and told me that if I didn’t feed it wet cat food once a week, the cat’s dick would crystalize and he wouldn’t be able to urinate. I just kinda write these lyrics that make me laugh.”

Slumber interruptus may contribute to the mid-sentence pauses from the pop genius on the other end of the line, but that aside, you can tell he’s simply more comfortable letting his songs do most of the talking.

Reaching through the thick fog of grogginess, Caporino proves to be just as stymied as anybody as to why M.O.T.O. has been relegated to cult status for so long. Perhaps it’s his obvious disinterest towards talking about himself, which permeates our interview, that is the most telling. “I don’t know why we aren’t bigger. I guess we haven’t really toured much in the past. I guess we’ve been at this for a while, so people are starting to show up to the shows, and it’s, uh… Sorry, what was the question again?”

With Brutal Knights, Nymphets and the Confusers at Quai des Brûmes on Friday, Dec. 9, 9 p.m., $8

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