The band that tyme forgot

Fuzzy recollections from the Gruesomes, now that they done grew some

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

All aboard the way-back machine! Let's travel to a time gone by, when narrow pants, octagonal shades, big round hair and teardrop peace medallions were the now thing! Set the dial for 1966!

Wait--shit, this thing's fucked up! Alright, all aboard for a time gone by, when narrow pants, octagonal shades, big round hair and teardrop peace medallions were the now thing! Set the dial for 1986, when Montreal's own Gruesomes were at the forefront of the garage rock revival, punishing their vintage guitars at Deja Voodoo barbecues and packing college concert halls across the nation!

Fuck! This way-back machine is a dud! I knew I shouldn't be buying time travel technology off Russian mafia types. Look, let's just be here now, in the age of Pokémon, Playstation and... hey, is that a new Gruesomes album?

That's right, the garage goofs are back, minus the foolish haircuts, cramming their new CD Cave-in! (on Stomp offshoot Tyrant Records) with yummy riffs and snotty vocals, just like in the old days. The Mirror rounded up Bobby Beaton (guitar, vocals, lame jokes), Gerry Alvarez (guitar, girls), John Davis (bass, crabbiness) and drummer John Knoll for a relaxed round of that-was-then, this-is-now:



Mirror: What was the space of time that elapsed between the last farewell show, and the idea of this new album popping up?

John Davis: It was nine years, but John didn't play at the final shows, so for this lineup, it's a full 10 years. I thought John was in Czechoslovakia, so we didn't even bother trying to contact him. We just hired another drummer. But he was in town the whole time!

John Knoll: Would a phone call have killed you?

M: So why the new disc?

Bobby Beaton: It started because our friends at Stomp wanted to put out a Gruesomes greatest hits package. We realized it would be a massive undertaking, digging up old tapes, talking to the old label people. We thought we could probably record a whole new album quicker and easier.

Gerry Alvarez: It was a good break. It let us see the Gruesomes in a different way, what the sound is, what we're all about. Our new record is really 100% Gruesomes.

M: By the time you'd broken up, you'd had a big influence on Montreal's indie rock scene...

GA: There were the Cryptics and the Sherlocks here in Montreal, but all the big bands, the Chesterfield Kings and the Fuzztones, that big movement we were part of, had pretty much died down by that point. We were one of the only ones left.

BB: I think the Cryptics wanted to go back to garage. See, by the end, we weren't playing that three-chord punky stuff anymore. We were playing R&B, blues and pop-influenced stuff. The Cryptics felt that we weren't playing that tough, mean garage stuff anymore.

JK: There would be a vacuum in the world of fuzz music, if one of the bands wasn't playing it anymore. Nature abhors a vacuum, so someone had to step in and fill the natural void left in the fuzz scene.



Bowlhead battalions

M: So where did the new songs come from?

JD: From our "myndes"--with a Y, and an E at the end.

BB: These songs came from the heart, man! Kids are getting put down because they have the long hair, Beatle boots and paisley shirts! You walk down the street and the Man's cutting you down because you can't dress the way you want! So we wrote these songs to say, hey, it's cool to be different, and don't be like the squares!

JD: Yeah, it's a real crying shame--spelled with a Y.

BB: (all hush-hush) Don't make fun of the garage scene, you'll alienate the bowlheads!

M: What was that? Could you repeat that?

BB: Um, uh... just kidding!

JD: Bowlheads. Those mushroom heads.

BB: The kids who all looked like Austin Powers long before the movies came out.

GA: They were pretty hip.

BB: Every city in the world has a bunch of people who are really into garage music, and dress it, with the pointy boots and the bowlcuts. They will come to shows dressed like that, and dance the frug and the mashed potato off in the corner, and have a blast, a '60s night, every time the Gruesomes would play.

JK: They were an element at every show, but I found that in the States it was more prevalent. We would be playing to the one little tribe, because the audience was so fragmented.

BB: The reason being, nobody outside the garage community knew us down there. In Canada, we'd been playing universities and stuff.

JD: Those people would always be bringing us stuff, like tapes of obscure songs they thought we should cover.

GA: One thing about those bowlheads is, they knew their music and their vinyl.

JK: Should I tell the coin story?

JD: That's the height of absolute '60s-obsession geekness.

JK: We were playing Washington, D.C., back in '88, and they were taking a collection for gas money. The show had sold poorly--it was a bunch of people sitting on milk crates in a warehouse. So this kid comes up to us, he's got the bowlcut and the narrow tie, and he goes, "Here's some change for you guys. Check the dates on the quarters, man!" Perfectly polished, shiny 1966 coins.

BB: He only accepted money dated 1966.

JK: That's how far it went with some of these guys. They really needed to go to a hockey game or something. They're way too stuck in their little '60s thing.

JD: But they were our diehard fans.



The other Glass Tiger

M: I'm more interested in the regular college kids, what today would be phat-pants kids in Korn T-shirts, who would come see you guys.

JK: When I look at it now, it's so much easier to understand how we could fill rooms across Canada. I think people were so hard up for guitar music in the late '80s. The bands you could go see were like, some guy with bad hair playing a synthesizer.

BB: People tend to forget that before Nirvana, in 1990, people just did not go see bands that were just guys playing loud, trashy guitars.

JK: I remember some guy in Sudbury, saying how great we were, and we were like, "Yeah, yeah." He goes, "No, you don't get it. There's two shows a year here--you guys and Glass Tiger." Nothing summarizes the '80s like that.

BB: That shocks me, to be called an '80s band! We thought '80s music sucked--because we were living with it! Junior, Tina Turner, Hall & Oates... What it was, though, was we presented this easy image that people could pick up on very quickly, which allowed us to play bigger and bigger shows. But once they were out there, I think they just liked us because we were goofy on stage and acted like jerks.

JD: I don't think those kids knew who the songs we covered were by. I don't think they even bought the albums. They just came out because they knew a Gruesomes show was a good time. They just wanted to get drunk and laugh at our lame jokes.

JK: That's something else that was, at the time, an alternative in the true sense of the word. A band that was self-deprecating, funny...

All: And non-political!

JD: The band before us would be like, "This is a song about apartheid! We're against it!" Yeah, no kidding!

BB: Then we'd go up and say, "This is a song from the Flintstones!" And everyone goes crazy! The world was so much more P.C. back then, though--the height of campus P.C. mentality. We used to get blasted because our songs were so-called sexist. "Yeah, baby, you're no good." We were blasted for being jerks.

M: Did you guys get a lot of grief for that?

BB: Now and then. Campus papers used to give us bad reviews and slag us...

JD: Because we sucked.

BB: Yeah, and because we were teenage jerks, yelling about being mad at our girlfriends.



Euros seeking trash

M: Ever get over to Europe?

JD: Yeah, but not with these bozos!

BB: No, but we sold as many records in Europe as we did here!

M: There's the question: how do you build a fan base in a place you've never even been to?

BB: The international cult of garage music!

JK: They were actively looking for these things. They had a little network. Thinking of it now, pre-Internet and everything, they did a pretty good job!

JD: Speaking of which, all the mail we get at our Web site, www...

All: Gruesomes dot com!

JD: ...is from Europe, from Spain, Greece, Italy, England, everywhere. None of it's from Canada.

GA: The weirdest thing is, it's all from people who've never seen us. I can't imagine someone digging the Gruesomes without seeing the live show...

JD: And knowing us personally.

M: I'd figure the mail would all be from thirtysomethings, people who saw you back when. But it's all from kids?

GA: In Toronto, I met this girl who was 21, saying, "I'm so happy to see you guys! I've heard about you my whole life, and now I get to see you!"

JD: Then the cops arrived.

JK: At the shows we've done so far, that's pretty much everyone I've spoken to. The fact is, people our age don't go to shows.

M: But they used to...

JK: They used to, and a few still do. But most of them were like, "Aw, I just missed you last time around, I've got all the records..."

BB: You know why that is? When we broke up, vinyl disappeared. Our records are gone forever. So I figure that if the Gruesomes had a high profile, the name carried on, but the music didn't. It just died, because nobody could ever hear it! It's just collector jerks on the Internet, selling the records for... how much are we asking again?

JD: Sorry, I don't have them up on the Net yet.

BB: Yeah! Kids! Don't get ripped off by collectors! Get ripped off by us!



"Getting" the Gruesomes

M: So how's the reaction been, so far? I heard you guys demolished the Horseshoe in Toronto at your debut reunion show there a couple of months back.

GA: We broke their all-time attendance record, and the beer sales...

BB: Yeah, and the audience had a few drinks, too!

JD: That was amazing. I walked past with a friend the night before, and she asked how I could know for sure the show wouldn't bomb. The thought never even occurred to me, but at the same time, I didn't think it would do as well as it did. People went nuts, man.

BB: Don't forget, we've always been bigger in Toronto than Montreal.

M: Why's that?

GA: The language thing. Francophones have their own scene, their own bands...

BB: Toronto is a city full of nerdy, anglo jerks like us. So, any time we crack dumb jokes on stage, or make cultural references, it's totally Toronto. They always "got" the Gruesomes, understood what we were about.

M: What about the West Coast?

GA: We were always big there.

JD: You'd be hard-pressed to find any band doing grungy guitar rock in B.C. that doesn't cite the Gruesomes as an influence.

GA: We started off a lot of bands out there, like the Evaporators, the Smugglers...

BB: And you know where the Smugglers are right at this moment? Japan. Grant Lawrence saw the Gruesomes as a young kid, went home and immediately started the Smugglers. Now he's touring Japan--and we're sitting here, talking to the Mirror. :