Sweethearts of the grindhouse

>> The budget punk of Detroit's Gore Gore Girls

By JOHNSON CUMMINS

 If you've spun the radio dial recently you will hear pop-punk sitting comfortably alongside Aerosmith power ballads and boy band fluff. The major labels aren't the only ones putting a fresh coat of gloss on punk, either. It seems that indie punk labels like Victory, Honest Dons and Epitaph have upped their production values in the name of moving units.

 Then there's Detroit's Gore Gore Girls, who play punk rock with a heavy leaning towards '60s girl groups but make sure to keep the meters in the red at all times. Like most of the stuff coming out of Jim Diamond's Ghetto Recorders studio, this is primal garage rock that could peel paint at the right volume. They take their name from a gem by one of the B-movie's greatest mavericks, Hershell Gordon Lewis. A closer look reveals that the Gore Gore Girls have pilfered more than just a name from the Hersh. On their Strange Girls record, production values are thrown out the window in favour of a shoestring budget and primitive power.

 "Lo-fi is the only thing we know," explains guitarist Amy Surdu. "I really like the production values of Lewis's movies. I think that we are just fascinated with that time period. We just love that garage type of sound."

 It seems that everything coming out of Detroit now is either thrusting techno to new heights or taking fuzz-driven garage back to its original, distorted dimensions. The Gore Gore Girls are just one of many bands that make up the garage explosion happening in Detroit right now. "I get asked the 'why is the Detroit garage scene thing is so great' thing all of the time. There's a lot of crazy people making crazy music here but that has always been around and the garage punk scene is really small, so everybody knows each other."

 But why Detroit? History? Weather? Something in the tap water? "Hmmm," muses Surdu, "the only thing I can think of is that Detroit has a high rate of alcoholism, and that apparently the state of Michigan consumes more potato chips than anywhere else in the nation." :
 

With the Swinging Neckbreakers at Cafe Campus on Thursday, July 12, 9pm, $9