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Flying V for victory >> The Fucking Champs champion prog-rock riffage
Hardly a Vai/Satriani rehash, the roots of the Fucking Champs run all over the place. “We like to listen to a lot of proto-metal, like Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple,” says drummer Tim Soete, “but we also like a lot of krautrock, like Neu and Kraftwerk, as well as a lot of electronic stuff and Steely Dan.” Already possessing the best rock ’n’ roll moniker ever, they raise the bar with some of the best song titles around. For example, “Nebula Ball Rests in a Fantasy Claw,” “Thor Is Like Immortal” and “Crummy Lovers Die in the Grave.” “We’ll come up with the song first and the title will reflect the feeling of the song, but we also have this friend in L.A. who comes up with pages of titles and we’ll pick a couple of those if they are interesting or funny.” Although most of their second record has some of the most mind-scalding harmony guitar playing ever, they do keep things interesting and even dabble in Brian Eno/Robert Fripp territory. “We do get heckled occasionally and a lot of people just conveniently write us off as an Iron Maiden band and don’t really dig any deeper. We really think we are doing something new.” : With Drunk Horse and the Donkeys at Petit Campus tonight, Thursday, June 13, 9pm, $10 |
Was
it
really that long ago that John Lydon was spotted walking up and down
Portobello
Road with “I hate” scrawled over his Pink Floyd shirt? In
this day and age, when punk rock is best suited to selling shoes, it’s
high time for progressive rock to finally crawl out from under the rotten
log where it’s been hiding. Frisco instrumental trio the Fucking
Champs take the prog tendencies of Breadwinner and
Trans Am (with whom they did a split EP), give them a bit of muscle
and serve them up with some of the most skewed time signatures and minor-fifth
harmonies since good ol’ King Crimson.