by JOHNSON CUMMINS

It's 5 a.m. and I'm sitting in the Plateau digs of Jerk Appeal's singer Ted Minette, along with guitarist Curt Gove. Minette has just regaled us with his tale of how he shit his pants yesterday. Sadly, his "fart surprise" was not a result of hearing the news of being picked as one of this year's noisemakers but a wrong choice on Burger King's menu. With scatological disasters still dancing in our heads, Minette and Gove give me a sneak preview of the new album - and what a scorching punker it is. No-frills punk rock, played by a bunch of hockey-lovin' punks who know what they're doing and obviously love doing it.

In case Gove's thick Brooklynese isn't a tip-off, Minette and Gove are recent transplants from NYC. "Montreal is way different from New York," say Gove. "If you're not a good band, a Montreal audience will let you know. In New York it doesn't matter if you're good or not, it's how cool you are. Here, there are no scene guys or cool guys, you either rock or you don't. Which is good because we're definitely not cool guys."

Minette agrees and adds, "Both the music fans and hockey fans are like that here."

Gove is a notorious figure, playing with NYC's gutter punks L.E.S. Stitches and, more recently, street-punk kings U.S. Bombs. Despite holding down two gigs, Gove promises that Jerk Appeal is hardly a side project. "We love what we do and we're really proud of it. I really like playing with the Bombs but we are a good enough band that we don't need to ride on U.S. Bombs' coattails. We are a real band."

A seven-inch is coming out in the next couple of months and a track on a comp from Disaster Records (owned by Duane Peters, singer of U.S. Bombs) and the shopping-around process for the album will begin in the new year.

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