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BY JOHN GRAHAM
242-2122, EXT. 312
The first thing everyone notices about the Murder City Devils is their clothes. Or, more specifically, the clothes of singer Spencer Moody: rumpled button-down Oxford and tortoise-shell glasses, ill-fitting slacks and scuffed-but-sensible shoes. The group's other members are the type of tattooed, black-clad ruffians usually seen in some smoky cocktail bar, but Moody looks like he's studying to pass the bar exam instead. "It's such an unconscious thing," says the Bellevue-bred Moody, 22, about his dress sense, calling the media's fashion fascination
"ridiculous." And the second the Devils ascend to the stage and rip into a soul-spearing rocker, onlookers who'd joke about honor-roll-this or math-geek-that bite their tongues. As the other band members--Dann Gallucci (guitar/keyboards), Nate Manny (guitar), Derek Fudesco (bass/keyboards) and Coady Willis (drums)--careen around with kinetic energy, Moody's unassuming appearance becomes twisted into a spastic mass of flesh, cloth and microphone cords. Suddenly, when he sings that his "heroes have always been flunkies and drunk," it all makes sense. Rock 'n' roll is reborn again, the phoenix rising to torch non-believers with a fiery touch. When ex-members ofthe Unabombers, Death Wish Kids and Area 51 came together in 1996, they weren't thinking about igniting a stagnant scene. They just wanted to get electric, to plug in and rock out. That's what they did, and Seattle took notice. Soon they were opening for national acts and gaining notoriety for their furious, ranting performances. If the crowd didn't want
to respond, Moody's anti-apathy maledictions made sure they did. Eventually Sub Pop chose Murder City Devils as the inaugural act on its new offshoot; the band was even allowed to name the label (Die Young Stay Pretty, after a line from Gallucci's favorite Blondie song). When the self-titled release arrived in '97, it may not have broken new ground historically, but it didn't merely dig up the bodies of old punks and trot around in their skins for a while, either. The influences are obvious--Iggy and the Stooges, Johnny Thunders, Dead Boys--but don't forget, those acts had their own lineage to live up to. Iggy was inspired in part by Jim Morrison, while Thunders' New York Dolls worshiped the Stones. Moody insists the band is not trying to cop someone else's attitude. "Sometimes, in consciously or unconsciously trying to imitate other people, you come up with something that's yours," he says. He understands that this may lead to some criticism, but adds that the Devils are not capable of simply "imitating any of those people, so it's gonna come out as something new." It's all cynical bickering anyway. The album is a solid chunk of vintage punk that strays far enough from formula to guarantee an attentive audience. When organs shimmy into earshot, the music almost seems closer to the Animals than anything Stiv Bators might've written. (Listening to the disc's slow, almost ballad-esque closer, "Tell You Brother," one notes similarities to "House of the Rising Sun," not "Sonic Reducer.") Still, if there's one undeniably punk aspect of the Devils' music, it's their attraction to--and reflection of--the damaged messiahs of music and literature. In addition to Iggy and Stiv, Moody lists Burroughs, Bukowski, Jean Genet and Steven Jesse Bernstein as favorites. "What's important to me is that the types of people I've always looked up to are the ones who did things outside of the normal way," he explains. "The famous people I've admired in the past, or been influenced by, it seems like they're more the degenerate portion of our society. I believe in the idea that you don't need outside sources to validate what you do. Like rock 'n' roll--in the beginning it wasn't 'valid' because society as a whole didn't think it was a legitimate art form. They did it because it felt natural for them to do. Everything good starts out that way." There is an apparent pitfall to such anti-hero worship, though--one that Moody readily recognizes: Blindly self-destructive behavior is not just unglamorous, it's a waste of life. He acknowledges that his choice of role models is a subjective perspective, not an authoritative statement of purpose. "The thing that's weird about this and sometimes poses problems in my ability to express myself is: what's important to me is that what I sing is true when I sing it," Moody says. "It doesn't have to actually be The Truth. I'm creating something that's honest, but just because it's honest doesn't mean it's The Truth. "It kind of bothers me sometimes because I don't know how people are gonna take it when they listen to it," he says of the music. "But it doesn't really matter because I have to speak what I really think.... People shouldn't take anything I say at necessarily face value, but they should believe the emotion of it." |
