#52: Refrigerator snot
Post Sex Nachos; Suck Lords; Tiny Bit of Giant’s Blood; Sophiaaaahjkl;8901; Poptropicaslutz!
Post Sex Nachos
Maybe you find the idea of post-sex nachos off-putting, but a) it’s probably (?) less unhealthy than cigarettes after sex, and b) pre-sex nachos sound way worse to me. Imagine cheese-flavored food product, pickled jalapeños, some questionable ground beef, and God knows what else lurching around your stomach while you get down to business. No thanks. I also like to imagine someone having sex while high and thinking the whole time, “This is fun, but I’m gonna eat the shit out of some nachos afterward.”
So kudos to this Columbia, Missouri-bred quintet—they recently decamped for Nashville—for all the possibilities their name conjures. (Related: M-I-Z!) Following a successful Indiegogo, they’re currently undertaking “the bold, arduous task of becoming YOUR second favorite boyband this summer” on tour. Sixty-two backers raised more than $5,000, which should get them about three tanks of gas. TOPICAL JOKE!
Suck Lords
At first I was impressed how this Portland hardcore band has zero presence online—even the Bandcamps with their music are for record labels, not Suck Lords. Then I found a YouTube video of their final show, and the “no web presence” thing made a lot more sense. But the chyron at the beginning says it was Suck Lords’ final show “for now,” and the guitarist prefaced their first song by saying, “It’s our last show—the first of many.” That was almost three years ago, so maybe it stuck?
Regardless, you can’t argue the simple beauty of the name Suck Lords. While I doubt they were the first to employ it, did any of those hypothetical predecessors have songs called “LSDoomsday” or “Refrigerator Snot”? I think not. These songs are the logical artistic reaction to life in PDX, per their bio:
In the city of No-Sales-Tax the daily minutia of constant-development and self-automated Kombucha stores is enough to make one say “fuck it” and just play ripping fast hardcore all-day, all-night, all-their-life.
As far as I can tell, Automated Kombucha Store is available for a band name. May I also recommend Refrigerator Snot?
Tiny Bit of Giant’s Blood
This “glam punk heavy rock product from the dark side of Chicago” says the name also describes “a lion on stimulants / a velvet jumper two sizes too small / a blast of radiant light that will render you temporarily immortal / a mysterious dark liquid that wants very much to be pulsating inside of you.”
I can’t speak to the rest, but the dark liquid is very much a real thing available for sale on their Bandcamp. What’s in it? Who knows! Rest assured “it is as genuine as it was humanely (and giantly) procured.”
Maybe think of it as bootleg Game of Thrones merch? The the band tells the, ugh, Moshville Times, this about their name: “We wanted something that felt ten feet tall to represent the music and the attitude. We also liked the acronym, TBGB, and there was a little bit of Hodor in it, if you know the reference.”
Attitude is a big part of TBGB, from their “middle-age glam” look to the shit-talking lyrics in “Mick Jagger Carries My Boots,” from 2020’s Gigantosaur. It calls out Jagger, David Gilmour, Paul McCartney, and Brian Wilson for being old and past their prime (pot, kettle), via some lyrics that can be charitably described as “clumsy.” For example:
Brian Wilson can’t sing anymore
And I sure do adore but I also abhor it
When they wheel you onto the festival stage
To see you I would not pay minimum wage
Take that, mentally unstable pop genius! As for Sir Paul?
Paul McCartney the songs you write now are terrible
How can you be the same person who wrote “Yesterday”?
I know it’s not today
But let’s just say you’d be hard pressed to play In the subway
He’s performing in front of more than 200,000 people at the Glastonbury Festival tonight.
Sophiaaaahjkl;8901
Sometimes it’s fun to imagine a person teleporting from 100 years ago and trying to process something like Sophiaaaahjkl;8901, a “glitch/electronic musician and visual artist” hailing from Long Beach, California. This Bandcamp header alone is like a Technicolor seizure:
Speaking of seizures, I imagine throwing some noise-canceling headphones on this poor sap and playing one of the 21 tracks from Sophiaaaahjkl;8901’s Dawn of the Dachshund—say, “My Whole Life is Different Now; and not Even in a Way That’s Poetic.”
I imagine explaining to this bewildered person that they’re hearing music, not malfunctioning equipment. Then I imagine their putting the muzzle of the revolver I’m holding in my hand for some reason (time travel protection?) up to their temple and begging me to pull the trigger so they don’t spend another moment in our dystopia. (Fair!)
I don’t say this to mock Sophiaaaahjkl;8901 or their art—just that their music is such discordant, distorted semi-impenetrable chaos that it defies easy explanation, even to someone from 2022. At least some of the song titles are funny, though: “I’ve Never Been to an Anime Con, and Now I Never Will,” “A Fair Exchange of Smoke for Insect Vomit,” “Losing a $20 Bet to the Shadow Entity That Lives in My Upstairs Bathroom,” and, naturally, “I’m on My Period!!!”
Poptropicaslutz!
Poptropica is an online role-playing game that’s been around since 2007, but didn’t show up on my radar until 2016 or so, when my daughter became obsessed with a graphic novel series based on the game (which she’s never played). Because I came to it through that side door, I still think of Poptropica as a book, which isn’t that weird, because it’s the creation of Jeff Kinney, who writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. (We’re fans of that too.)
While the game’s website promises kids can (safely) connect with friends, play epic adventures, and adopt their own pets, apparently there are also slutz? (Sorry, slutz!) Poptropicaslutz! is a self-described “hyper-punk” duo—apparently a combination of “pop-punk” and “hyper-pop,” because the latter is obviously a real thing and not press release filler—consisting of high school pals who started playing music during lockdown. They somehow landed a deal with iconic punk label Epitaph Records, who gushes that “poptropicaslutz! is an authentic emo-pop group for generation Z.”
Sometimes the time traveler trying to make sense of contemporary music is me.
POST-SCRIPTS
This is so very late. I apologize. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.
Z-O-U! I presume Post Sex Nachos go or went to my alma mater, the great University of Missouri, located in one of the greatest college towns, Columbia, Missouri. There’s a reason my wife—whom I met there—and I refer to it as “the womb.” I appreciated seeing some of the old sights in the video for “Holdin’ onto You.”
The bonus edition of BNB is coming in a couple of days, Pride themed and arriving just in time for July. (D’oh.) It features special appearances by BNB faves Middle Aged Queers and more!
VIRGINITY ROCKS