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THE FORMULA
Atlanta's Black Lips have been playing their dirty blend of Sixties pop and rockabilly punk since middle school, when they all used to skateboard together and grillz-sporting guitarist Ian St. Pe (the band's eldest member at 25) would buy his bandmates beer and cigarettes. By 1999, bassist/vocalist Jared Swilley and guitarists/vocalist Cole Alexander had been kicked out of high school for what Swilley calls "victimless crimes" like smoking cigarettes, and the whole band was living in an ex-frat house on the Georgia Tech campus. They whiled away their days playing music and practicing for their future lives as rock stars by tossing TVs off the roof of the house during daylight hours and playing music until dawn. In 2001, the Lips got enough money together from their respective jobs at a local skid row diner to book their own tour, and they've been on the road ever since. "We've been on tour for seven years," Swilley says. "It's not that hard. Hard for me is having to work nine to five at the diner."
SOUND The Black Lips have coined their own term, "Flower Punk," to describe the cacophony of distorted pop that comes out of their amps. "I like to mix wimpy stuff with tough stuff," Swilley explains, citing the influences of early GG Allin, the Germs, and Sixties girl groups as serious inspiration. "We're too punk to be hippie and too hippie to be punk -- it's a nice middle ground."
SCAT ROCK: With the recent release of their Vice Records debut Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo -- a live disc that also functions as a greatest hits comp -- the Black Lips have become THE band to namedrop at loft parties in Brooklyn. But for these four southern marauders, the only thing that's changed in the last year is the fact that they've quit playing guitar with their penises. "We stopped doing that," Swilley says of the pissing-in-their-own-mouths, making out with each other, puke-riddled stage shows the band used to be known for. "We did it in the beginning to make up for a lack of musicianship and because we were playing tiny bars for twenty people so it was more just like a drunk party. We don?t want to be circus performers because the songs are better than that. You can only go so far before you have to strap dynamite around you and blow yourself up on stage."
MUST-HAVE TRACK: On the sock hop-ready gem "Dirty Hands," the Lips display their uncanny ability to merge classic Motown melody and song structure with the raunchy looseness of rockabilly. It's "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for greasers.
WHERE TO HEAR IT: Everywhere. The Black Lips have released four albums (three before signing to Vice) all of which are available on iTunes. In September the band will release an as-of-yet untitled new album, which was recorded in some guy's home studio in Atlanta.
SEE THEM NOW: Watch the Black Lips indulge in a series of toilet confessionals in which they tell embarrassing stories about one another from the comfort of the bathroom backstage at New York's Bowery Ballroom.
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