Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009
boys from brutalsville bring ill will
ANTiSEEN
The Carolinas' self-proclaimed "bad-will ambassadors," ANTiSEEN, will perform its brand of pissed-off hard rock at The Basement (819 Main Street) in Myrtle Beach on Friday night.
Jeff Clayton is the barb-wired-wrapped-baseball-bat-toting lead singer, songwriter and co-founder of a not-so-ordinary act that has been scaring and scarring youth for 26 years. "Me and Joe Young, the guitar player, are the only originals," said Clayton of the long-running association. I spoke with him via phone while he was on break from his job in a North Carolina heating and air conditioning distribution center. "The bass player and drummer slots have been a revolving door for most of those years," he laughed. Currently in those positions are Jon Bowman, the band's bassist, and Phil Keller on drums. "We like to call our home-base Charlotte," he said, "even though none of us live there anymore. We're scattered all over North and South Carolina."
ANTiSEEN prides itself in having experienced virtually no musical evolution since its inception. "Our music has been exactly the same for the past 26 years," said Clayton. "Really primitive and raw. Our early influences were Motorhead and The Ramones."
While the music may have stayed true to the band's earliest embracing of metal and punk, Clayton and Young have been prolific songwriters releasing some 50 projects since ANTiSEEN's first vinyl and cassette releases from the mid-1980s. Most of the band's projects have been released and distributed by a long list of indie labels, which have helped the band build its fan base here in the U.S. and around the globe.
The band has toured the world and the Southeast extensively with many visits to Myrtle Beach in the past. "We play one weekend every month and usually go out on a two or three-week tour every year in the spring or fall. We've been all over the world - it's easier to tell you where we haven't been - Australia, Japan or Spain - but pretty much everywhere else. We've played Myrtle Beach many times - since the '80s - The Magic Bus and other places where the buildings probably aren't even standing any more. I guess it's been three or four years since we were last there."
In photos of the band on its Web site (www.antiseen.com), Clayton, who is thoughtful and mild-mannered on the phone, looks like a cross between a bloodied professional wrestler and a redneck chainsaw killer. I wondered if the band had a very dramatic stage show, even in small venues like The Basement. "We won't do any pyro there - Great White pretty much killed that - but we are somewhat theatrical - nothing like KISS or Gwar, though."
Out of the band's extensive discography, and after nearly three decades of touring, they've never scored a bonafide hit, though that seems to be OK with Clayton. "We've never had any [releases] that we've sold 10,000 copies of - our stuff's not that digestible to the masses. If you count [cassettes] CDs, LPs, EPs - we've probably released 50 titles. Mainly Joe and I write the music but the other guys do contribute. We work apart and then bring it together to see how it works. We've had some college radio airplay and we get played on independent stations in Europe."
In reviewing ANTiSEEN's Web site and after talking with Clayton I kept noticing similarities to my favorite band, Spinal Tap.
"We've got tons of album reviews on our Web site and we put them all in - good or bad," said Clayton. "In fact we like the bad ones the most because we're convinced they sell more albums." An un-credited writer from KERRANG!, an internationally respected hard rock music magazine, is excerpted on the band's Web site, as the reviewer writes about a 2001 ANTiSEEN release "The Boys from Brutalsville:" "Four fart-obsessed Yetis" who play "prehistoric punk-schlock," who are "trying to shout empty bourbon bottles full, while stumbling haphazardly about a guitar-filled garage." The poetic prose only a critic could write.
I asked Clayton if in the posting of bad ANTiSEEN reviews he was channeling the "This is Spinal Tap" movie where the mocumentary host played Rob Reiner reads a few cutting and vicious album reviews to the band. "Well it's kind of like that," said Clayton, "but they [Spinal Tap] get all sad when he reads the bad reviews - we get really charge out of it when we get them."
So what's an ANTiSEEN show like? "We ain't preaching no peace and love - we're saying 'stop shoving the bullshit down our throats and let us live our lives the way we want to and we won't bother you.' People will have a good time, and have fun, but, if they come out to The Basement expecting a radio-friendly, MTV-friendly show they're definitely not gonna get it."
Tickets for ANTiSEEN's show ($8) are available at www.myspace.com/thebasementmyrtlebeach or www.myspace.com/brokensoundmyrtlebeach. The Basement at Crazy J's is at 819 Main St., Myrtle Beach. Call 448-2467.
Have a thought, comment or newsworthy item for Weekly Surge Music Notes? Send an email to pgrimshaw@sc.rr.com.