The Fucking Champs/Drunk Horse, Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco (April 12)
It was metal night at Bottom of the Hill. If you didn't believe it from the crowd's hair length, one look at the opening act confirmed everything. The name of the band was Hammers of Misfortune, and the sound was pure late-night slasher flick material. While the vocals shifted from guttural growls to goth opera howls, I couldn't take my eyes off the bassist. The lone female in the band, her lanky body was poured into a leather jumpsuit with black fins spiking up from her shoulders. As she shredded through the songs, the zipper holding the outfit together kept plunging lower, causing one rock chick to shout, "I can see your nipples! Yeah, baby!" The woman made me want to be an Iron Maiden too.
Headliners the Fucking Champs made the metal kids equally hard, only without the Rocky Horror costumes. The instrumental trio plays with two guitars and a drummer. When they really want to puncture your ears till they bleed, the drummer puts down his sticks and picks up a third guitar, hitting you with a wall of six-stringed screams so loud you think your eyes will start rolling back in your head.
The first time I heard the Fucking Champs was back when they were just called the Champs and my housemate invited them to play my 21st birthday party. They only got through two songs before my neighbor, good old Charlie Tweedle, called the cops on account of the goddamn noise. Tonight we were safe from meddling neighbors, and the noise evoked screams of "Fuck shit up!" from the boozed-up rockers in the back. Bleached blondes flew the devil signs as the band stormed through a set that even put the effects pedal down on a classical composition.
Another Bay Area band, Drunk Horse, was the evening's respite from the pure metal highway. The five-piece fried up Southern rock in bluesy rhythm. Like Zen Guerrilla, they're a brilliant hard rock band versed in too many styles to settle into one musical category. One minute they sound like Thin Lizzy, the next like Lynyrd Skynyrd jamming with the Rolling Stones. They even reached into acid rock to cover Deep Purple's "Bloodsucker."
By closing time, feedback was starting to ring through my ears?along with the bitching from a barfly who wanted it to be known that out of all of us, he was the only one who had truly appreciated the show. Half the crowd had been the typical Bottom of the Hill indie-folks-with-their-hands-shoved-in-their-pockets set, stirring the heckler to yell, "This isn't indie rock," at the passive kids between songs. By the end of the night, he had graduated to yelling, "Fucking posers," at the sullen rockers, calling out, once again, that "Indie rock sucks!"