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The Showcase Showdown were a super fast pogo punk
band from Boston, USA featuring Ping Pong (vox) Clothery
(Git) Victoria (bass) and Chez Nips (Drums)
and were formed in 1993. They have released 9 singles and
two albums, we did their last and best album 'Permanent
Stains' in 1999.
They got in touch with us because they loved one of our
bands 'Armitage Shanks' and there was to be a split
single with the two of them but it never happened.
Anyway it's a fucking great album as long as you're not
from Norway.
They split in 2000 and some of them arte now in a band
called SPITZZ (www.spitzz.com).
Here's an interview from there web site by Carly Carioli
in the Boston Phoenix:
'One sort of has to go looking for the Showcase Showdown;
at times in their six-year history, they have seemed like
a band hiding in plain sight. You might catch a passing
glimpse of them: a mysterious seven-inch single in a record
bin; a patch safety-pinned to the jacket of some suburban
punk kid; in the gutter, a photocopied flyer for a show
that took place two weeks ago at some VFW hall. You might
go looking for them and even then they might not be found.
Last month, the Showcase Showdown released their
second full-length album, Permanent Stains, on Damaged
Goods, a British label specializing in a brand of punk
rock that cleaves tightly to the style as it was established
in New York and London circa 1976-'77 -- eschewing such
showroom extras as the style-conscious, pop-inflected glitz
of skate punk or the heavyweight metallic gloss of hardcore.
The Showcase Showdown formed in 1993, united by their
mutual dislikes. "We all hate the Beatles," says
guitarist Tom Cloherty, "we all hate the
Beach Boys, and we all can't stand '80s metal and can
see no reason for it to come back." That same year
they made a few unsuccessful stabs at Boston's club scene,
slogging it out at the Midway Cafe, T.T. the Bear's Place,
and the now-defunct Club 3. They also released their first
seven-inch single, which garnered a favorable review in
the punk-rock bible, Maximum Rock n Roll. Although
the members of the Showcase Showdown don't look like
your typical gutter punks ("We look more like accountants,"
Cloherty warned me before we met), that review helped
them gain entrance to a nationwide network of appreciative
crust-punk loyalists. An early show soon thereafter, with
the Connecticut punk band the Pist, drew an enthusiastic
response. "A hundred and seventy-five people came out
of nowhere to see us," recalls bassist Victoria
Arthur. "We didn't know we had fans. It was our
first all-ages show, and then it just took off from there."
Since that gig, the Showcase Showdown have toured
the country numerous times; traveled, as guests of the Portuguese
punk/garage band the Tedio Boys, to Spain and Portugal;
and issued nine singles, including a karaoke disc and a
holiday seven-inch entitled "Merry Christmas, I
Fucked Your Snowman" -- while remaining all but
invisible here. They might make an appearance in Boston
to open up for a band they've met on the road -- say, the
New Bomb Turks, or Blanks 77 -- or to support
an actual first-wave British punk band (as they will this
Wednesday, August 11, with Chelsea at the Middle
East). But with all-ages shows an increasing rarity, the
Showcase Showdown appear almost exclusively out of
town, and outside of the punk faithful they are virtually
unknown. I meet them -- Cloherty, Arthur,
the singer (who calls himself Ping-Pong), and the
drummer (who is going by the name Chez-Nips) -- at
the Silhouette Lounge in Allston. Before I can hazard a
question, Ping-Pong has one for me that seems as
telling as any of the answers they give. "So, how did
you find us?"
He says this with half a smile -- as if with a certain
amount of pride and a dash of dread, like a fugitive who
has stepped into a new life and, years later, is confronted
at his front door by the law. "The average Phoenix
reader," he continues, "would have absolutely
no idea who we are. So we're definitely outside the loop.
And it's really because nobody's invited us in." He
laughs. "I mean, we've been underground for a long
time. And it's getting really dark and damp in here and
I'd like to come out."
Although their collective musical interests range from
'60s European pop to English novelty singles, the Showcase
Showdown hew pretty close to punk's party line. They
do it the old-fashioned way: loud, fast, snotty. Cloherty
praises the new album as being "more thoroughly obnoxious
than our last album -- and I mean that in the best sense."
It helps that Ping-Pong is a vocal dead ringer for
Johnny Rotten, with an audible dose of Jello Biafra
thrown in -- the latter exacerbated by a flair for lyrics
inspired by the same clever yippie confluence of political
agitation and politically incorrect baiting that infused
the Dead Kennedys' "Let's Lynch the Landlord"
and "Holiday in Cambodia." I venture that
they must get these comparisons quite often. "Beats
being compared to Sebadoh," says Cloherty.
"I think it's true, but there's gotta be a million
bands that sound like the Dead Kennedys and the Sex
Pistols."
So it's more nuanced than that? "Right," he answers.
"We probably sound more like other bands that sound
like those bands than those bands themselves. But that's
cool -- they're good bands. It's also that Ping-Pong's
kind of singing -- that higher-pitched punk-rock singing
-- is so dead. Most punk bands sound like Bruce Springsteen
vocally, they're deep and gruff. Or they're trying to be
like Joe Strummer. And since we're not like that,
there aren't many things to compare us to." "I
only do what I can do," says Ping-Pong with
a shrug. "I mean, I listened to those things exclusively
for a period of time, so there's nothing I can do about
it." But to get back to Ping-Pong's original
question -- simply because it's better than any of the questions
I had for them -- I found the Showcase Showdown completely
by accident. Once upon a time, long after the demise of
the Channel and the Rat, I stumbled into the downstairs
room at the Middle East, and there before me lay a scene
I'd thought had been lost to history. Down in front there
were 200 kids looking as if they'd just stepped out of the
cast party for Sid & Nancy. The knew all the
words, especially to the catchiest song the band played,
which had the absurdist chorus "Fuck you, fuck you,
fuck you, fuck you . . . fuck you Norwaaaaaay."
It seemed so randomly malignant. The singer looked amused
by the whole thing -- the song, the kids shouting along
earnestly. I couldn't believe they were from Boston.
That was several years ago, and I'd always assumed the song
had been recorded for some obscure and out-of-print single
that everyone had except me. In fact, "Fuck You, Norway"
is the 18th and final song on the Showcase Showdown's
Permanent Stains, right after one called "God
Save Robert Blake." Also on Permanent Stains
there's "They Saved George the Third's Brain"
which takes potshots not at George Bush III, but at 18th-century
England under King George. There's "I've Got a Date
with Louise Woodward." There's a funny song about getting
date-raped by Rupert Murdoch that's also kind of about media
megalopolies. But my favorite is now the opening track,
"Duty Free" which locates an actual space
in the real world where punk's utopian dreams (as the lyrics
have it, "No society will own me . . .
I wanna be free, without a country/a non-person in a non-place")
have come to pass.
This place exists, on something of a tragic technicality,
at the duty-free shop at the airport. Ping-Pong insists
the song is based on the true story of a guy who got stuck
in the international terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport
because he didn't have a passport. "No country would
accept him, so he lived in the international terminal on
a bench for eight years. He collected money from passers-by,
and people who worked for the restaurants would bring him
food." In the song, the punch line is that this punk-rock
Valhalla is both the ultimate libertarian blessing and an
absurd dead-end trap. In essence, the song says the only
way to find what you're looking for is to get lost. The
story had a better ending in real life, according to Ping-Pong.
"In fact," he says, "the guy was just recently
granted political asylum in Belgium."
www.showcaseshowdown.com
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