| "Tell
them Gorilla Rose was at the door, but not in the show, '' said the cover-charge-
taker at C.B.G.B. the night I went to see Savage Voodoo Nuns there. Gorilla
had been going to play a cardinal, he said, but decided he was tired of
"those drag roles." We still had Kate Parker as B.M. ("short for the Blessed Mother") and an assortment of glitter guys and gals (Fayetta, John Flowers, Arturo, John Hayes, Montana and Tomato du Plenty) as some outrageous nuns, mother superiors, 'ho's and god knows what else. Funniest scene is where a "747 to heaven" is hijacked to hell by Fayetta as Lady Satan. The songs are take-offs of pop standards ("Black is black/I want my habit back") and the jokes cornily appealing ("She's fallen off more laps than' a cocktail napkin"). And there's even a douche race, with contestants opting for Coke, vinegar and the real thing (I guess). Gorilla urged me to stay for the Ramones, which turned out to be a pretty good idea (though I groaned a bit at the suggestion, having waited over two hours for the voodoo girls). Gorilla's description of the band as "anti-gla mour, " " revolutionary'' and ''minimal'' struck me as an unusual combination, so I stayed. The band is a quartet of young kids who play at being hard-ass leather rockers. There's something very theatrical about their whole approach-not derivative, but theatrical. Poses and attitudes, musical and physical. None of their songs lasts longer than a couple of minutes. They're either old rock songs ("California Sun'' by the Rivieras) or mock-rockers. The music is primal, mindless, without climaxes (the songs just stop). The guitarist does nothing but whang away violently at the strings (all at once). The bass thumps, the drummer bangs, the singer squeals and screams. The songs have titles like "I Don't Want to Go Down to the Basement and "I Don't Want to Walk Around with You'' and "Beauty Is a Punk." They epitomize early Sixties simple- minded rock-and-roll, but are played with a 1974 vengeance and violence, sounding like a scratchy 45 played on a cheap record player with the volume all the way up. Everything is distorted and there are raw edges everywhere. The drummer wears his keys carefully dangling to the right, but you get the feeling that it means nothing whatsoever, down deep. R .B. |