Deep Throats – Good, Bad, Pretty
The year is 1999. San Francisco’s legendary punk, visual art and homocore scenes are overripe and on the turn. Mission School trio Deep Throats have just finished recording their sophomore LP, Good, Bad, Pretty, their entertaining and drug-fuelled debut of post-HC and erratic art-punk coming just a year earlier. Yet, for the majority, Good, Bad, Pretty remained unheard until now, John Dwyer’s Castle Face imprint rounding up these recordings for a retrospective in order to right the unfortunate health issues that prevented its release first time around.
Still smarting from being “excommunicated” from their own scene by homophobic cops and audiences on trumped-up charges of vandalism, violence and lascivious behaviour (which all sounds like the makings of a great show), the band occupied their time playing benefit gigs, with “random sex work” and by cruising the city blasting Black Flag from the speakers of a ’64 Cadillac. On their travels, “hot as hell” (© John Dwyer) drummer and vocalist Sugar Fixx along with lipstick/stockings-wearing frontman and guitarist Tracy Lourdes met Chris Johanson, aka Ron Draino. Drawn to the band’s “ritualistic and chaotic … fucked-up magic” Johanson immediately identified with their “saying no to the fascism of the square world … the very notion of normal.”
Accordingly, Good, Bad, Pretty is anything but ordinary. Its doomy, tunnel-vision bass sharks amidst wiry post-punk guitar angles. Jittery post-HC tempos splutter alongside stop-start punk-funk signatures. Rudimentary and messy grooves thrust sexually to partner Lourdes’ unhinged vocal turns, which range from the theatrically camp to unapologetically screeching duets with Fixx.
Deep Throats’ clatter of percussion and crunching guitar parts unspool precisely as they wish with no interest in anything save their own artistic existence. Dialling back sparse concessions to schlock-shock psychobilly, a dirgey midsection even descends into bluesy rock ‘n’ roll, the band’s melodic message of inclusion and love cruising out of the slow mix. Small parts of Good, Bad, Pretty undoubtedly have the sound of out-takes – a meandering middle here, an unfocussed outro there – yet most others are just too much fun to have stayed out of the public domain any longer. More importantly, it’s an album full of in-your-face nostalgia for a time when anything seemed possible.
~Good, Bad, Pretty is out now on Castle Face.~