Street Life #2, 1977

Street Life #2, 1977.

I first saw em standing in the audience at the Ramones.
    Tomata du Plenty in child's quilted Jacket, stovepipe pants and hair on end, T. Gear was leaning against the rail flaunting his classic European features like Alain Delon in black.
    If they weren't already in a band, I would've tried my best to get them to start one; I could tell they had strong and interesting personalities and their dedication to taste and style just by looking at them!
    Fortunately, the Screamers were already in full swing. They begin as The Tupperwares in NY, relocated to a burgeoning underground scene in (?) Seattle were threatened with legal action by the Tupperware Co., changed their name (promptly) to the Screamers and came to L.A. hoping to make a splash where the entire style consists of the Quick                                       and...umm...the Quick.

I confess I haven't seen them live but the live tapes are so inspiring, I can't even begin to tell you.
The Screamers are a full

BY LISA FANCHER
PICS: JENNY STERN
LF: LET'S START WITH BORING BACKGROUND. WHO WRITES THE SONGS? G: We both work on music & lyrics. It's a shared effort.
LF: I CAN HEAR A LITTLE VELVETS IN YOU , WHO WOULD YOU SAY ARE YOUR MUSICAL INFLUENCES?
G: I think more in terms of inspiration...TV themes, movie themes, and people like the Ventures.
LF: SO YOU'RE AN ALL-AROUND MEDIA BAND?
G: YES. And we're also very big on magazines. We do a song called "Magazine Love" and the chorus is: "you don't love me, you love magazines." And the verses are names of magazines strung together. But yes, we're very media conscious.: Like, on a musical level, Nico, Neu...
LF: KRAFTWERK?
G: Oh, Stockhausen philosophy music? Everything we do is so synthetic,

color glossy magazine for white rockers with no representative media other than fanzines. AM radio is great but how many TOP 40 singles do you own currently? Is Fonzie likenable to James Dean and how many 70s movies can you put yourself in? Follow this closely: they are inspired by non-representational media and turn it into directly presentationable music. It'll take getting used to.
Three reasons they're great:
1) they don't look like any- body else.
2) they sound like danger.
3) they never write about traditional themes.
What follows is an interest- ing, however informative, dialogue between Tomata (T), Gear, (G) And me (&%*#@).

I suppose we' re related but I don't really care for them.
T: My musical influences are Felix the Cat, Monkees, a lot of bubblegum, Nino Rota. I love the Rollers. Really electrified themes could be moving, gritty. But moving as well. I don't think our musical influences will eventually be what we will sound like. But seriously, I want to be managed by Sony.
LF: SUMMA-CORPORATION ROCK.
G: Japanese TV shows are the best. Ultra-Man.
LF: YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T EVER WRITE ABOUT TYPICAL THEMES. DO YOU BASE SONGS ON MOVIES YOU'VE SEEN OR WHAT?
G: We wrote "Eva Braun" after seeing a Lanie Reifenstahl movie called "Triumph of the Will." And when we were in Seattle, there was a store called G. O. GUY so we named our song "G.O. Guy", it's a place of course but when you think of it as a kind of person hey, I'm a G.O. Guy.
LF: SOMEBODY SHOULD WRITE A SONG ABOUT PEP BOYS!
G: WE ARE! Manny, Moe and Jack. Manny's the one with the white glasses, huh? I see him and I think of Lou Reed's "White Light/ White Heat".
G: We're also writing a song about everybody's plight- Peer Pressure. Pressure from peers to do certain things and act certain ways. It's a reaction kind of song.
LF: WHATS' YOUR STAGE ACT LIKE? DO YOU ACT OUT SONGS (LIKE BLONDIE AS OPPOSED T0 THE TUBES)?

T: I think we're more...FRANTIC. It's like a controlled nervous breakdown.
(Tomata says his all-time favgirl is Twiggy and we talk about how disappointing her LP is)
LF: I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A YARDLEY GIRL LIKE JEAN SHRIMPTON AND COME OUT OF AN ENGLISH PHONE BOOTH. ALL POISED IN A PLASTIC SKIRT.
G: That's why we wrote "Going Steady With Twiggy"! There's a verse: ''Jean Shrimpton leaves me quite limp/ Mary Quant is not want I want / How can I feel without Emma Peel?"
LF: ARE YOU GOING T0 PLAY LIVE SOON OR ARE YOU STILL RUNNING THROUGH SETS?
T: Yeah. We're going over our material then we'll be able to play live. There's this great bar we saw called ''2 Dollar Bill's" that has the same lay-out as CBGB's.
LF: OH, I KNOW WHERE IT IS! BUT IT'S PEACE & LOVE AND YOGA NOW. BUT THEN CBGBs WAS COUNTRY AND WESTERN.
G: We'd really like to play there a lot.
T: We want to play everywhere. Rooftops...
(Conversation drifts to: three piece Runaways, bikers, Bowie's Low, Texas, Blondie, Kim Fowley Night, the Quick being nice guys, the Bratz "delete what I said"- Tomata, Promotion of no-talents like Henry Gross and Hall & Oates, Fighting at parties)
G: What's your favorite magazine.
LF: FAX. IT'S ENGLISH AND IT HAS ALL GLOSSIES WITH VERY LITTLE TYPE. I LIKE TABLOIDS A LOT.
T: I love ''Inside News" --topless dancers with three boobs.
G: Our favorite is "Apartment House Wrestling". It's the best!
T: It's a sports magazine. Like one story was these girls coming to Hollywood & learn how to apartment house wrestle in bikinis and by the last panel, they've managed to get each others bikinis off...
G: I've been trying to find out where they hold the tournaments! ("Juliet of the Spirits", Dolomite, coffee houses, CBGBs. Richard Hell, geeks, we hate hippies, glass eyes, how Gear is synesthesic-hear colors and see sounds, bracelets, TV, cars, Shirley Partridge, Eve Plumb)
LF: WHAT ARE THE NAMES OF SOME OF YOUR SONGS?
G:"Peer Pressure, Magazine Love, Gloomy Sunday by Billie Holiday, Dolores-Mother of Sorrow, Don't

Put the Kitty in the Microwave Oven, It was the Onions that made Me Cry & Love Theme from Condominium. (The Ramones Press Conference that I attended)
G: I was there.
LF: YOU WERE? I DIDN'T SEE YOU...
G: I was disguised. As an end table.
T: We used to do "Pushing Too Hard" but not after we saw Sky Saxon...
LF: THEIR "MOTHERS IN LAW" SEQUENCE WAS THE BEST OF ALL.
T: Did you see Chad and Jeremy on Dick Van Dyke?
LF: YEAH, AND THE BEAU BRUMMELSTONES ON THE FLINTSTONES.
T: Did you ever watch the Jetsons?
LF: YES!
G: we want to do covers of TV theme songs. Jetsons, Bat Girl, Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian...
T: Patty Duke had a great song.
G: Or an anthem version of "Who Can Turn the World on with Her Smile..." (back to magazines)
LF:DID YOU KNOW THE SEX PISTOLS HAVE THEIR OWN MAGAZINE?
T & G: REALLY?
LF: IT'S CALLED ANARCHY IN THE UK AND IT'S ALL PICTURES BUT SOME HAVE SOME SCRIBBLING.
T: That's what I like. All pictures like interview almost.
G: I think photographs are very important because people relate better to visual images than verbal ones
LF: I ALWAYS THOUGHT A GOOD ALBUM COVER SOLD AN ALBUM MORE THAN THE MUSIC.
T: Oh of course. God, I love picture sleeves on 45s. (Gear tells us how he was beat up by the police while being armed with a Milky Way candy bar, Now Yorkers always talk too loud, Russ Meyers, Sex Pistols' fans original fashions, and the sixth sense- a sense of responsibility)
T: Have you ever read "Winning through Intimidation"?
LF: NO.
T: It's my favorite book. It's fabulous. You should read it. Using intimidation as a tool.
G: It's knowing how to use intimidation to get what you want and knowing how other people use it for what they want. I see us integrating a lot of those concepts into our stage act, to relate to the audience. Not intimidating them directly but we will be an audio-visual lesson in-winning Through Intimidation. And it will be soon. When we get organized and buy some proper equipment... All the things that it takes.
T: All we need is some good pimping.
G: Well, let me see, do we know any Negroes? (BE WATCHING FOR A SCREAMERS EP COMING OUT ON STREET LIFE RECORDS!)