Photo by Baynard Woods
Sick Weapons: Jackson Bad Dog (unmastered version)
[audio:http://whatweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/04-Jackson-Bad-Dog.mp3]Ellie Beziat, Sick Weapons energetic blond singer, was standing around the Golden
West before the band’s final show. She and Joey Sulkowski, the band’s drummer, were trying to think of jokes to tell about Peter O’Connell, one of the band’s guitar players. O’Connell was about to move to San Francisco which was why the band was breaking up. Or one of the reasons.
“We had a tour that killed our souls,” Beziat said with a laugh. “We didn’t like each other for a long time. But now we all love each other. It’s like maybe how after a divorce people actually get nicer.”
“No,” Sulkowski, the drummer said. “Probably not.”
“You’re right. But it feels great now. We don’ t have the pressure anymore and we love each other.”
This kind of gallow’s humor might be expected an hour or so before a band’s final gig. But gallow’s humor is not a bad way to describe Sick Weapons sound.
Photo and story by Baynard Woods.
The exuberant laughter that comes from the recognition of fatality and demise has always been a cornerstone of all but the most strident punk. Thursday’s show—on the penultimate day of the year—was the perfect line-up to evoke that early seventies sound before something like punk had been defined.
When Sick Weapons finally took the stage the Golden West was sold out, full, the doors were closed and you could hardly move. The band was psyched to be up there and wanted to rock.
There’s something about women singing punk songs. Wye Oak and Beach House, two of Baltimore’s best known bands, use the female voice to create an ethereal, spooky sound. But Ellie Beziat is that other kind of front woman: raucous, loud, propulsive, and explosive. She drives the band with raw power.
The place erupted as Sick Weapons started to play, the crowd surging towards the stage as the thick and sharp sludge of sound drove back at them and pushed them into a fury. The songs are funny, clever, and wild. “Anthony Bourdain’s Earring” hangs around the refrain “We don’t need no reservations.” Other songs are called “Prettiest Racist in Town” and “Orgy on the China Train.” Both are sexy and funny and hard and scary. At one point, Beziat’s voice reached a squall as she sang “Don’t give a shit,” and the dancing became more frantic. One fan almost crashed into Beziat as he jumped on stage to leap off and crowd surf all the way to the bar in the back.
At one point, Beziat’s wild energy seemed to explode as she started cursing at the drummer and he got up and left the stage. A friend came up and took his place and did a passable job. It was the joke they’d been planning at the beginning of the night. It was one of the ways they showed affection to their departing band mate.
After a toast, Beziat asked the crowd to sing along on the most plaintive–but still sonically blistering— song, “Love Me.” After that the crowd chanted “One more song!” but Beziat joked they didn’t know another.
Someone said something. It turned out they’d forgotten to play a number and they tore through it near 1:30 on the morning of the last day of the year.
Still, Baltimore may get other chances to love Sick Weapons. They were selling advance copies of an album on Reptilian records, to be released soon.
Besides, most of the band members plan to go on to other projects. “I’m going to do an album of Simon and Garfunkel covers called ‘Ellie Thyme.’ ”
The opening band, Beyond Say consisted of two guitars and a drummer. All three started head-banging as they thrashed out the first notes from their instruments. They really had the seventies New York sound, with one guitar seeming to play guitar like Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, while the other used the eerie cascades of notes reminiscent of Television. The combination, of course, was electric.
For rock and roll to work without vocals, the music has to surprise. There were three times when some unexpected combination made me laugh out loud to myself. The crowd grew and throbbed along with Eric Bos’s crashing drum beats. Beyond Say were both technical and hard-driving in a way that managed to steer clear of any of the heavy metal cliché solos.
After Beyond Say, it was striking how forcefully Witch Hat’s songs were driven by the bass line. The 3 piece moved back and forth between musically sparse choruses yelled out with a voice somewhere between Tom Verlaine of Television and Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and fuzzy loud choruses screamed out in a higher register.
