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The Supersuckers Rule
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The Supersuckers rule. I first saw them in Seattle opening for the Dwarves. They knocked my socks off. Four guys, two guitars (Sometimes two matching Gibson Les Pauls). They like to give you the finger and tell you how old they are. They write songs about giant gorillas and about being poor. But the best thing about the Supersuckers is that they play their instruments with power. They also seem to have a Hell of a good time doing it. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen was at a free promotional show by Subpop at Rockcandy, a club in Seattle, where the band was covered in beer and other miscellaneous liquids thrown on them by the audience. They seemed to feed off the abuse. They got better and better as they got wetter and wetter., and never faltered, even when literally blinded by beer. It's impossible to say exactly what makes them great. They've just got something Phil Collins never even heard of.
Needless to say I was very excited when I saw that the Suckers were playing Boston, my hometown with their buddies The Dwarves. Since they were playing there on the same night as Shonen Knife, I drove down to Providence to see an earlier show. Unfortunately, Providence is a seasonal town, and in the summers not many people are around to see punk rock shows. Nevertheless, the Suckers wowed the twenty people who showed. I guess I felt bold in my old school town or something because I started a conversation with Dan, the drummer. I don't remember what it started as, but it evolved into a comparing-notes-about-Seattle thing. Ed, the bassist/singer told me about the difficulties of releasing anything on vinyl. Sadly, before I could reach any kind of real conversation level, The Dwarves set something on fire, some locals smoked the club out with chemical fire extinguishers and all Hell broke loose.
Oh well, it was great to see them, I thought, and prepared for another great band, Shonen Knife. Shonen Knife played at T.T.'s, The Dwarves/Suckers at The Middle East, literally next door to one another. Waiting outside for my friend Jessica to show up, I was keeping company with Dan and Ron, the guitar player, who thought I should blow off the Shonen Knife show to see them again. They couldn't convince me, but we had a nice talk. They told me about Arizona, where they all met and started The Black Supersuckers. They dropped the Black when they moved to Seattle in the Eighties (before the Mudhoney album came out they are quick to explain). They told me they had spent the previous night in some house built on the border of New York and Connecticut, "with a little plaque to prove it. They talked about their US/Canada tour, and the worst town they played was Vancouver. "Fuckin' Calgary was more fun than Vancouver." As if Calgary were Butte, Montana or something. Personally I wouldn't know. My knowledge of Canadian cities is not what it should be.
We talked about Shonen Knife, who they do not like because they are too nice, and strippers, who they do like, and about Boston, where they had never been before. Basically the Supersuckers are genuinely nice guys or someone told them to be nice to their fans. I suspect it's a little of both. There new album is out and they are on tour right now.