Braving That New World

Riding Waves Of Hype And Controversy, The Ecstatic Sounds Of Atlanta's Black Lips Dig Deep

originally published February 21, 2007

Atlanta's Black Lips spew '60s-inspired garage-punk psychedelia amid infamously chaotic shows. The oily-colored light show, the droning vocals and agitated guitars all skitter along the edge of delirious oblivion. They have built a crowd-pleasing bad-boy image out of shock-rock stunts like spitting urine into audiences, hair-trigger vomiting, creative use of genitalia on guitars and the odd indoor lo-fi pyrotechnics display. Despite all that gimmickry, the Black Lips have the sound to get away with it. Their musicianship and songwriting skills have grown alongside the size of their audience, eventually snaring them a swanky new record deal with Vice Records. Pretty rosy for a guys who took off touring only six years ago at the tender age of 16 .

Nope, not often do musicians grow up before such a wide audience that adores them for their gross-out stunts as much as for their lo-fi, jangly sound. Having formed while at Dunwoody High School in Dunwoody, GA, Jared Swilley (bass, vocals), Joe Bradley (drums, keys), Cole Alexander (lead vocals, guitar) and Ben Eberbaugh (guitar) ate up records by the Stooges, Stones, Beatles, Troggs, and Japan's Teengenerate. On a weekend trip to Atlanta's Wax 'n' Facts record shop, they hit on the Back From the Grave compilations, all full of insane '60s garage punkers that have come to define a genre then unknown to the dudes.

"When we started, we thought we were geniuses," Swilley says about combining influences like Link Wray and the Germs to start a band. "We didn't think that anyone was doing it. Then slowly we started to realize that was a genre."

Eberbaugh died in a 2002 car accident and was replaced by Jack Hines. Hines left the band last year; guitarist Ian Brown is the newest addition to the mix.

In August of 2002, when the 40 Watt banned the Lips for shooting off firecrackers indoors and attempting to light their drums on fire, none of the current success was imaginable. While those involved agree to all those "it's so yesterday" sentiments, any talk about the Black Lips' return to the Watt's stage demands some kind of chitchat regarding the kerfuffle. Like any other out-of-bounds rock and roll story, it would've faded away had the band not caught some hapless fool on tape sneering about the Lips' admittedly puerile stage antics. The guys slapped the audio sample on their first album, committed the episode into punk lore, and forever defined the Lips members all as "bad boys." Heck, after such a ballsy move, who isn't curious about a band that got banned from a musical institution such as Athens' own fabulous 40 Watt Club?

"We played like dog shit that night," admits Swilley. He is tucked in a corner booth at the Majestic in Atlanta, nursing a cup of coffee in the same all-night diner where he and his bandmates once held down straight jobs. "We were really bad, but that was how we used to play all the time. All I remember, Joe pulled out his lighter fluid, was gonna light his cymbals on fire, which, y'know, that's bad. And I see a guy run onstage. Our guitarist [at the time, the late Ben Eberbaugh], he was a big guy, just knocked the sound guy off the stage. Then all of a sudden [the] power's cut. I think they were expecting this riot, but we did play shitty. Yeah, I apologize for that. It's over now, but we were really mad about that for a while."

Says 40 Watt owner Barrie Buck, "People enjoy controversy and make it out to more that what it was." Weary of the subject, she attributes the Lips' long stint between gigs there to a case of bad timing and an undeveloped audience, adding, "The offer [to play here] has been on the table for years." In fact, Buck is perhaps the band's single greatest fan in town, a rare breed who owns all five Black Lips collector plates (seriously!) and stood with only four other warm bodies to see the band play at the Caledonia Lounge in late 2004.

It's safe to say that the band's Athens audience has finally arrived. A word-of-mouth show at the local DIY venue Secret Squirrel last November blossomed into a crowd-surfing shambles lit by greasy red and yellow projections, punctuated by goodnatured yet profane trash-talking. Hardly a month later, a sold-out show at the Caledonia with Deerhunter on a frigid December night in that dubiously heated room confirmed the band's appeal.

But while their appeal sloooowly crept east from the piss-stained floors of primal Atlanta basement shows and beer-soaked dives like Lenny's, audiences across Europe and North America flocked to see the Black Lips' spectacle for themselves.

"It used to be really bad," says Swilley. "Kids would come to the show expecting to break everything and attack us. It was fun! But then we got better at playing music. Oh, the shows were the main thing, because if you come out, you wanna see a show. You don't wanna just see people standing there. That's part of it, but we don't let that take precedence over playing the actual music.

Yet as press-focused on the guys' stunts, something in their primal sound coalesced with 2005's Let It Bloom, released on In The Red Records. "I don't know. I guess we started playing together more," says Swilley, speculating about the changes in the band's instinctual sound. "When we went into the studio, we used the same process as always, but maybe it's that we got better at songwriting?"

The band has since signed to Vice, the record company arm for the fashion/lifestyle mag. The move horrified a purist segment of the band's punk fan base, but confirms Swilley's opinion that "cool stuff is bubbling over." He says, "Vice picking us up, even thinking they could market us [shows that] a lot of In The Red bands have been accepted by people way outside the 'garage-rock' thing."

The Lips' first release on Vice hits the streets this week. The 12-track Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo was recorded live from a performance in Tijuana, Mexico by John Reis from Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes. The album includes live footage on an enhanced CD featuring "interviews, pills, tacos, hookers, Mexicans, tequila and a donkey painted like a zebra," according to the record company.

In December 2006, the Lips recorded what will become the band's first studio album for Vice at The Living Room in Atlanta with Ed Rollins. The fruits of those sessions are slated for release later this year. On Friday, Jan. 12, they backed up Atlanta soul man The Mighty Hannibal at The EARL. A year in the making, that landmark show electrified garage-punk circles, not only because it marked Hannibal's return to his home stage after 23 years, but because the Lips lassoed a platinum bill that included the Reigning Sound and Gentleman Jesse & His Men.

On the heels of that, the Lips set out for a tour of the West Coast, and are only now returning to Georgia. "I go crazy if I gotta stay here too long," says Swilley. "I don't have a job. Usually, I feel like a retired guy."

As genuine as they come, the Black Lips have unwittingly reinvented '60s garage psychedelia in a treble vein. As their musicianship grows alongside their skill for writing songs, the trouble-making stunts fall away as they pursue that sweet spot where sonic piss and venom mate with a surreal vortex of sound.

Gretchen Wood

WHO: Black Lips, Dark Meat, Fatal Flying Guilloteens
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, February 24
HOW MUCH: $8