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[l to r]:
Judy Molish Drums Sharon Needles Guitar Bianca Butthole Vocals, Bass Blare N Bitch Guitar |
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1. Rock My World |
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“You are your influences,” so it says in the chapter of rock and roll music in the great book of pop culture. It should be no surprise then that BETTY BLOWTORCH – feral female estrogens guitar explosions without the baggage of pretension – can be summed up in the titles of two of co-founder Bianca Butthole’s favorite discs: The New York Dolls' Too Much Too Soon and Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power. The real Queens of Noise, L.A. hipsterettes with a bottomless reserve of energy humor and verve, BETTY BLOWTORCH lived out its rocking fantasies as most boys, let alone girls, can only dream of. Formed from the ashes of punk-parody act Butt Trumpet (whose 1995 disc Primitive Enema may be a moment of pure pride for the participants), Bianca, plus the female remains of the Trumpet (lead guitarist Blare N. Bitch, bassist turned guitarist Sharon Needles) regrouped in 1998 as BETTY BLOWTORCH, with former Bobsled drummer Judy Molish. On a Saturday night at Al's Bar, in front of an utter mob (Bianca recalled total shock at the turnout, as the show was meant as a tune-up only) they launched their pyrotechnic based, 70's arena/glam plus salaciousness upon an unsuspecting planet. A club-based KISS, if you wanna call it that, but that band never in its wildest dreams could have imagined their feminist counterparts out-rocking them-and they did! Later recording the nearly impossible to find Get Off EP with former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan producing and endless touring made them a completely different animal than the messy, chaotic Butt Trumpet. “Duff captured our raw side and energy,” states Bitch. “It is unfortunate that so few were printed and things so suddenly came to end with the EP. These are kick-ass versions and its great that they are finally going to be heard.” McKagan's studio taskmastership and roadwork created a machine, a four-headed vibrating pelvis that shrieked and shimmied. A Torch show in the late 90's would typically commence with one of their anthems or instrumentals and rev up and go from there. Bianca slamming eighth notes hard on her bass, Needles stroking chords and stabbing the air, Molish keeping time like a muscular clock and Bitch trilling atop the mess like an unhinged Angus Young. At a Key Club show supporting the reconstituted Faster Pussycat, they were like a pneumatic drill, only letting up for one of Bianca's foul-mouthed, cock-hungry tirades. After the semi-success of Get Off, the band was signed to Foodchain Records and made a much more polished and fully-realized full-length debut in 2000, Are You Man Enough? Produced and engineered by Matt Hyde (Porno for Pyros, Monster Magnet), the record reprised Butt Trumpet's radio hit "I'm Ugly and I Don't Know Why.” It also added more grist to its mill, power mania like "Hell on Wheels” and “Love/Hate,” the power-pop of "Frankie" and Bianca's tongue-in cheek homage to 80's spandex-poofery "Big Hair, Broken Heart.” The high-point (or low one) was a duet with ‘90s icon Vanilla Ice called "Size Queen" in which the rapper raves about his johnson, which appears on the Last Call disc live in concert without the Ice. It was good for a laugh, which pretty much states the BETTY BLOWTORCH ethos in a nutshell. Appearances on the WARPED tour and the movie Bubble Boy followed, and their endless touring was about to pay off. “Things were finally coming together,” explains Bitch. “We could finally start to taste success, and were beginning to reap the reward of all of our hard work.” (Too many years in the van together unfortunately ended up being too much for the totality of the band. One night in Charlotte, North Carolina, Molish and Needles simply upped and left the band in mid-tour, leaving Bianca and Blare to carry on with tour mates Nashville Pussy's roadie drumming and former L7/Other Star People guitarist Jennifer "Precious" Finch as fill-ins. They acquitted themselves nicely until the band's New Orleans’ performance, after which Bianca (who had been clean and sober for over a decade) accepted a ride back to her hotel from an inebriated fan. He lost control of his brother’s Corvette, which he had borrowed, and skidded across the divider into oncoming traffic in Interstate 10, just outside the city. Bianca was killed instantly. The Torch was over, and the fan is now serving time in jail. |
[BIO cont'd] Not to be forgotten by their fans, label and film chronicler Anthony Scarpa, who had toured with the group, BETTY BLOWTORCH will see the release in 2003 of its definitive collection entitled Last Call, as well as a Torch documentary, “Betty Blowtorch: And Her Amazing True Life Adventures." Included in the 29-track package are Butt Trumpet demos including one of the funniest observations on the music business ever, "I Wanna Be on Epitaph,” outtakes and tracks from the McKagan Get Off EP sessions, live tracks from a KNAC.COM performance, funny banter and more. “Last Call is a timeless collection of our music and what it was all about,” says Bitch. “It shows how our music told stories of what we were going through, and that we evolved over time. The songs that have never been recorded other than on 8 or 16 track like ‘Kill The Butcher,’ ‘Epitaph’ and ‘Van’ were fun tracks that were classic to the band. I think that it is awesome that Foodchain is putting out all this material that people have never heard.” "The demo of ‘Dresses’ that they did is so much different than on Are You Man Enough?" says Molish. "We turned it into this cute little pop thing, that's not how it was conceived.” As a side note, Bitch is now in The Blare Bitch Project while Molish and Needles play together in Stay at Home Bomb. The film, which will make the rounds of indie festivals later this year is the quintessential band forms/band falls apart story, a real-life Spinal Tap, only the humor is more subtle and sad to say, the tragedy more real. The moments where its late bassist sits on her leopard-skin couch and reflects thoughtfully on her life and band completely contradict her onstage persona as penis-crazed she-devil. It's enough to make the toughest soul break down and cry. "Some of the best moments on Last Call are just Bianca talking," says Molish. "Especially ‘T.I.T,’ the ‘Tambourine Institute of Technology’ thing. Bianca was a tit-grabber, you'd be standing somewhere like in a bar in Ohio and she'd walk up to you and ask for the van keys and pinch your boobs – my boyfriend said Bianca grabbed 'em more than he did!" Last Call makes you wanna laugh, jump up and down, punch holes in your walls and revel in the memory of great live shows, roaring beats and the joy of living despite hard times and disappointment. You can laugh anything off as long as you have rock and roll. That's Bianca's testament and it's all here, good to the last drop. "The whole Last Call disc," says Molish, "is just a great goodbye to Bianca. Nothing but non-stop fun." If it is believed that the spirit is indestructible during life and after death, this document is all the proof you'll ever need in one place, anywhere. “Last Call is appropriately titled,” sighs Bitch, “considering there really is no last call in New Orleans.” |
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