Stitches out West
Thursday nights in San Francisco are all about punk rock, peepshows and big women in small skirts dancing on the pool table. That's because Thursday is the night for Stinky's Peepshow, the weekly rock 'n' roll showcase and "home of large and lovely go-go girls" at the Covered Wagon. For less than 10 bucks, the club offers three bands and two girls as entertainment. The lovely ladies dress in everything from schoolgirl uniforms to naughty nighties, shaking their hips in a campy intermission mix of sex and rock.
Satan's cheerleaders were in the house this evening, their fabric horns sparkling as they shook their pompoms over the club's usual collection of red-eyed punks. I was barely pink-eyed myself, though, before the Hatchbacks struck their first chords. The band barreled through some hard Austin-style garage rock. Within the first song, the guitarist was off the stage, kneeling down on the sticky cement. By the third song, he was playing the guitar behind his neck. By the fifth song, I was a little bored. I love rock that lays into you like a big sloppy kiss, but even with all those moves, this one just didn't have enough tongue.
On to the Starvations, a band that sounded like Television weaving through country-punk melodies. Or like Camper Van Beethoven without the wit. They had an odd indie-rock backbone that kept slipping into different genres. The singer looked like Tom Petty and dressed like he'd just gone fishing, with a bandanna around his neck and a floppy tackle hat on his head. "That's not a good look at all," my neighbor mumbled. It was the only comment I heard about the band all night.
The real reason most of us were there was to see the Stitches. My friend compared the L.A. band's punk style to "the Sex Pistols meets the Dead Boys, but with lots of songs about coke," which sounded like a good preweekend warmup to me. Once they took the stage, there was no denying the band's Hollywood roots. No leather and safety pins here. This band was all about white plastic pants, polka dot shirts and perfectly spiked coifs.
Once they got into the music, though, their songs could have been about cocaine, the price of a good L.A. haircut or how playing in plastic can make you really sweat?other than one audible lyric, "I need a pick-me-up," the band's lyrics were completely indecipherable due to the singer's whiny snarl. The music was standard three-chord punk, not too angry, but aggressive enough to get the crowd throwing beer and bottled water. The Stitches were no Dead Boys, and no Black Halos either, but they were fun and we were drunk and it was enough to get the sloppy folks up front to hug before half the crowd pushed into the other half. If we weren't gonna get what we'd expected, we'd have fun with the ones we were with.