Love is all around

Anal Cunt get sensitive; plus crooner Brian Evans

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

It doesn't get a whole lot more bizarre than this: an acoustic album of romantic songs from Anal Cunt. We'll repeat that: an acoustic album of romantic songs from Anal Cunt. You've now heard the one joke that makes up Picnic of Love (Off the Records), but it's a hell of a joke. In the past Anal Cunt have specialized in minute-long punk dirges with the most offensive titles imaginable. But on Picnic of Love they turn achingly, excruciatingly sensitive. Instead of misogynist rants, they offer "Saving Ourselves for Marriage," "My Woman, My Lover, My Friend," and "I Respect Your Feelings As a Woman and a Human."

Does this reflect a genuine change of heart? In a word, no. From the start, Anal Cunt (known as AC in more-timid circles) have had one mission in life -- to piss people off. This they've done quite admirably over the years, having been banned from a few local clubs and even arrested once or twice for their on-stage behavior (hurling cinderblocks at one's audience tends to be frowned upon by the authorities). The beauty of Picnic of Love is that it never breaks character: it begins at a ridiculously earnest level and just escalates from there, with a couple songs insisting on chastity ("I'm Not That Kind of Boy"), pricelessly awful lyrics and ultra-twee melodies, and even a token protest number ("Greed Is Something That We Don't Need" in which a female voice intones, "This is Mother Earth, somebody please help me!"). Josh Martin gently strums an acoustic while Seth Putnam emotes in a whiny falsetto that's somewhere between Neil Young and Mr. Bill. True, any slob with a tape machine and a bad attitude could have done this, but until now nobody has.

"It was something stupid to do to waste time," explains Putnam over beers at the Middle East. "The songs took longer to write than usual -- we normally spend about 30 seconds writing an Anal Cunt lyric, but we had to take time and think of the dumbest things you can possibly say. If you listen to 'Saving Ourselves for Marriage,' you can hear how hard it was for me to sing, because I couldn't stop laughing."

Part of the inspiration for the new album came from a warehouse job Putnam once had at Hear Music, the locally based company that specialized in baby-boomer music. "It's also a flashback to hearing folk music in my parents' car on long, boring drives. We started making fun of people like Buskin & Batteau and went on from there."

Of course, the fact that Putnam's even heard of obscure folkies Buskin & Batteau raises suspicions that behind his offensive Anal Cunt persona perhaps he's always been a normal guy. He's certainly affable enough off stage. Then again, people said the same thing about the late rock outlaw GG Allin (who nearly hired AC as his backing band in 1990 and later borrowed their name for a song title). "I'm sure you can go into any local bar and there'll be a million people there like GG Allin -- the nicest guy one minute and a psychopath the next," Putnam points out. "He could be pretty normal, but once he got fucked up he'd put on his GG Allin act. As for me, I used to play about 60 percent of our shows blacked out, and that's why the violence happened -- I'd have to find out the next day what I'd done on stage. But that kind of thing gets pretty old, so I try not to get as drunk anymore."

The next Anal Cut album, aptly titled It Just Gets Worse and due for release on Earache this fall, will be a return to form for the band, with songs titled "I Sold Your Dog to a Chinese Restaurant," "Conor Clapton Committed Suicide Because His Father Sucks," and one that got the plug pulled on an AC gig in New Hampshire recently, "Women Are Nature's Punching Bag." Which brings up the obvious question: how do their girlfriends feel about this? "They think it's awesome, because they know we're not really like that. People got really mad at us about the song `Women Are Nature's Punching Bag' in New Hampshire -- somebody said, `What's next, songs about child abuse?' And I said, 'Well, sure. We've already got a few of those.' "

Is there any song topic that would be too tasteless even for AC? Putnam thinks that one over. "The only thing we can't get away with is anything racist, because that would get us dropped from our label. But other than that, no -- we've covered pretty much anything that would bother someone."

BRIAN EVANS

One of the most successful acts to break out of Boston in the past few years is a guy you've probably never heard of. But Haverhill native Brian Evans is a Sinatra-inspired crooner who's done the thing that many locals dream of: he's made it big in Vegas. At 27 he's one of the youngest headliners in town, but he packs 'em in on a regular basis. Next month he begins a six-week engagement at Sinatra's old stomping ground, the Desert Inn.

"They haven't had a crooner my age since the Rat Pack days," he says from his current home in Los Angeles. "After Frank died they wanted to wait a while before they brought another singer in there. I'm probably the lowest-paid guy that ever played the Desert Inn, and I'm making 20 grand a week. That's the strange thing about Vegas."

This Saturday Evans comes home to play the Beach Club in Salisbury, his first local performance since he left town seven years ago. His career has taken some strange twists in the interim. He initially went to LA as an actor, appearing on the pilot of Beverly Hills 90210 before scoring a regular role as Kimmie's boyfriend on Full House. When the breaks stopped coming, he went to Vancouver and made an album that wound up selling 50,000 copies. A pair of major labels are now looking to sign him in the US. But it was the Canadian release that gained him some matinee-idol status and brought him to the attention of a high-powered manager -- Elliott Lott, who handles the Beach Boys and is now negotiating with Elton John -- who then took him to Vegas.

"The thing is that I was always a dork growing up. Just a lanky, out-of-place kind of guy. I fought against that when I was an actor, but I didn't really make it until I said, `Screw the dork complex.' In school I had no girlfriends, and I was the last one to be picked on the teams. I'm serious, it sucked, man. Even in Little League, they aimed for my ass when they were pitching."

Evans is something of a traditionalist by Vegas standards, having mixed feelings about the city's preferred brand of glitz. "You don't see people like Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra there anymore -- it's all lions and tigers, fireworks and motorcycles going over Caesar's Palace. I think I'm carrying on an old tradition. But if you listen to a band like Oasis, the style of music may be different, but the problems they sing about are the same -- it's all love and heartbreak. The only difference is that Oasis might be beating the hell out of nine guys in the audience while they sing it."

Evans has gone to some odd lengths to get his message across, including opening a recent West Coast tour for Shonen Knife. But his next move may be even more unexpected: his manager just submitted him as the opening act for this fall's Kiss tour.

BURDON AND SUGARHILL

It's not every week you see two crummy shows by people who've made some of your favorite records. When you catch a warhorse like Eric Burdon at the House of Blues, you at least expect to hear credible versions of his '60s hits, and you hope he's at least part the maniac he was back then. In that respect, Burdon didn't disappoint a week ago Tuesday. He doesn't just inhabit a song, he dives in and smears himself with it, and he's wildly irreverent toward his own material. (I couldn't tell you what all the original lyrics to "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" were, but I'm pretty sure that "I was sitting in the Ritz Carlton, looked down and I had a hard-on" wasn't among them.) Unfortunately his band comprised LA hair-metal types (including the once-cool Zappa drummer Aynsley Dunbar) who made all the songs sound like Winger outtakes. When "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" became an occasion for wank-off guitar and double-kick-drum rolls, it was proof that Los Angeles really can turn your brain, or at least your songs, to mush.

As for the Sugarhill Gang/Grandmaster Melle Mel show at the Middle East two weeks ago, the co-headliner didn't show up, the set began an hour late and ran only about 35 minutes, and nearly all the show was canned. Other than that, it was great. No denying that the Sugarhill folks made some landmark hip-hop records in the '80s -- Melle Mel's scathing rap on "The Message" remains one of the decade's peaks -- but the label was also notorious for sending bogus line-ups on tour. It was the original Sugarhill Gang who hit the Middle East, but their act consisted mainly of playing their old singles (complete with vocals) and shouting over them. Only on the opening "Apache" did any real live rapping get done. When Melle Mel failed to appear, they simply spun "The Message" and mimed to it. Fortunately, Sugarhill's set ended early enough for me to make it upstairs to catch Fuzzy's encore of back-to-back Titanics covers. Which seems to be the trend this year: the forthcoming album by New Orleans rowdies Dash Rip Rock includes another Titanics fave, "Clown Down."

COMING UP

Tonight (Thursday) it's Rocket from the Crypt downstairs at the Middle East, polka maniacs Brave Combo at Johnny D's, funk-rockers All the Queen's Men at the Lizard Lounge . . . Tomorrow (Friday) Neutral Milk Hotel headline downstairs at the Middle East with Papas Fritas and Of Montreal, Merrie Amsterburg plays the Lizard Lounge, the Honky Tonk Gurus (with the non-original guys from the Band) are at Harpers Ferry, Slide are at Mama Kin, a cappella kings the Persuasions are at Scullers, and Dana and Karen Kletter are at the Kendall Café . . . The Red Telephone's CD-release party is at T.T.'s Saturday with the Shods and Permafrost. Also on Saturday, My Favorite Relative play the Middle East, Roadsaw and Random Road Mother are at the Linwood, and New Orleans soul belter Marva Wright is at Johnny D's . . . Edgy rockers Mancie went underground after winning some raves last year, but they reappear at T.T.'s on Sunday . . . It's worth a trip out to the Beachcomber in Wellfleet for NRBQ on Monday . . . And on Tuesday, Kim Wilson brings the current Fabulous Thunderbirds line-up to the House of Blues, and rock vet Nils Lofgren is at the Middle East.