I've been writing rock journalism off and on for six years, if such a thing is even considered journalism anymore, and have guffawed at my share of press kit banality. Why 9 out of 10 bands fail to covet the hidden power of their press kits is still beyond me. Horrid publicity photos or pontifical oratory masquerading as the bio (with all the witticisms and pithy utterances you can stomach) lands the whole shebang in File 13. Hey, that's the music biz.
A few mornings ago I was flipping disinterestedly through the latest ish of Nugget when my assistant, Roz, entered with a smile on her face three-miles wide. She produced a press kit that had fallen off her desk, her only remark: "This is the shit."
I yanked the kit from her hand, a smile creeping 'cross my countenance; Roz has a panache when it comes to separating wheat from chaff. (She's partially responsible for Menudo's success, you know.) The name of the band said it all: Dogs With Diapers. And, yeah, there was an illustration of a triumvirate of terriers wearing diapers on the cover. I tugged my jaw and wondered: Was this another one of those animal-themed things a'la Christmas Cats? A truly heinous recording of tomcats and tabbies "singing" Xmas carols by having their tails stomped by a lug wearing jackboots? Thankfully no.
DWD is a trio of musicians who reside deep in the bowels of the nightmarish suburbia, Kingwood (charmingly referred to by DWD as Kingwad, or the 'Wad), approximately twenty-five miles north of Houston. Theirs is a brew with the heady tang of Zappa, the Residents, the worst old Genesis you could think of, and Beck (from what I've listened to, DWD was of the Beck milieu back when Beck was in elementary school). And if that doesn't make you loopy, add a Steely Dan chaser and you're three-sheets-to-the-wind.
I managed a sit-down with members Tristan Fabriani, Charlie Maddox, and 5 (yes, 5) and flew to Kingwood to ask them, among other things, how they've managed to successfully (?) meld these disparate sounds into something deceivingly listenable, and just exactly what of dogs with diapers?
