The Dwarves: Photos/Review from Knitting Factory, Brooklyn 7-15-11

"It is all fun and games until somebody gets hurt" - Unknown

The show last Friday at the Knitting Factory started off fairly quiet but crowd really filled in prior to The Dwarves taking the stage. The Dwarves were more fired up than I've seen them in recent years and Blag was in and out of the crowd while beer was flying through the air.



The band played as a four-piece - too many members have come and gone over the years for me to identify the lineup with certainty but a best guess would be Fresh Prince of Darkness, Gregory Pecker and Whölley Smökkes. The band blasted through their set, which spanned their back catalog from Blood, Gut and P*ssy to the present, and a very clean-cut looking Sgt. Saltpeter made a guest appearance on one song.









This is the first time that I've seen the band play without HeWhoCannotBeNamed (so no nudity at the show) but HeWho made an appearance toward the end of the set dressed in his wrestling mask and a pair of tighty-whities and stage-dived into the crowd. The show seemed to get cut short as there was one guy (photo below) who kept climbing onto and diving off the stage. His last time off - no one caught him so he hit the floor. He was bleeding (I didn't get a good look) and ended up in an ambulance and the show stopped there.



Links:
The Dwarves

The Dwarves - "Born Again" CD Review (MVD Audio)

“I am the Jesus Christ of Sin and Vice” – Blag Dhalia

Can anyone honestly say that they expected The Dwarves to last twenty-five years? The Dwarves' latest release Born Again is the band’s first new studio disc since 2004’s The Dwarves Must Die and the band has come a long way from their speedball punk, violence-inducing (fifteen minute) sets from twenty years ago.

Continuing in the style that the band started around the time of Come Clean (2000), Born Again contains a number of melodic, surf-rock and power punk tunes about sex, sin and debauchery. The band keeps with their ‘less is more’ approach and blast through 18 tracks in just over 30 minutes. While The Dwarves have moved away from 34 second dirges like “Fuckhead” (1990), this disc isn’t all bouncy anthems like “Salt Lake City” (from The Dwarves Must Die). Most of the tracks are under the two minute mark and the band pulls out the punk and hardcore stops on tracks like “You’ll Never Take Us Alive”, “Stop Me’ and “We Only Came to Get High”. Born Again features a number of special guests, who include Vadge Moore and Sgt. Salt Peter from the band’s Blood, Guts and Pussy era, who may have played a role in adding an edge to the music. The band obviously had fun making this disc and the final track, “The Band That Wouldn’t Die”, features a voice-over cameo from Space Ghost Gary Owens.

The Dwarves - "Drugstore" (from Blood, Guts and Pussy)


The Dwarves - "The Band That Wouldn't Die" (from Born Again)


With the band’s musicianship and musical hooks improving with each release, The Dwarves are moving into the space occupied by The Meatmen in the mid-80’s (who had Minor Threat’s Lyle Preslar and Brian Baker on guitar) and the band also shares Tesco Vee’s refreshingly wicked sense of humor In an era where too many bands wear their emotions on their (metalcore) sleeves, one can hope that there is some justice in the world and The Dwarves reach the sort of payday that many of these mall-core/Hot Topic bands have achieved.

Links:
The Dwarves

The Dwarves: Must Die Redux CD Review (MVD Audio)

(from a June '10 Interview with Punknews)
PunkNews: The new Dwarves record is tentatively titled The Dwarves Are Born Again. The previous record was called The Dwarves Must Die. Can you explain the significance?

Blag Dahlia: Once we were dead, it was critical that we be reborn. Otherwise, who's gonna make the records? Although Tupac managed to make quite a few records after he was dead. And so did HeWhoCanNotBeNamed.



The Dwarves new disc isn't out just yet but MVD Audio's reissue of 2004's The Dwarves Must Die should serve as a good stop-gap. The Dwarves Must Die was originally issued on Sympathy for the Record Industry and has been long out of print. As part of this reissue, MVD adds two non-LP singles: "Kaotica" (which was originally released as the b-side to "Salt Lake City" and "Kids Today" (from the Rock Against Bush compilation).



This disc has held up well over the last few years and the flow of the tracks are fairly indicative of the The Dwarves' current live show. This disc follows in the style of Come Clean and includes a number of memorable melodic hooks. The Dwarves Must Die's seventeen tracks (all clocking in around two minutes) are a mix of power-punk, surf rock and hardcore. (Note: I'm intentionally glossing over The Dwarves ill-advised, but amusing, venture into Beatie Boys style rap.)

The disc include guest spots from Dexter Holland from The Offspring, Nash Kato from Urge Overkill, desert rock icon Nick Oliveri, Josh Freese from The Vandals and Spike from Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Dexter Holland adds his distinctive vocals to "Salt Lake City" and Nick Oliveri guests on "Massacre". The Dwarves have been poking fun at absolutely everyone for the last twenty years but eveidently Josh Homme took offense to the lyrics of Massacre: "This one goes out to Queens of the Trust Fund/You slept on my floor/And now I'm sleeping through your motherfucking records" as he was sentenced to 36-months of probation for an assault on Blag in 2004.

While you aren't going to hear the blood, guts and chaos of The Dwarves' early live show, The Dwarves Must Die is what punk rock is all about.

Links:
The Dwarves

HeWhoCannotBeNamed - "Sunday School Massacre" CD Review (MVD Audio)

Sunday School Massacre (MVD Audio) is the debut solo effort from the (frequently naked) Dwarves guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed. This 12 track // 33 minute disc is a bit harder-edged and than recent releases from The Dwarves but it isn’t that far removed from The Dwarves’ core sound.

The songs are predominately guitar-heavy pieces where a number of songs build to a wall-of -noise (similar to early Nirvana). The Nirvana comparison holds in part with the vocals as well as HeWhoCannotBeNamed has a rough but clear vocal style that is closer to Bleach-era Cobain than Blag’s smoother delivery. The overall disc has a clean sound, courtesy of HeWhoCannotBeNamed and co-producer Bradley Cook (Counting Crows, Foo Fighters) and features Dwarves bassist Saltpeter on bass and acoustic guitars, The Fresh Prince of Darkness on guitar and Andy Selway (KMFDM, The Dwarves) on drums. Both Nick Oliveri and Blag Dahlia add guest vocals to a couple of the tracks.

Given HeWhoCannotBeNamed’s long tenure with The Dwarves, it is no surprise that the lyrical themes are in the gutter. Lyrics for these twelve sing-a-long punk anthems range from the disc opener “Happy Suicide” (no explanation needed here), Dwarves style sexual themes (“Duct Tape Love” – “greatest invention of mankind, the only way to make you mine”) to sci-fi (“Machine Boy”). The disc bounces around stylistically between grunge, punk and power pop but none of these style shifts are disconcerting. “Superhero” features vocals from Blag and could have been a Dwarves cut, “Duct Tape Love” sounds like a Ramones outtake and “Toxine” sounds like a sixties-style ‘girl group’ ballad. “Sinister Sal” is clausterphobic and psychedelic, like an early Dwarves cut and “Wake Up” includes a rap break. (“Get Stupid // Go Dumb // Ride This Yellow Bus with Your Zipper Undone”)



HeWhoCannotBeNamed claims that the lyrics and title, Sunday School Massacre, were inspired by his experiences as a counselor/teacher with teenagers suffering from mental illness or abuse and that many of the songs were actually written while he was on duty at a residential treatment facility. Coming from a guy who faked his own death back in the 90’s, you have to take stories like this with a grain of salt but it does make for fun reading.

Here's HeWho has revealed about the song "Machine Boy":
"There was this kid that I worked with when I was a counselor. I'll call him S____. S____ was about 13 when I knew him, and he had some serious physical disabilities because his mom's boyfriend had beat the shit out of him when he was an infant. I heard that the guy had thrown him into a wall when he was less than a year old. Anyway, it had seriously fucked him up. Both his hands were gnarled so that he couldn't really pick stuff up. His spine was out of alignment or something, so he had to wear some kind of brace. Of course, he wore big thick glasses, and before he went to bed he had to use a breathing apparatus with big tubes. And to top it all off, he regularly shit his pants so he had to wear diapers. Life had not been good to S____, but he was really a pretty nice kid in spite of all this. I noticed that S____ was really into reading comics. He especially liked superheroes, and I think he imagined himself to be one. One night I saw him getting ready for bed with his fresh diaper on, breathing through his big plastic tubes while reading some comic, and I wondered if S____ himself were to be a superhero, like he most likely imagined himself, what he would be like. That night I sat down and wrote most of "Machine Boy". I couldn't quite get the last verse though, so the next day I asked S____ for help. I asked him what he thought the strongest super power of all is. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said "I think it's the "Soul Burn". He explained that this is an evil power that goes far beyond just destroying your body, but gets completely inside you and burns everything else out. S_____ actually inspired some of the lines in Motorboating as well."

Sunday School Massacre is raw, lewd and fun – the way punk rock was meant to be.

Links:
HeWhoCannotBeNamed

The Dwarves @ Knitting Factory, NYC Jan. 24, 2007

It is hard to believe that The Dwarves have now been at it for over 20 years. If anything, the band had gotten more musical and their sets tighter over the years. Even the set times seem to be getting longer (I remember 20 minute sets in the late-80s and early-90s).

The band played about a 45 minute set last Wednesday and ran through highlights from most of their releases. I wasn't keeping track of the songs but remember them playing Free Cocaine, Astroboy, Dairy Queen, I will Deny, Salt Lake City and many others.

The Dwarves latest release is a DVD entitled FEFU. The Dwarves website describes the disc as follows:

The FEFU video is made by BOB SEXTON with a little help from naked pin-up nymphets the SUICIDE GIRLS. Fetish artist DAVE NAZ contributes a huge dose of perversion as the Dwarves premiere a video that can't be shown for a song that can't be broadcast. Nudity, violence and dwarf love make FEFU the most popular GREEDY/MVD release yet and stations across the country spread the video virus while a full length FEFU dvd showcases 20 years of live insanity following the Dwarves from their midwest origins all the way to intercontinental infamy.

BLAG DAHLIA has also released his second novel NINA along with a spoken word cd. The reaction to this depraved tale of a wayward teenage girl is swift and harsh.