The Dwarves Plays Knitting Factory and The Studio at Webster Hall This Month on Their 25th Anniversary Tour

Here are five items from the list of "25 Things You Don't Know About The Dwarves":

1 - THE DWARVES first tour in 1988 covered over 6,000 miles and highlights were featured in the Village Voice. The tour consisted of 3 cities, 4 shows and $165 dollars cash. The band slept in a cargo van and booked gigs on stolen telephone cards.

2 - THE DWARVES have recorded for visionary independent labels including Sympathy For The Record Industry, Epitaph, Fat, Sub/Pop, Bomp!, Amphetamine Reptile, Man’s Ruin, Recess, Theologian, Glitterhouse, Burning Heart, White Jazz, High Voltage, No Balls, Zodiac Killer, MVD, Midnight, Reptilian and Greedy. Some of them even paid royalties.

3 - THE DWARVES have been stabbed, bludgeoned, swarmed, arrested, shut down, sabotaged and even fellated onstage and much of it is available on video, like the free dvd that comes with the Dwarves Are Born Again.

4 - THE DWARVES were one of the first hardcore bands to regularly use samples, drum loops and found sounds, even on their earliest recordings where they used cassette tapes to generate them.

5 - THE DWARVES were kicked off tour with a UK metal band for sleeping with the girls the headliners had hired to hang out backstage. They were banned from venerable punk dive CBGBs for breaking a table and bleeding on the floor making the venue cleaner and improving its décor.

The Dwarves are touring behind their latest disc, Born Again, which is their first new studio disc since 2004's The Dwarves Must Die. (see my previously posted review of The Dwarves are Born Again)

The band just finished up a European tour and is kicking off their US tour in Baltimore on July 13th. The Dwarves play Knitting Factory on July 15th and The Studio at Webster Hall on July 16th. The show at the Knitting Factory includes The Stalkers and Lugosi and tickets are $15.

Tickets for the show at Webster Hall are also $15 and The Dwarves are playing with The Stalkers, The Threads and Cvlt War.



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