July 28-August 3, 2005

music

PINK SKILLS: "It's still party time," says V.I.P.'s Bear (left). "But we're making songs that are about things more significant than sex and drugs."

Get It Straight

Gravy Train!!!! and V.I.P. go beyond queer-hop.

by A.D. Amorosi

This is not just a story of two bands united by one groove, one sound and naughty lyrics that appeal to queercore communities and fashion victims.

This is, first, a story of poor driving habits.

"We just hit a car and our windshield shattered," says Chunx, the redheaded lyricist and vocal mistress of Gravy Train!!!!. She just got into a minor scrape with a parked automobile, after winding down a Chicago side street. "We're going to be here a while."

On the same day, in Philadelphia, V.I.P.'s Jonny Makeup explains why they're driving so fast.

"We're late to pick up our set list for this tour we're starting Monday," says Jonny. "We just got so tied up with watching Rosemary's Baby. You can't not watch it until the end — you know, where Mia's holding that knife and spits in her husband's face. That's so ghetto."

Beyond just being lousy drivers, Gravy Train!!!! and V.I.P. are bound by a mutual trashy affection for antiquated souped-up rap beats, new wavish synths and an obsessive, sardonic sex/food/drug lyricism that'd make John Rechy wretch. Both have become toast points of the gay community.

"We're definitely proud of meaning so much to that audience," says Chunx, a 24-year-old known to her mom as Heather Hewett.

Since the end of 2001, Chunx has made her bones reading paramours the rrriot act for their physical shortcomings, while still longing for long comings, on several CDs for the Kill Rock Stars label. Their newest is called Are You Wigglin'?

Since their start, at the beginning of 2004, V.I.P.'s rapping trio — VIPeter, Jonny Makeup and Bear — have seemed solely out for dick, blow and Gucci gold on their Mad Coke EP.

Now the Bay Area-based Gravy is set to take the gayish Philly outfit under its red vinyl wings into the bigger universe of queercore and homo hip-hop. But catch the garish groove while you can. Despite making rabid fans in the gayborhood, both bands know they must expand to continue.

"Gravy Train!!!! started as an outlet for me to talk shit about this guy I dated," laughs Chunx, who complains about pencil-peckers and limp pricks on songs like "Hella Nervous." Farfisa-riffing organist Funx and dancer/multi-instrumentalist Hunx helped birth a mirthful, battered electro-rap sound to back Chunx through her ribald diva ramblings on cottonmouth blowjobs and short-dicked men.

Personal experience or fiction?

"Guess I got fucked over one too many times."

Yes, there were songs about eating too much and buying tacky Hello Kitty outfits. But rather than cockily place her laughably slanderous laments into Oakland's free weeklies, Chunx dovetailed her disgust into songs like "You Made Me Gay" on their debut, Hello Doctor. That collection of tunes not only celebrated an unholy alliance between JJ Fad and the B-52s with its cheap, limited instrumentation of Casios and drum machines, but ultimately glorified the tri-sexual nature of its members.

TRIANGULATING THEIR POSITION: "It's natural for homos to like us more, because we're all about homo stuff. It's rad," says Chunx (left) of Gravy Train!!!!.

Though dating "dudes" at present, neither Chunx nor Funx will singularly define their sexuality. The feminine socio-political rhetoric of Chunx's lyrics remains the same no matter who they're fucking. "The boys in the band — Hunx, Junx — are totally gay and totally wear it on their sleeves," says Chunx.

"But me? I wouldn't say that I'm straight. I wouldn't say that I'm bi … We're about being whoever you are whenever you are."

What's less elusive is their connection to the gay community. Though not overtly gay-political, Chunx knows her audience is primarily a queer one. "It's natural for homos to like us more, because we're all about homo stuff. It's rad."

With lewd, crude lyrics and spare musicianship, Gravy Train!!!! didn't start out to be serious. But, now, the fully formed, fully fleshed-out Gravy Train!!!! shows off a love of punk rock and '60s girl groups on Wigglin' with cheery, sharp guitars, haunted horns and nervous harmonies added to its electronically seduced bitch-hop sound. "We're using more instruments and fuller arrangements on Wigglin', because, well, it's depressing not to. How far could you go with those sorta hip-hoppy songs and boring organ riffs?"

The album's lyrics too are more personal and intimate, as on "Stop the Wedding," where Chunx fantasizes about dancing so seductively for a paramour thought lost to matrimony that he leaves his betrothed and follows her.

Then there's "Jonny Makeup," wherein Chunx praises the charismatic V.I.P. rapper of the same name. "The stories he tells, the dramatic way he acts — I know it sounds cheesy, but he's begging you to write a song about him," says Chunx.

Chunx and Makeup both recall the crazy, racy, druggy story of how they met after a Gravy Train!!!! show at Silk City. That was the gig where an obsessive Makeup, convinced his then-beau was fucking Gravy Train!!!!'s Hunx, took in snootfuls of a mystery substance, publicly, at the bar, while watching his favorite band through a red jealous rage.

"That was the first thing he ever told me — that story," says Chunx, still in awe of his haughty, yet touching honesty. "I can identify with that drama, becoming crazy jealous and psycho over romance."

"I looooove that song," says John Szymanski — aka Jonny Makeup — with an excitable whine. The lyrics call him a coal miner's daughter and compare him to Beyoncé. "I used to not like Gravy Train!!!!," says Makeup. "I know that Hunx was so all up on my boyfriend of that time that I just so wanted to fight them. But secretly I loved the band and was so glad when we became best friends ever since."

That kinship led Chunx to sing on and write hooks for several clips of the next V.I.P. record (a song called "Straight Boys," in particular). And Train!!!! is about to take the Philly act on its first tour across the States.

"I think between this tour and our first full record, this is our time to, you know, like Kelly Clarkson says, to break away," says Makeup while trying to find the street where his newest producers live. The Pink Skull team — including Julian S. Process and DJ Diabolic — is adding a big pop dance sound with hard hip-hop beats to V.I.P.'s trademark dirty lyrics.

While Gravy Train!!!! moves from the kitsch electroclash and hip-hop of the previous records into a harder computer-pop sound, V.I.P. is also looking to re-define its cluttered, sequenced aesthetic and racy druggy lyricism into something grander and greater than its original lo-fi skanky lyrical ideal.

"It's still fun and crazy, the new music," says Bear (that's his legal name), holding his cell phone under his ear while driving. "It's still party time. But we're making songs that are about things more significant than sex and drugs."

For this, the three V.I.P. rappers have subjugated their egos to the outside vision of the Pink Skull producers — "the next Neptunes, I swear," says Makeup. The high-pitch, one-dimensional sound is traded in for a thicker, more nuanced approach. Pointing to songs like "Hate Us," Bear claims the next record isn't just about the same old rhetoric of fucking boys and partying. "People think we're a flash in the pan, that we're no good," says Bear. "This will change their minds."

Gravy Train!!!! and V.I.P. play with Schnozola, Sat., July 30, 9 p.m., $10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808, www.northstarbar.com.