‘They’re a bit of a joke.’ Says my mate as she watches Pink Grease’ eyeliner run in gloopy rivers down their pasty faces. They look like ruined extras from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video, the funk of forty thousand years hangs hot and heavy in the Hi Fi.
Saxaphones, huge weird panels covered in flashing buttons, AK47 shaped guitars, demented Misfits Cramps James Brown Stax overdrive thumping swamp glam punk shot through with electronic senility, screeching and buckets of filthy, cascading sweat: this is about the best way to describe Pink Grease. Since the last time I was in their presence, they’ve ditched the backing singers – stray dogs are probably scratching at their shallow graves as we speak – and in the low, dark temper of the Hi Fi the sound of Grease shakes the air.
They have the same kind of twisted plan 9 B-movie vibrations as The Misfits and The Cramps had, but Pink Grease’ radioactive field of influence is a lot bigger - the sound of James Brown, Gary Glitter and Glen Danzig smashing each others faces in with the buts of their atomic ray guns. Still, in today’s climate of pastiche and retro, Pink Grease’ look and sound is undoubtedly now. Its all a searing wall of noise with the odd saxophone line slicing through like a rusty blade, the alien flashing board sends whining static into the sodden air and then the bassist swings around on the air conditioning unit like a dope fiend King Kong. Every now and then he stares at the crowd and shakes his scrawny arms around in some kind of voodoo dance. Whatever sickness he has runs out of his pores in streams.
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Towards the end Pink Grease switch gears and weld a Black Sabbath sludge-core riff to some torture chamber yodelling before, finally, the Lou Reed Iggy Pop hybrid frontman tears his shirt off and the band swing from the rafters, screaming and reeling as the sound system bleeds out and dies of abuse. Pink Grease are spent.
From a contemporary point of view, I guess Pink Grease has something in common with The 80’s Matchbox B-Line Disaster; the genre ‘Phsychobilly’ (presumably some kind of crazed red-neck, inbred sound) bandied around. There’s greasy shades of it, but Pink Grease are kidnapping a whole bunch of wider influences, decapitating them with blunt hacksaws, and parading their bloody heads on spikes. Also, they fit right in with the Turkish whorehouse atmosphere of the Hi Fi. Their sound is made for the cramped space, unlike the last time I saw them in the vast, sterile Metropolitan Uni.
Ain’t my cup of tea, I’ll admit, But it’s a pretty brutal sight to see and the perfect soundtrack for slipping on the ole’ hockey mask and overalls.
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