This year the raunch-com flick Sex Drive contained doozy ol' tunes by the likes of MGMT, Donovan, and REO Speedwagon. In this fine company, the movie also featured "Got You (Where I Want You)", the 1998 hit by one-time Delicious Vinyl band The Flys. After a special screening of the film (a must for all Seth Green completists), we drove out to a bizarre brew pub in the dark heart of the San Fernando Valley to meet with Flys frontman Adam Paskowitz and stroll down memory lane...but first, if you don't know 'em, here's some background on the band:
The Flys were, at heart, a product of off-the-map surf culture turned minor Hollywood rock royalty. As typified by their sole hit single "Got You (Where I Want You), their music was pitched between Sugar Ray's pop-hop fromage and the radio-ready mosh-a-longs of The Offsping. (The Flys toured with both bands.) But no matter what you might make of those comparisons, it would be difficult to imagine a less poser-ish upbringing than that of Flys frontman Adam Paskowitz and his rapping younger brother Josh.
Adam and Josh are two of the nine children in one of surfing's most deservedly legendary families. Their father, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, a Stanford educated doctor, dropped out of society in the 1960s to take his wife and children with him in a 24 foot camper on a never-ending surfing safari. The peculiarity of their upbringing (depicted in Doug Pray's riveting documentary Surfwise) meant no house, no formal education, and no processed food, all arguably rendering the Paskowitz children ill-equiped to function as cogs in the straight world as adults. Good thing then, that Adam and Josh both harbored dreams of rock stardom.
By the mid 1990s, Adam's band The Flys were chasing their own tails in the purgatory of L.A.'s toilet circuit. "It wasn't like record labels were beating down the door to sign us," Adam says. They maintained a weeknight residence at Smalls, a club on Melrose Avenue opposite the Paramount Studios lot. "We were paid in free drinks, we had no following. We were playing Ozzy songs in a big band swing style, and our own songs in between that."
Then one night Delicious Vinyl honcho Michael Ross happened to pop into Smalls. Mike Ross: "Adam had this ill jerry-rigged vocal processing unit he called The Nebulizer, and he was doing a pretty good Freddie Mercury impression. They played a song called 'Gods Of Basketball' that was cool. I mean, a song about basketball, that was enough for me to sign 'em."
In addition to the survivalist self-belief instilled in Adam by his guru father, Doc Paskowitz's other key contribution to the Flys was encouraging Adam to let Josh join the band. As Adam acknowledges, the timing was perfect: "It's a good thing we agreed. We weren't having much success, then my little brother joined and brought in his rap thing. I mean, if Josh had been about country music, we would've gone rock'n'country. Instead we became rap-rock and blew up. It might have had something to do with Josh being good-looking, ripped, and covered in tattoos."
With the band now fraternally aligned, Mike Ross sent the Flys out to Chris Goss' newly-completed Monkey Studios in Palm Springs, where they quickly knocked together an album for under five thousand dollars. "We wrote eleven songs and put them all on the album," says Adam. "We used every tune we had."
Holiday Man is a post-grunge rap-rock free-for-all, its representative tunes including "Superfly" (Chili Peppers-esque wah-wah bluster) and "Sexual Sandwich" (puerile proof of the band's lounge act leanings). The album's most endearing track, "The Family", rides a strolling Sly Stone type groove as Adam recommends going to the movies: "Take your favorite girlfriend/ you know she's of Mexican descent!"
Ross tested the waters by releasing the obvious single, "Got You (Where I Want You)", packaged with b-side "The Gods Of Basketball" (a turgid plodder with none of the messianic bounce implied by its title) in a mildly salacious sleeve drawing of a whip-wielding S&M chick. The brooding "Got You" starts as a feckless appeal by a lovesick crooner ("hey, what's your favorite song/ maybe we could hum along?") which, by its soaring chorus, reveals itself as the ploy of a seasoned pick-up artist. The song is Top 40 friendly, surprisingly soulful, and — with a crunchy middle featuring Adam's rap — utterly perfect.
Trauma Records acquired the Flys contract from Delicious, ponied up for a video for "Got You" starring Katie Holmes, and re-released the single. Soon the Flys had a Top 10 Modern Rock hit, a celebrity fan in the form of Chicago Bulls lugnut Dennis Rodman, and, with Holiday Man flying off shelves, an opening slot on the Rolling Stones' 1998 No Security tour.
The most intriguing artifact from the band's recording career is undoubtedly "Te Tengo Como Querio", their Spanish language version of "Got You". (The Paskowitz brothers, neither of whom spoke Spanish, spent two weeks being drilled by a translator before recording it.) While Spanish version was only ever granted a promotional release, dig it here, hombres.
THE FLYS, TE TENGO COMO QUIEROTHE FLYS, TE TENGO COMO QUIERO
As Malicious Vinyl's first signing, Excel played pure Venice, California bred balls-to-the-coping skate rock, charged from the same creative wellspring that fueled the peerless Dogtown skateboard team of the mid-1970s, and Excel's Venice bros Suicidal Tendencies. That spirit — epitomized by the Glen E. Friedman photo of Dogtown pioneer Tony Alva that graced the cover of original vinyl pressings Seeking Refuge— is in the album's every unflinching groove. Excel's third and final album, Seeking Refuge contains some songs that had been in the band's repertoire as far back as 1991, but by '95 they were recording with a more metal-minded line-up, updated from their original '80s incarnation.
On Seeking Refuge, the band is clearly possessed by a propulsive energy that doesn't allow for melodic nuance, although singer Dan Clements' voice has sonorous uplift, and lyrics to go with it. Subverting the assumption the music so aggro must be bent on destruction, Clements delivers lucid, unencumbered messages ("don't deny your brother/ don't deny one another" goes "Riptide") over Brandon Rudley's shreddymade guitar leads and the tribal-minded pounding of no-last-name drummer Max. Befitting their titles, "United Naturally In True Youth" and "Take Your Part Gotta Encourage" are mercuric monuments to positivity embedded in seriously burly riffage, while the wah-wah intro of "Riptide" sucks the listener in and under like the Venice beach breakwater on a dangerous day. The album peaks with the focussed quickness of "Unenslaved", a five-and-a-half minute emancipation proclamation ("feel unenslaved now/ they can never rule me") with a dreamtime breakdown evoking the mystical surf experience of shooting the tube...before breaking right back into the churn.
EXCEL, "Unenslaved"
Excel, "Unenslaved"
If you are a freak-a-zoid, Bobby Evans is your friend. "Freak-A-Zoid Robotz (RMXXOLOGY Theme)" is his new single, so get ready for some serious electro-pelvic gyrations. The song sports whip-it-good drums, ass-clapping bass, and synapse-snapping synthesizers...but not today, not here, not now. Instead we're freaking on one of the single's bonus cuts, the Freakapella, reveling in the isolated voice of a loving droid as it gives props to the pioneers of Miami Bass music:
Freak-A-Zoid Robotz Acapella.
FREAK-A-ZOID ROBOTZ (RMXXOLOGY THEME) ACAPELLA
And now for a word from the Bobby Evans:
"While making 'Freak-A-Zoid Robotz' I was taking in a steady diet of bass and early electro, Afrika Bambaataa, Gucci Crew II, Maggotron, DJ Smurf — a lot of the artists who wound up getting name-checked on my song. Even the SP-12, TR-808, and TR- 909 are mentioned on the chorus. Those machines were the foundation of the music so I knew I had to work them in. Musically 'Freak-A-Zoid Robotz' is steeped in Bass references, the drums are 808s, there's arpeggiated synths, and of course the Vocoder! Also everything in the mix was touched by the same classic reverb that Prince used on 'When Doves Cry'."
Thanks Bobby. Freak!
The Flys were, at heart, a product of off-the-map surf culture turned minor Hollywood rock royalty. As typified by their sole hit single "Got You (Where I Want You), their music was pitched between Sugar Ray's pop-hop fromage and the radio-ready mosh-a-longs of The Offsping. (The Flys toured with both bands.) But no matter what you might make of those comparisons, it would be difficult to imagine a less poser-ish upbringing than that of Flys frontman Adam Paskowitz and his rapping younger brother Josh.
Adam and Josh are two of the nine children in one of surfing's most deservedly legendary families. Their father, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, a Stanford educated doctor, dropped out of society in the 1960s to take his wife and children with him in a 24 foot camper on a never-ending surfing safari. The peculiarity of their upbringing (depicted in Doug Pray's riveting documentary Surfwise) meant no house, no formal education, and no processed food, all arguably rendering the Paskowitz children ill-equiped to function as cogs in the straight world as adults. Good thing then, that Adam and Josh both harbored dreams of rock stardom.
By the mid 1990s, Adam's band The Flys were chasing their own tails in the purgatory of L.A.'s toilet circuit. "It wasn't like record labels were beating down the door to sign us," Adam says. They maintained a weeknight residence at Smalls, a club on Melrose Avenue opposite the Paramount Studios lot. "We were paid in free drinks, we had no following. We were playing Ozzy songs in a big band swing style, and our own songs in between that."
Then one night Delicious Vinyl honcho Michael Ross happened to pop into Smalls. Mike Ross: "Adam had this ill jerry-rigged vocal processing unit he called The Nebulizer, and he was doing a pretty good Freddie Mercury impression. They played a song called 'Gods Of Basketball' that was cool. I mean, a song about basketball, that was enough for me to sign 'em."
In addition to the survivalist self-belief instilled in Adam by his guru father, Doc Paskowitz's other key contribution to the Flys was encouraging Adam to let Josh join the band. As Adam acknowledges, the timing was perfect: "It's a good thing we agreed. We weren't having much success, then my little brother joined and brought in his rap thing. I mean, if Josh had been about country music, we would've gone rock'n'country. Instead we became rap-rock and blew up. It might have had something to do with Josh being good-looking, ripped, and covered in tattoos."
With the band now fraternally aligned, Mike Ross sent the Flys out to Chris Goss' newly-completed Monkey Studios in Palm Springs, where they quickly knocked together an album for under five thousand dollars. "We wrote eleven songs and put them all on the album," says Adam. "We used every tune we had."
Holiday Man is a post-grunge rap-rock free-for-all, its representative tunes including "Superfly" (Chili Peppers-esque wah-wah bluster) and "Sexual Sandwich" (puerile proof of the band's lounge act leanings). The album's most endearing track, "The Family", rides a strolling Sly Stone type groove as Adam recommends going to the movies: "Take your favorite girlfriend/ you know she's of Mexican descent!"
Ross tested the waters by releasing the obvious single, "Got You (Where I Want You)", packaged with b-side "The Gods Of Basketball" (a turgid plodder with none of the messianic bounce implied by its title) in a mildly salacious sleeve drawing of a whip-wielding S&M chick. The brooding "Got You" starts as a feckless appeal by a lovesick crooner ("hey, what's your favorite song/ maybe we could hum along?") which, by its soaring chorus, reveals itself as the ploy of a seasoned pick-up artist. The song is Top 40 friendly, surprisingly soulful, and — with a crunchy middle featuring Adam's rap — utterly perfect.
Trauma Records acquired the Flys contract from Delicious, ponied up for a video for "Got You" starring Katie Holmes, and re-released the single. Soon the Flys had a Top 10 Modern Rock hit, a celebrity fan in the form of Chicago Bulls lugnut Dennis Rodman, and, with Holiday Man flying off shelves, an opening slot on the Rolling Stones' 1998 No Security tour.
The most intriguing artifact from the band's recording career is undoubtedly "Te Tengo Como Querio", their Spanish language version of "Got You". (The Paskowitz brothers, neither of whom spoke Spanish, spent two weeks being drilled by a translator before recording it.) While Spanish version was only ever granted a promotional release, dig it here, hombres.
If you are a freak-a-zoid, Bobby Evans is your friend. "Freak-A-Zoid Robotz (RMXXOLOGY Theme)" is his new single, so get ready for some serious electro-pelvic gyrations. The song sports whip-it-good drums, ass-clapping bass, and synapse-snapping synthesizers...but not today, not here, not now. Instead we're freaking on one of the single's bonus cuts, the Freakapella, reveling in the isolated voice of a loving droid as it gives props to the pioneers of Miami Bass music:
