The Kindergarten Circus
The Kindergarten Circus
Genres: blues, rock, garage, punk rock
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About The Kindergarten Circus
Hoo boy. A band called The Kindergarten Circus. Oh, I can just picture it. The oldest member of this band probably isn't a day over 17 years old, and probably looks it. I picture a buncha cherubic-looking overachievers whose timely collision with punk rock, blues and garage a coupla hundred fortnights ago accelerated their collective puberty to the chagrin of parents of teenage daughters all over the South. Dollars to donuts, they gleefully bleed their own blood at every other show they play. Yeah. And I'll betcha your rare mono South American pressings that these podunk prodigies are fawned over and treated like royalty by both their hapless high school chums and the town's local beardos and record collectors alike. They're probably way too good to be humble, way too young to be jaded, and way too smart to compromise. Yessir, I bet they're just the very fucking distillation of teenage caveman rock and roll pandemonium, and they know it. Yep, that's pretty much exactly right. And I'm damn proud to call them my friends. Formed when the members of the band - Dillon (guitar, vocals), Lil Bill (drums) and Logan (bass) - were still in junior high (8th grade, to be exact), the boys quickly grew tired of jamming on Beatles covers and decided to turn up the volume. Their lives were instantly changed by The White Stripes, but unlike thousands of other kids their age who'd have been more than content to mimic their heroes until they day they were inevitably distracted by tennis lessons or auto shop or some bullshit, these Kindergarten Circus wackos took it upon themselves to begin exploring the deep and twisty history of blues, punk, and garage, as a means of discovering the roots of the music they loved. It used to be a practice as natural as breathing - you'd get into, say, The Beatles, and eventually find your way back to Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Or you'd get into Nirvana (who, just for reference, 'broke' while these guys were still non-verbal and in diapers) and you'd eventually run into The Vaselines and Flipper. But kids these days, they don't like to do that so much. Lucky for us, The Kindergarten Circus are old souls. Before long, the fellas were well versed in music ranging from Leadbelly to Mississippi John Hurt to Captain Beefheart to the Flat Duo Jets. They absorbed it all like twilight scavengers, piecing together histories, studiously taking note of timelines, and eventually synthesizing all of it into a unique and distinctive (and distinguished) sound. But that came a little later. In the beginning, though, before Lil Bill could afford drumsticks (he'd play drums with his mother's paintbrushes), and the boys were more than psyched to get a gig at a middle school talent show (they were initially rejected), the band played more covers than originals. But these Kindergarten Circus folk, well, they're a restless sort. Before long, they'd amassed almost two albums worth of righteous hi-octane boogie to call their own. The result is a debut album of original songs (all but one authored by the band - and lest you think the lone cover here is "Hand Springs" or something, get this - it's "Goodnight Irene" fer chrissakes), and it's a monster. Under the influence of the ghosts of every greezy-haired delinquint who ever stomped a Big Muff and told the high school principal to eat a dick (actually these boys are all honor students - shhh, don't tell), the album is practically a clinic in cool, encapsulating every era of raw, honest American (and occasionally British) music since Lomax thought to himself "hmmm, maybe I oughta set up a few mics and get this all down for posterity." The rest, to coin a phrase, will be history. Shunning pills and booze in favor of Nestle Buncha Crunch and Capri Sun, and likely to be found screening calls from their myriad of female fans so they can get in a few rounds of Mario Kart, the men of The Kindergarten Circus only really seem their age when they're not onstage thrashing, howling and bleeding. Onstage, and on this record, though, it's pure filth and fury. It's hard time killing floor blues and teenage kicks. It's somebodys gonna get their head kicked in tonight. It's rock and roll, baybee! Where you been all my life??
Taken from Last.fm
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