Murder City Devils 1998:
Unabashed, In-Your-Face, Rockcore for the Cynical
by J. Kim

With so many people muddling through their lives and working in jobs they hate, cynicism and apathy have become the unofficial languages of the times. Murder City Devils frontman Spencer Moody speaks no such language. Instead, he is so completely in love with his work that joy bursts out of his mouth faster than words can catch up. Such enthusiasm makes the average bloke raise a skeptical eye. Can it be genuine?

It is.

Moody and The Murder City Devils will not stop until they have left their mark on modern music. Moody elaborated on their determination recently over Thai at his favorite feed shop, Bamboo Garden on Queen Anne.

Moody knew the first time he heard Iggy Pop's Fun House (after being a David Bowie fan) that he wanted to be in a band. Several years later he dropped out of Sammamish High School, moved to Seattle with bandmate/guitarist/organist Dan Gallucci, and ranted for the hardcore band Area 51.

"The worst things about being in a band are also the best things because of the risk involved," said Moody. "Its about giving up jobs, ruining relationships, being gone all the time. Its a huge risk because if it doesn't work out, its going to take years to recover my life. Since I dropped out of high school, any job I get is going to be some pretty shitty minimum wage job. The sacrifices are pretty big but that's what makes it so exciting."

What makes the Murder City Devils so exciting is they play unabashed in-your-face-rock without bemoaning life's eternal sadness and without sounding as cheesy like an 80s glam metal band. The Murder City Devils music could easily whip the Wallflowers, Puff Daddy, Fat Boy Slim, and the entire swing movement with their hard edge raw and rollicking sound. Derek Fudesco (bass and organ), Coady Willis (drums) and Nate Manny (guitar and bass) share the stage with Gallucci and Moody, along with their love of tattoos and black tees. They play in-your-face rockcore with a punk sensibility but without punk's stringent aesthetic.

"I still love punk," said Moody. "At the time (when they formed Murder City Devils) it was the scene I was in, I had a 7" on a punk label, I was hanging out with punk kids living in a punk house, but that's not what I was listening to."

Yet their music could pass for a kissing cousin of punk. Otherwise, they would not have opened for X (which Moody called an amazing experience), or they would not participate in an upcoming X tribute album. Or they would not share bills with Zeke or Karp.

Their Sub Pop CD, Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts, fits better in the broad rock genre than in any narrowing subgenre or subculture. Fast or slow, every song swaggers off the record with more bravado than Matt Dillon's character in The Outsiders. They use a Farfisa organ in part to capture the boldness of the Stooges, but also to distinguish themselves from the rock rat race. The band laces the creepy Ed Wood movie feel of the organ into the raucous guitars for a sound all their own.

If you can contribute to this kind of genre that's changed so little in its fairly young life, said Moody, If you can give as much as you've taken, that's when you've really left a permanent mark. We've all taken a lot from rock.

Moody related how people take from rock with a universal anecdote. "Its when you're 13 and you're trying to do your homework but you can't understand it, so you're crying and tears are staining your paper," said Moody. "But you have this one record and you keep flipping it while you're staring at your paper for hours. And you believe that David Bowie really does care about all the young dudes and cares about you. Its knowing there's something else out there, beyond the world you've been given - your family, your school - you know there is an outside world out there."

Singing for the Murder City Devils has transported Moody to the outside world to places like Albuquerque, where their roadie Gabe got blindsided and hospitalized by a beer bottle. Music has taken him to Uncle Rocky's, where they shared a bill with Deadbolt and Moody had his only physical confrontation with a heckling audience member. Moody slammed him against a wall and informed him that if he did not like the music, perhaps he should consider not standing in the front row.

His career has also brought him to Baltimore several times. Calling it the ultimate John Waters fetish, Moody adores Baltimore. It has sometimes the nation's highest per capita murder rate, it has the worst schools, the highest rate of heroin overdoses in the emergency rooms, and a huge portion of the city has been abandoned, said Moody. And the waterfront is a disgrace - the whole idea of tourists going to Baltimore is absurd.

The folk art painted on window screens throughout that city has inspired Moody to create the lyrics for his band. The other four collaborate to write the band's music, but Moody alone writes the words, then everyone pieces the two together.

With this pressure upon him, Moody has turned to unusual sources for inspiration, the most influential being the fundamentalist Christian cable channel, the Trinity Christian Network. As he begins to describe his divine inspiration, his eyes grew too big for his glasses and he could hardly stay seated in the restaurant booth.

"The way they perform their sermons, more than any other band, that's what I've been trying to emulate," said a non-religious Moody. "To create something like that is so insane, they're not really saying anything other than repeating a few things over and over, but the way that they present it is so outlandish."

"They all look like Liberace and they have these huge million dollar sets and they just take their bullshit to the ultimate level. Its exactly what Marilyn Manson does and its exactly what a rock show should do."

Murder City Devils have not resorted to elaborate stage set-ups, beyond lighting their drums on fire, and the wardrobe has stayed pretty sedate. Moody wears Oxford shirts because he likes shirts with collars. Instead they rely on their music and Moody's theatrics and howling.

"About 75 percent of the time, I know I'm good at what I do, but I do not pretend to have any musical ability," said Moody. Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan inspired him because they lacked classic voices but profoundly connected with their audience. The band paid tribute to Iggy Pop on their last album with the song, "Broken Glass." Iggy, I like the taste of your sweat, Moody howls on that song.

Moody sounds like Jim Morrison would have had Morrison smoked less pot and drank more whiskey. Moody has been compared to Henry Rollins by the Stranger.

Several months ago, the Murder City Devils received overnight Seattle darling status, suddenly they appeared in every paper and on every stage.

"It was obviously really exciting getting so much attention so fast, but then there were all these people talking shit about superficial stuff," said Moody. "It was like there was a paragraph about us and nothing about the music. Sean Nelson (of the Stranger) had never seen us but he said we were not there for the music, just to be seen and he said my singing was Rollinsesque blowetry. It was just weird having your feelings hurt by total strangers."

About an hour after describing the Sean Nelson incident and at the end of our lunch, a teenager approached the table to tell Moody how much she really loved his music. She said she had just seen him on MTV and overheard our conversation and just had to tell him how much she loved his band. He politely explained his band had never been on MTV and that she had him confused with Sean Nelson, who fronts Harvey Danger in addition to writing music reviews. His embarrassment at being mistaken for Nelson far outweighed the teenagers embarrassment for making such a mistake. However, no one could ever listen to the two bands and mistake one for another. In fact, other than perhaps the Makers, the Murder City Devils resemble no one in Seattle.

Click here for a 1999 interview with Murder City Devils

Pandemonioum Online's Review of Empty Bottles Broken Hearts

Live Murder City Devils Photos !

Email J. Kim