Strap in, kids. I could type about this band and album all goddamn day.

Once upon a time, a band changed my life. Cliche’? Yeah, but only because every music fan worth a damn had a band change their life. Me, i actually had two, but we’ll get to the other one soon enough.

Senior year of high school (1992), Other Band unlocked the door to my closeted and sheltered small-town metal-centric musical lexicon. Once i got to college, that door was creaked open by a band here, a band there…mainstream “alternative” bands like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, more obscure (to me) fare like They Might Be Giants or Sebadoh…but then in 1994 the doors were blown off the fucking hinges, and finally, finally, i understood punk rock.

August 1994. Elk’s Club, Green Bay, Wisconsin. The opening band: Milwaukee’s Alligator Gun, playing friendly, energetic, Seaweed-influenced punk-pop (as opposed to pop-punk, a different beast entirely). This did not prepare me for what was next. What was next were four of the best dressed thrift-store chic lookin’ motherfuckers going batshit and sending their instruments through more effects than a Star Wars Special Edition. Holy mother of fuck, who IS this?

“Thank you thank you thank you we are Brainiac from Dayton Ohio. It’s good to be back here in Green Bay, Wisconsin with all of you. This next song is called ‘Ride.’ rrrrrRRRRRRRRRROOOOWWWWWWWWGHHH!!”

Jaw, meet floor. And DJ, meet your new favorite band.

The last band of the evening was the also excellent Jawbox, but by then i was barely paying attention; my love for that band would have to develop another day. All i could think about for the next, well, three years was Brainiac. Timmy and Tyler and John and Juan. I picked up Smack Bunny Baby and played it for everyone with the patience to let me. SBB was a revelation for me at the time, all weirdly tuned guitars, jagged rhythms and processed vocals. Having not yet investigated Ohio’s proto-punk past, i had heard nothing like it before, and really, even now that i’m versed in Pere Ubu and Hardcore DEVO, i haven’t heard anything like it since.

But as excellent as SBB was, it was beaten into the dust by its follow-up, Bonsai Superstar. The tunings were still weirder, the rhythms even more jagged, and Jesus H, what the hell was Timmy even saying now?

And the live shows–oh god, the live shows. Look, i know that this is supposed to be about the record, but Brainiac taught me everything i needed to know about putting on a goddamned show when playing your instrument. Tyler Trent was in constant danger of careening off his drum stool and off the back of the stage, bashing the skins, standing up between beats, and screaming like a banshee all the while. A light bulb flipped on in my head and i thought to myself, “so that’s how it’s done.” The rest of my drumming career has been a marathon race to catch up to Tyler Trent. I like to think i’m gaining ground, but he hasn’t been in a band in years to my knowledge, so i can’t see him on the track.

I’ve had a few debates with people who think that 1996’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture is the superior Brainiac album. It’s the darker of the two, for sure, and it boasts some fantastic singles in “Vincent Come on Down” and “Nothing Ever Changes,” but no song on Prigs has the same spastic stomp of the chorus to “Hands of the Genius,” the same sultriness of “Flypaper,” or the same “boom shellak a laka ooh i think she likes me” of “Sexual Frustration.” Both records are tour de forces (is that the plural for “tour de force?”), but Bonsai Superstar is just a little more frantic, and to me, that means it wins.

Over the course of three years, i managed to see Brainiac no less than 12 times, traveling anywhere i could in Wisconsin to see them, and even deciding to blow $33 on the 1995 edition of Lollapalooza solely because they were opening the second stage. They made regular stops to Green Bay, which in the mid-90s had a thriving all-ages venue and the band referred to as “our second-best market after Dayton.” 

By the last time i saw them, in April 1997, The boys recognized us by sight. I tapped Timmy on the shoulder in Beloit as he was nuzzled up to the bar, and he turned around with a huge grin on his face. “What are you doing here?” ”Dude, it’s only like a three hour drive from Oshkosh,” i responded. I still have the bootleg of that show on cassette, which means i have live versions of their last unreleased songs, identified on their setlists only as “Crash” and “Ice.” That last show was one of the best Brainiac gigs i had seen yet.

A month later, Timmy was dead. Four years later, on the anniversary of his death, i had some of the Hissing Prigs artwork inked into my shoulder and back, because i’m a sentimental nerd like that.

I still go back and watch bootlegged videos of Brainiac live shows from all across the country, and i feel sort of bad for anyone who never got to see them live, whose experience with the Brainiac live show is via cathode ray. Because it doesn’t even begin to capture the electricity, the energy, the oh-my-fucking-god-what’s-going-to-happen-next? Thank god we still have their albums, somewhere, somehow.

Touch & Go still sells copies of Prigs and the two EPs, Internationale and Electro-Shock for President, but Smack Bunny Baby and Bonsai Superstar were released on Grass Records (aka The Label That Dropped The Wrens In Order to Make Creed Stars), and are, to the best of my knowledge, out of print. If you can find them online, download them (legal or not, the real crime is not reissuing these records). If you find the vinyl anywhere, um, let me know, and i’ll pay you top dollar.

Brainiac, i love you and i miss you. Boom shellak a laka.

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