The Tits are Alright

In Orlando, I was eager to see Florida's Best Band (in my line of work, caps=important), Jeanie and the Tits, perform in what I thought was a gay bar, but was really just a former Kinko's with a bar installed where they used to keep the collater, but they removed said collater, replaced the smooth jazz with The Misfits, and painted the walls in muted darktones. In other words: Hip.

I say I was excited not just because I hadn't left my parents' house in almost a week--weary of the drudgery of hottub sessions, cable TV, good books, and January Central Florida relaxation--but because Jeanie and the Tits make me feel just a little like Kim Fowley, without the lechery and showbiz acumen, of course.

In December of 2005, I did a live talkshow in an Orlando bar reminiscent of the taverns in late-70's country/western films where a chairsmashing bottlebreaking fistfight inevitably transpires. Jeanie and the Tits played on the show, billed as the World's First Teddy and the Frat Girls Tribute Band.

(Teddy and the Frat Girls, aka Sheer Shmegma: A mystery from West Palm Beach. The Best Florida Punk Band, and Possibly the Ultimate Proto-Riot Grrl Band (but far better than riot grrl, due to the humor). Songs appear in Kollected by Dorks comps, Homework comps, and the Killed by Florida LP. EP on Alternative Tentacles. Scatalogical and incompetent, nobody sounds like them anywhere, like a hearsay attempt at what punk rock sounds like without actually hearing punk rock, thus making it more punk rock than any authentic "punk rock." One song ends with singer Cookie Mold screaming "RAPE!" for reasons not entirely clear. Legend has it that Cookie later faked her death, then became a born-again Christian, renouncing all involvement with S.S./T&FG. In other words, they put the "Florida" in "Florida Weird," and damn if I don't see this band as being everything truly (as in, not predicated by scenes or ambition) terrific about the advantages of creating in the geographical isolation of Florida, a state with as many bad stereotypes as Utah and Jersey).

At my wonderful talkshow, "the Tits" played the entire Frat Girl recorded output, even (after I shouted for it) "The Eggman Don't Cometh." The set was a marvelous example of four people who don't know what they're doing while knowing exactly what they're doing even if it looks and sounds like they don't know what they're doing. In other words--pure entertainment, unsullied by any ambitions except for F-U-N.

In full bushleague Kim Fowley mode, I wanted to get Jeanie and the Tits to the Almost Bigtime. In other words: The Middle West, because this attitude reflected the kind of thing more bands should be doing. (For example-Sneaky Pinks!) I wanted "the Tits" to play the Blackout, but by the time of the last Blackout, I had about as much clout with them as a 1969 Yippie with the first Mayor Daley (Yowch! Nobody's safe here tonight!).

So the Ta-Tas were forsaken for a couple two three of Jay Reatard's 37 current and former side projects. Time passed. Jeanie and the Tits were now writing and performing their own songs. The Blackout came and went, this time with all the predictable inebriational expectations of New Year's Eve. Summer. Autumn. Winter. I go back to Florida, and Jeanie and the Tits play a show on what remains of Mills Avenue that hasn't been torn down in favor of Orlando's Next Great Transformation--this time not as Hollywood East, or Atlanta South, but as Boca Raton North...in a gussied up ex-Kinko's turned hipster bar.

(Aside: In Central Florida, only the bars look like they've been 2-3 other businesses before being bars. Most of the buildings are under 25 years old and haven't had a chance to really dignify (assuming pink stucco can "dignify") and be more than one business, except for bars in former Kinko's, Long John Silver's, Denny's and Pizza Huts.)

Upwardly mobile Orlandoans throw around the word "fabulous" the way gangbangers on the corner throw around "bitch." But the bartenders actually ask you how you're doing, so if they are in fact trying to be a hipster bar, they have a ways to go, at least compared to their yankee brethren. I talk to Rich from Florida's Dying (Hi Rich!), while the opening band, a couple youngsters from Lakeland, sloppily grungeout like it's 1992. I've been to Lakeland, and my guess is that it is in fact 1992 there. Which beats 1974, the year it was the last time I drove through about seven years ago, but not by much.

The band room was separate from the barroom, so I missed the climactic prop guitar smash (the guitarist even wore a robe and mumbled) finale, talking to Rich while a wasted dude in a Tigers ballcap and gold brah chains like you only see on Florida crackers and Brooklyn Puerto Ricans, laughed like he was trying to imitate Ray Liotta in "Good Fellas" sucking down a helium balloon. Naturally, this laugh was not 1/10th as cool as he thought it was.

Which brings us to Jeanie and the Tits. I'm pleased to say that the original Titsongs are right-on logical extensions beyond the initial idea. Like a snottier Twat Vibe, if that means anything (it should). Amateurish and refreshingly apathetic, energetic without having to make a huge production out of it, you just want more bands to follow their lead. They've been practicing...but don't hold that against them.

In New York, you can get a bagel at 3AM, and in Chicago you can fart into a microphone on a stage and you're guaranteed an audience of at least 50 (or host a talkshow and you'll be sure to pull in at least 25), but only in Orlando can you see what stared out as a Teddy and the Frat Girls tribute band, and then drive home in January with the top down, blasting "The Dicators Go Girl Crazy," down I-4 past the Ugliest Skyscraper in the World (again: caps=Serious Shit)...and maybe it's nothing much, really, but really--you could do much, much worse. Like Indiana....