Gravy Train!!! vs. Jared Swilley of the Black Lips
In the October issue of Maximum RocknRoll Brontez from the Bay Area multicultural Queercore/pop/Electroclash leftover whatever you want to call it band Gravy Train!!! writes a scathing installment of a column, called “She’s Over It” in which he points some pretty damning words at Jared Swilley from the Black Lips, painting him as a racist.
The column begins with a disclaimer, “TO ALL COLUMN READERS: I’M ABOUT TO TALK HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLA SHIT (be warned...)”
From there he begins the column with “Fuck Jarrod sic. from the Black Lips.”
In his column, Brontez tells a story about hanging out at B Jay Womack’s, which is known to the locals as “The War Room,” after Gravy Train played a show at The Drunken Unicorn a few months back. He goes on to include some pretty illicit details, such as “Everyone was popping shrooms” and “...doing shitty coke...” He also adds that he got cozy with a “hot hooker boy on the couch.”
From there he describes a party that sounds like a scene lifted straight out of Gummo. A tanning gun was being passed around and Brontez claims that Klan jokes, immigration jokes, and various racial and ethnic jokes were thrown about so flippantly that afterward one member of Gravy Train!!!, keyboard player/dancer FUNX (who is of both Jewish and Latino descent) felt so alienated that she cried afterward for not speaking up.
This is perhaps the best part of Brontez’s rant:
“My homegirl had to sit down in the other room and come down on shrooms and listen to those hipster redneck motherfuckers talk all of this insane pro-Klan shit about how ‘the Mexicans’ need to ‘quit complaining’ and pull themselves out of poverty like the Irish Catholics...”
Anyone who knows or has spent any time around the Black Lips, whatsoever, knows that they like to test the limits of acceptable social behavior, but racists they are not. Brontez’s account sounds like he was having a bad trip, and because of his admitted drug use, his story seems to be a bit suspect.