They Came From the Sea

By Skylaire Alfvegren

LA Weekly: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 - 12:00 am

“What gets everyone turned on when they go to see a show, like what gets the kids turned on when they go to the Warped tour, or when people went to see Roxy Music, is that it’s a little bit nasty and raunchy — that’s a good feeling,” says Yin. “That’s what makes playing guitar or beating on the drums fun. We love the beauty that a musical instrument can create, but we’re also there to throw in a hormonal, visceral element.”

“Yeah, rock & roll should be sexy,” says Quine.

There’s a story behind everything, including the cast of Sex With Lurch. There are the Lurchettes. “It started off one queen at a time,” Quine says of Electra Lux, Brandy Warhol and Lady Dante, the band’s transvestite backup singers. Yes, there’s also a Lurch, although the band is not about having sex with him. Exceedingly tall and gaunt, and made up like the Addams family’s butler, the Lurch in question deejayed in Orange County under that moniker for two years before a friend brought him to a Sex With Lurch show. He can be glimpsed doing “a go-go zombie shuffle” and playing theremin directly behind Yin onstage. Bassist Dawn Laureen and drummer Roy Staley add the perfect surf-oomp beats to the SWL experience. Recently, the band has also been performing with Aniela, a cellist.

And then there’s the enigmatic Paul K, seen onstage perhaps dressed as a chicken and painting a portrait of Sartre.

“At recent shows, I’ve been passing out propaganda,” he says. “That’s what I’ve decided my role is, Minister of Propaganda, although I haven’t bothered telling the band that. The first was attached to a photo of Robbie’s butt.”

It said, in part: “As Independence Day approaches, I hope that we will all look at Robbie’s butt as a reminder of the freedoms and liberties we as Americans are privileged to have. We may take Robbie’s rump for granted; it is lovely, but hardly worth further consideration. In reality, however, it’s nothing short of a symbol of national pride. Those swirls on Robbie’s derrière are shining emblems of the dreams and goals of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and all other great Americans who dreamed of and fought for a better and freer world. People in Communist China do not get to have butt tattoos. And even if they did, they would not be able to display them with the pride Robbie does. Nor would they have been able to in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. Our great nation was founded upon the premise of personal freedoms, freedoms to express ourselves as we see fit. And Robbie’s behind is the epitome of that freedom, pronouncing to all the world the joie de vivre with which Robbie approaches life, in the only nation in history which enjoys such sweeping rights to pursue nonconformity.”

Sex With Lurch: nonconformists all. Ride their ocean of latex and midnite movie monsters. Release the bats, grab your longboard and come out to see them play.

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