Sounds From The Junkshop #53 - Antiproduct

 

"I wouldn't mind if I could find my place in life/I'm a fool on a string, I'm a bird with no wings and I'm always crashin' down..." - Antiproduct - Bungee Jumping People Die!

Oh lord, Antiproduct. The memories. I must've followed this band all around the north in the early noughties. Even to Hebden Bridge once. To say that they really were a unique proposition is a bit like saying that Keith Moon could be a bit of an excitable chap on the odd occasion. Basically imagine a big bald lad on drums, three Amazons on guitar, bass and keys and a guy up front who looks like a cross between Gene Simmons and Krusty The Clown bombing into the audience and offering the mic around every five seconds. It was insane, it was brilliant and I don't think anyone who ever experienced it is likely to forget it in a hurry.

We've already encountered Antiproduct frontman Alex Kane in these pages via his short-lived Clam Abuse project with Ginger Wildheart. When that inevitably fell through, he would link up with guitarist Clare Pproduct (a classically trained violinist in her spare time!) and veteran session musicians Chris Dale (ex-Bruce Dickinson's band) on bass and Robin Guy on drums (former stand-in for Faith No More among others!) Dale and Guy would both leave shortly after the release of the group's debut album Consume And Die...The Rest Is All Fun in 1999 to form the equally lunatic Sack Trick and the group would refigure taking on new sticksman Simon Gonk, bassist Toshi (who would subsequently leave to join the Ga*Ga's, another future SFTJ entry no doubt, to be replaced by Marina Metallina) and keyboardist Milena Yum.

Alex Kane is actually a man with quite the rock 'n' roll CV - prior to Clam Abuse, he'd started out with Beatles-influenced Chicago glam-rockers Enuff Z'Nuff in the late '80s although by the time they hit big with Fly High Michelle at the end of that decade, he'd been ousted to be replaced by Derek Frigo. From there he started up the utter insanity that was psychedelic glam-thrash band Life, Sex & Death (whose 1992 classic The Silent Majority definitely deserves a Garbage Days Revisited dedicating to it...hmm, there's an idea...). That album swung like a monkey that had ingested a truckload of hallucinogens from blues to thrash to sleaze rock without any regard for boring stuff like genres or continuity. Arguably, it was a foretaste of what was to come with Antiproduct...

To those who never experienced them, it's kind of difficult to describe an Antiproduct live show - complete and utter chaos but chaos of the most thrilling kind. Gonk smashing his kit like he was building a shed, Marina and Milena the two cool-as-ice vixens at either side of the stage, Clare stalking the stage like a giraffe on stilts thrashing the hell out of her six string and Kane the tireless generator at the centre of the storm. Whether it was goading the whole audience into joining in with the opening bars of the group's signature tune Bungee Jumping People Die! (those trying to hide out at the back were often quickly pointed out and had abuse shouted at them), spraying silly string (and occasionally spray paint) around on stage or even getting the whole audience to shout abuse at Trashlight Vision's roadie when they came onstage much to the concern of their unprepared singer Acey Slade (Leeds Met, 2005. I was there. It was probably one of the most awesome things I've ever seen at a gig), you wouldn't forget an Antiproduct gig in a hurry, trust me. Their connection with the Wildhearts certainly didn't hurt in terms of attracting a few fans either - as we mentioned in the GDR entry for The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed, both Toshi and Simon deputised for the band when Danny and Stidi were unavailable on one tour the bands did together.

And they were a bloody hard-working band as well, playing anywhere and everywhere that'd have them. As well as Hebden Bridge, I saw them in Leeds, York, Bradford, Manchester, I think I might even have caught them in Scarborough once although as I've said before my memories of the early noughties are generally a bit waxed due to the sheer intake of booze and...erm, other stimulants shall we say. And that sort of persistence will earn you a seriously hardcore following - Antiproduct's APRA fan club were notoriously loyal even by metal standards. Add a tendency towards every daft publicity stunt imaginable from selling vials of their bodily fluids on their website to being interviewed in adult mag Mayfair, they really were a band outside the box in many senses of the word. And when their second album Made In USA arrived in 2004, it showed them achieving the near-impossible by capturing the full on chaos of their live sound on record with songs like Turnin' Me On and If I Was Orson Welles. They put one single out from it, Better Than This. Which had 15 tracks on it obviously. Reviews were good and it should have been the record to put them over the top.

Except...it didn't happen for some reason. Wrong band at the wrong time? The fact that such utter lunacy always meant that achieving decent sales outside their fanbase was likely to be difficult? Who knows but instability set in with various members bailing out to new bands - Marina joined Eyelash and Milena joined Shush (who I'm pretty sure will be another future SFTJ entry) while Simon picked up a broken foot on tour and still insisted on drumming throughout. Inevitably at the end, he had to leave the band for fear of risking permanent damage. The following months saw a revolving door membership with everyone from ex-White Lion drummer Greg D'Angelo to future Eureka Machines frontman Chris Catalyst serving with the band. Live gigs suddenly started to become rarer and rarer and Kane eventually disappeared back to the States for an extended hiatus.

A third Antiproduct album, "Please Take Your Cash" eventually surfaced in 2009 consisting of half new songs and half re-recorded songs. It was good enough but the lack of new material was a bit of a concern. They even came back over to do a few gigs supporting their old mates the Wildhearts in 2009 and 2010 (Alex and Ginger had fallen out in the interim but subsequently patched things up). But since then...nothing. Various ex-Antiproduct members have resurfaced in other peoples' bands down the years. Both Alex and Clare have done time with both Richie and Marky Ramone's live bands while Clare has also served with the appropriately titled Noizee. Of other ex-members, Milena has also been part of electro-rockers Tecnotitlan as well as Shush while Toshi reunited with Ginger in his excellent Hey! Hello! side project before joining the 21st century Professionals line-up with Tom from the Yo-Yo's and Chris from 3 Colours Red. Robin Guy is currently in Sham 69, the Fiascos (another criminally under-rated band) and probably about three other bands as I write this - he's also had a cancer scare in recent years and thankfully survived it - and Chris Dale occasionally resurfaces with Sack Trick. Simon and Marina? No idea I'm afraid. Phone home if you know.

I miss Antiproduct. The music world seems a much colder and less entertaining place without them around. I mean I know we've got a few bands these days who can claim to put on a good show in the live arena like the Darkness and the Struts but there really is only one A Product. But you know what else? Rather like every classic horror movie villain, something tells me we haven't heard the last of them and they're likely to surprise us with a return when we least expect it. I certainly hope so anyway.