Audio By Carbonatix
Triumphs may be the current motorcycle of choice among members of the posh Hollywood set, but mention the “T” word to Zeke frontman Blind Marky Felchtone and you’re likely to get clobbered.
“I just can’t get behind anything that pisses oil and was designed on the back of a cigarette package,” objects the bony guitarist/vocalist, who, at the moment, is acquiring some new ink at the Lucky Devil, a tattoo parlor in downtown Seattle. “The same with Harley-Davidsons. You have to drop a Harley out of an airplane to make it go fast. For me, Japanese bikes are where it’s at, man. Japanese bikes and American cars. That’s the ticket.”
It should come as no surprise that Felchtone, an amateur mechanic, admires these high-performance machines. After all, the singer is a bona fide speed freak. He worships fast cars and fast women. He adores fast food. And more important, he loves to play fast music–rip-snorting punk-rock music like the stuff that fills Flat Tracker, Zeke’s new LP on Scooch Pooch Records, a subsidiary of Sub Pop. Clocking in at a whopping eighteen minutes, Tracker is a supersonic shitstorm of a record that finds Felchtone and his fellow Zekesters (guitarist Sonny Riggs III, bassist Mark Pierce and drummer Donny Paycheck) counting off numbers like “T-500” and “Overkill’ quicker than most musicians can strum a bar chord. Even the album’s “slower” offerings, such as the thunderous “Daytona” and the crank-addled “Mystery Train,” barely exceed the sixty-second mark.
This breakneck pace may seem a bit extreme to the average rock listener–particularly those used to the more FM-friendly punk sounds of Green Day and Weezer–but Felchtone insists that anything less would diminish the impact of the band’s sound. “I don’t want to bore anyone,” he explains. “I mean, I used to hate it when I would buy a Ted Nugent album–you know, like Free for All–and the first three songs would be great, and then the rest of the album would be just completely fucking boring. It would destroy the whole record for me. So I like to keep records short. That way, you don’t have time to get bored.”
Point well taken. But there’s more to Flat Tracker than sheer acceleration; Felchtone and his mates also know how to sling a pretty good riff when the time is right. Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Chiva Knievel,” the album’s first single. A molten, mid-tempo rocker with a swaggering chorus and a stinging guitar solo, “Knievel” is one of the best headbangers to come down the pike since AC/DC unleashed Back in Black. Adding to the song’s appeal are its hell-bent lyrics, which describe the exploits of a motorcycle stuntman and practicing junkie whom Felchtone candidly describes as “me. I’m Chiva Knievel.” He amends this admission a moment later: “Well, it’s not exactly me. It’s more like my alter ego. Chiva Knievel is a heroin-addicted stunt guy who does these completely insane tricks on an XR-750. And in order to do this crazy stuff, he self-medicates with, you know, chiva–heroin. But it’s really the riding that gets him high. It’s like me with rock and roll. I’ve done drugs all my life. But it’s the rock and roll that I really dig.”
That’s not to say that Felchtone doesn’t enjoy his narcotics, too. On the contrary, the player is very open about his use of chemicals, especially heroin. The band’s first record, Super Sound Racing, contains several songs whose titles refer directly to smack (“Chiva,” “Relapse,” “Mainline”); and lyrics in other cuts mention acid, dilaudid, alcohol and an array of additional substances. By comparison, Flat Tracker is practically drug-free: Only “Chiva Knievel” and the aforementioned “Mystery Train” allude to the band’s vices. But Felchtone emphasizes that the same cannot be said about him. In fact, he’s something of a pharmaceutical connoisseur. When asked about a previous visit to Denver, he says dreamily, “You’ve got really good speed there.
“Drugs have been a big inspiration for me,” he adds. “But they’ve also been one of the very worst things that has happened in my life. I’m not going to advocate drug use, and I’m not going to warn anybody against using drugs, either. It works for me. What else can I say?”
Like Chiva Knievel, Felchtone also gets a high from motor sports. These days he’s souping up a Suzuki T-500, a vintage racing motorcycle that he says fueled much of Flat Tracker. The bike is not ready for the road quite yet, but it’s obvious that Felchtone is aching to take it for a test ride. “I’ve got the carburetors at home right now,” he announces. “I’m polishing them up, and they’re looking really sweet.”
And you can bet that when that last bolt is in place, Felchtone will be at the head of the pack.
Zeke, with Steerjockey and the LaDonnas. 9 p.m. Friday, March 21, 15th Street Tavern, 623 15th Street, $5, 572-0822.
