Necley, who cut his musical teeth in Colorado Springs, joined the latter conglomeration as a second guitarist in 1991, but by the following spring the group was history. Shortly thereafter, Meggitt was approached by Kennedy in a local club. "He was drunk and just sort of cornered me and said, `I'm gonna be in your next band,'" Meggitt recalls. "When somebody tells you that, you have to try them out first."
Originally a drummer, Kennedy converted to bass. The newly dubbed El Espectro then settled in for an extended period of woodshedding during which the players got back to their musical roots.
"Our first guitarist in Rope preferred a real tight, clean sound," Shiramizu says. "We were more interested in a roar."
"We weren't afraid to do something that sounded typical if it fit right, like an old punk-rock riff," Meggitt adds. "We wanted to get that kind of energy back."
El Espectro's abundant power emerges on stage as slacker hardcore--punk rock played by pros. The band's deliberately sloppy attack suggests prehistoric headbangers Blue Cheer wandering through dense, sonic swamps. Fortunately, a sharp sense of melody lurks beneath the clatter, preventing the material from veering into heavy-metal excess.
The driving rhythm section--particularly Shiramizu's powerhouse drumming--propels most songs at a breakneck pace. Necley's huge guitar sound could level a city block; his whining, wind-shear riffs fuel the anthematic "Keef," while his contributions to "U.S. Steel" are as thick and sludgy as 40-weight motor oil that hasn't been changed since the Nixon administration. This technique peaks on "Crush Your Own Velvet," which finds Necley wringing an orgy of feedback-drenched distortion from his abused ax.
Meggitt's minimalist lyrics are largely lost in the band's big din. "I doubt if people catch more than a couple words when we play live," the singer acknowledges. In fact, his hoarse vocals serve primarily as another angry instrument. Meanwhile, his onstage antics--leaping into crowds, rolling in puddles of spilled beer, contorting himself a la Iggy Pop--hold the audience's attention.
"It's just his nature," Shiramizu says of Meggitt's spaz-on-speed stage persona. "There was this time I had a brand-new drum set. John started headbanging, and whacked his head on a stand and split it open. He got blood all over my stuff." Such behavior, he concludes, "really isn't a distraction, except sometimes he knocks people over."
"I tend to drink hard liquor when we play," Meggitt admits, "which I normally don't do. Sometimes the crowd is looking at us like, `Hey, this isn't bad. Should I like this? Is this cool?' I feel like if I throw myself on the floor, then they're going to have to decide one way or the other: `This is cool' or `This sucks.'"
Athough El Espectro has existed for two years, it's just recently secured a permanent practice space (in Meggitt's basement) and begun playing the club circuit. The bandmembers are now busy recording a seven-inch single and a cassette for release by the middle of summer. Although the demos for this project don't soften the group's sound, they reveal hooks and vocal harmonies that are largely lost during El Espectro's live shows.
"The way I feel about it," Meggitt says, "if we have a seven-inch and T-shirts and a tape, we can go on tour. We never look at our watches and go, `Are we famous yet?'"
"We're just interested in hanging out and playing as much as we can right now," Kennedy continues.
The group's raw musical assault--Shiramizu calls it "honest rock"--isn't going to have big record companies beating a path to its door. Realizing this, the musicians are hoping to carve out a niche with the underground, indie-label crowd. Such a realistic outlook is refreshing; no dreams of overnight stardom here.
"You can't really look at things long-term. I've never made any substantial money playing music," Shiramizu admits. "And if you get into it thinking that you will, you're naive."
"If we make a good tape, that's a success," Meggitt declares. "I just want to put out some product and play. A year from now I'd like to be freezing in a van somewhere, scraping up enough money for coffee and a dime bag and playing in some club somewhere for thirty people who don't appreciate us. That's success.
