PAIN TEENS

Pain Teens are at their best engaging in a peculiar 21st century hypno-dance groove. The hips do all the appropriate obscure gyrations, while the mind wanders to "grassier" fields. Co-founder and vocalist Bliss Blood has the perfect wail/whine to complement the Sonic Youth-ish guitar histronics of partner Scott Ayers and, when all is going right, bass and drums combine to lay down a tremendous, if somewhat tongue in cheek, post-Stooges bedrock. All of which, until relatively recently, languished nearly unnoticed in the humid, warehouse-filled floodplains of Houston.

Bliss and Scott started playing together in 1987 and the first national Pain Teens release came out in 1988 on Trance Records. The current line-up was completed -- and the rhythm section solidified -- in 1991, when Frank Garrymartin (drums) was paired with 1990 bass addition Kirk Carr.

The nation-at-large's first chance to witness Pain Teens in action likely came the spring when they took to the road with the Boredoms and Brutal Truth in tow; an eclectic package to be sure! "It was very interesting," offers Bliss, "because, I guess, we were the best known band -- in some circles at least -- and we were the headliner on the tour, but because of the type of band we are, we can be sort of quiet and moody at times, but loud (!), and with the other two bands -- Brutal Truth, the most extreme noise/death metal you could possibly hear and the Boredoms, who're a cross between the Butthole Surfers and a Japanese hip-hop band -- sometimes it seemed like the energy level had lapsed by the time we got on stage. But, as the tour went on, I felt like we were really hitting our stride and that we could actually follow them.

"We had some agonizing moments though, times when I'd just go up to one of the guys in Brutal Truth and say "God, we suck!" and they'd go "No you don't, it was really good." It was hard. It was a challenge and I think that was a good thing for us." It was definitely one of the most interesting line-ups to come along in a while. "It was funny, because they were almost like these extreme male trip, and the Pain Teens are like an extreme female trip."

Houston is an odd place musically, full of at least as many snot-nosed noise/songwriter bands as cowboy boots, but operating in such a vacuum that the most common path for a group -- no matter how promising -- to tread, is to release an indie, play locally every ten days or so, burn the turn and either disappear or move on. The fact that the average venue lasts 14.2 months or so doesn't help. "The Houston music scene has always been very underrated in the rest of the country until after a band is gone," agrees Bliss. "that's what happened with Really Red and Culturecide, bands like that. It's just a matter of being so isolated from the rest of the country, and since we're not on either coast, we're just shut out of the national media. Nobody sends people to Houston to check out the music scene, but they'll go to Chapel Hill!" Her blood pressure is building; fortunatley, so is the humor. "I mean, 'Oh, Superchunk's from there!"

Is this still a frustration to you, given the level of establishment you've managed to achieve? "Well, like anybody who's making music, you want your work to be acknowledged as it's happening. In a way though, places like London, where there's so much media saturation, it's almsot like an unhealthy thing, because then you have tons of bands where it's like 'Oh, it's the rave trend.' Then you get 4,000 My Bloody Valentine-imitator, shoe-gazer bands! After travelling around the country I've seen a lot of places where I might like to live and where there might be a lot more people who'd come out and see our band, but you can also do that through touring."

Pain Teens have won recent local polls as Houston's Best Experimental Band. But perhaps even this fairly liberating category is a bit too constricting? Isn't there some straight 'rock' in there?

Bliss explains the sorry state of the arts. "Unfortunately, there's all of these separatist viewpoints about music, where it's either go to be one thing or another. That was one of the reasons I wanted to play with the Boredoms and Brutal Truth, because they're genre benders and so are we in a way. We don't play, you know, strictly industrial, improvisational jams. Although we have played those as part of our set before. We're trying to incorporate some of the sound textures of experimental music into rock. Some of the people who are in the extreme noise bands look at us and say 'Well, they're not very experimental,' yet up against the alternative bands, we're just not popular enough."

Niche carving is definitely the high road, but it's also the most satisfying and -- if successful -- the longest lasting. The new album DESTROY ME LOVER is currently available. The road will likely beckon shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Scott has been working on soundtracks, including one for a New York stage adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel THE KILLER INSIDE ME, and Bliss has been writing with fellow Houstonians The Mike Gunn.

Did someone say artists?