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| Punk Floyd at Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco. |
As Keyboard and Electronic Musician art director Patrick
Wong and I are now on the fractured tribute-band scene with our “Punk the Monkees”
concept act, the Trouble with Monkeys, we’re meeting some very strange groups indeed.
One such crew is Punk Floyd. While it’s no shock these cats do punk versions of Pink
Floyd classics, you really have to experience the trio live to appreciate the speed and
ferocity at which those songs are unleashed.
Guitarist John Poultney (a.k.a. David Killmore) weaves his nightmarish tonal textures
with an ’80s Strat clone (a Seymour Duncan Twang Banger is in the bridge position),
D’Addario strings (a .012 set), and Dunlop .88mm picks. Poultney’s amp is a tiny Marshall
Reverb 12 screwed onto a barstool, though he replaced the stock 10" speaker with
a Celestion G12-65 to get more bass. For “One of These Days,” the guitarist switches
to a ’40s Magnatone lap-steel, and for the sequencer bits of “On the Run,” he uses a
Korg Monotribe ribbon synth, a Korg miniKP Kaoss Pad, and a Yamaha SU-10 sampler
routed through a Realistic 4-channel mixer into a ’70s-era Roland Cube 40.
Bassist Matt Granz (a.k.a. Roger Rotten) pummels his ’80s Ibanez Roadstar II (picked
up at a garage sale for $50) as if his wrist were a possessed jackhammer, and his Gallien-
Krueger MB150S is set to an absolutely barking-mad midrange. The aggressively polyrhythmic
Skip Hovorka (a.k.a. Brick Napalm) rounds out the trio on his Sonor drum
kit. The overall effect is seriously clever, musically compelling, and, ultimately, frightening.
It’s as if all of Syd’s and Roger’s demons were dumped into a gallon jug with a
horde of pissed-off killer bees. Beware. facebook.com/pages/Punk-Floyd.
I don’t have to share a bill with your band in order to put you in this column. Just email me a
link to a gig video at mmolenda@musicplayer.com.