Porcelain & the Tramps

Porcelain and the Tramps: Homemade Tattoos, Jack Daniels, & Maverick Dispatches to the Mannequin Generation

by Brent L. Smith (Imagozine, April 2007)

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Hunter S. Thompson

Is there any hope for Rock in this post-9/11, pre-apocalyptic age of new excess, pale indifference and nurtured mediocrity? This decade is nearly over, and what do we have to show for it? New oil wars, accelerated climate change, and The Hills to name a few. We are, I suppose, in the midst of all this, the Neo-Lost Generation as we all seem wrapped up in aimlessness and division.

Call me crazy, but I don't think I'm the only one unhappy with the direction of today's music, specifically Rock. Where's the frenzy and unification and liberation among the young generation; something that sparks from the tortured depths of artists bearing loud instruments and shouting crude lyrics, giving a purpose to those who can't bear the pain of being young and misunderstood? Well, it seems to be dead and buried. And it has been ever since the suicidal front man of Nirvana (America's Last Great Rock Band) finally pulled the trigger. So, it appears the adolescence of the new millennium is S.O.L. when it comes to anything ground-breaking or inspirational, even half-way decent.

Wellll, I say fuck that. And so do four wild-eyed heathens who call themselves Porcelain and the Tramps.

I'm sitting in their loft in Downtown LA, sharing the loud traffic-jam noise of Koreatown's 3square-mile. It's a hot spring day and Snake hands me a frozen-cold bottle of Jack Daniels. I swig big without wincing (a bit of a struggle trying to act harder than I really am), and I hand the bottle back. Porcelain lounges casually in a slender white tube dress and purple jeans, there are traces of neon blue in her raven-black hair, and a few rings on her fingers are obscuring some of the tattooed letters on her eight knuckles spelling R-O-C-K-C-I-T-Y. She starts riffing as I feel the whiskey do its number.

To start from the beginning: Porcelain, the gritty enchantress lead-singer who was raised in Detroit, Michigan, met her future manager in a fluke encounter at the W Hotel during a last-

minute trip to Manhattan. "You guys are just what I'm looking for!" That kind of thing.

Something that every aspiring musician is dying to gamble on. So, at the age of seventeen she packed up and moved to Los Angeles, where a few months later she met with people at Virgin UK, was signed, and for the past three years she and the other members have put every fiber of their rugged being into a long-awaited debut LP. Their edgy and colossal sound is a supernova collision of Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, with a twist of Cherie Currie femme-fatality. Multi-colored hair and tattoos galore (most of their endless amounts of tattoos are homemade, by the way. They spend days and nights branding each other with beautiful art. An odd ritual, but binding nonetheless). The other members: Snake (Guitar) / Rocko (bass) / and Elmo (drums) look like they were threw up on by the Sex Pistols, with maybe a bit of spew from Slash pre-Use Your Illusion I & II. We talk music, we talk politics, we talk about loathing day jobs. I finally get to their stuff.

"In an age of music genre ambiguity, specifically rock, how would you guys classify your music if you had to?" I ask. With shrugging shoulders and wandering eyes, Little Miss Porcelain simply answers, "Sexy Fuckcore Industrial, bitch". Fair enough. Rock hasn't been this happily cantankerous since 93's In Utero.

They have the sound. They have the talent. They have the image. What's the problem? Why haven't they taken off?

The problem: wretched studio executives.

The fact that their Myspace page has over 1 million hits and over 140,000 plays isn't enough for the big heads at Virgin UK, who wish to mold these deep-rooted metalheads into manufactured pop-rock softies in hopes of rivaling names like Gwen Stefani. "They pretty much wanted me to rap. They wanted me to be like Fergie. I wasn't into it," Porcelain told me, disappointed and exhausted.

So, what did the band do?

With their album pending and their integrity at stake, they decided to drop both their manager and Virgin UK in hopes of seeking out more artistically-aware labels. As for management, they went with Ten Ten, a company based in Nashville, Tennessee. With the help of Bobby Huss at Ten Ten, they would lay down some new, fierce tracks and scout the Earth for a label that wouldn't put a stranglehold on their work.

"It just seems that art is the last thing they worry about, y'know?" Snake told me. "It's a constant war between what we want to put out and what they want us to put out."

"That's why they call it the music business," Porcelain continued, cutting me off. "It's a fucking business. It's very rare that you'll have an A&R [Artist and Repertoire] guy who has ever written a song in his entire fucking life. In the end, they really don't care about music. Not to talk shit or anything, but that's how it is. Because you'll even have bands that do have amazing potential, but

you'd never know it because labels are always changing them. If they would let bands just be, then I think there would be more overall success in the music world."

Rocko stands up and snags the frozen, mammoth bottle of Jack Daniels as Snake adds, "and I think that kids today are getting smarter about it too. A lot of them aren't buying into the bullshit that's being put out anymore. I'm seeing the crowds at metal shows getting bigger and bigger and these are fans that would live and die for this kind of shit, y'know? So with that, you have bands who are selling their personal belongings just to have some gas money for the next show. It says something when the band has passion, and even more when the fans have passion. You just don't get that with pop."

It's certainly the case that a lot of the youth today are detaching from mainstream pollution and getting in touch with the fresh air underground. It seems Rock is on a perpetual verge and bands like Porcelain and the Tramps are doing what they can to break the mold and shed some light on restless audiences.

In addition, I found out that this band has a different definition of the word mainstream. As opposed to being in the limelight, getting nominated for tons of Grammy's, selling products on television, and simply going through the motions of the industry, "being mainstream, to us, is just being accessible. Period. All we want to do is make our music and tour the world. It's not some gimmick or show to put on, it's our lifestyle," Rocko put it delicately.

A combative mindset and a passion that won't quit. Restless youth encapsulated. They potentially could've made a killing in the music industry if they had stuck with Virgin UK and danced to their tune. The price, obviously, wasn't worth it for them. Why should they change? I'll guarantee you that songs like King of the World, I Feel Perfect, You Want, Fuck Like A Star, or My Leftovers are unlike anything on the radio today. They're pushing the envelope and combining new and old methods for a fresh, raw, blood-pumping sound. It's hard to tell the future these days, but I think Porcelain is on to something.

The genre of Rock has been out of the game for quite some time, leaving us nothing but a bunch of substitute teachers (via Fall Out Boy and The Used's achingly disappointing second album) to keep us mildly entertained. Which is why I feel bands like Porcelain and the Tramps are playing a pivotal role in attempting to once again raise the bar for a new Rock era long overdue.

Porcelain had more, "we just want to be apart of something that defines our period."

In the recent past, I've come to know our generation as the Mannequin Generation. One of designer-bearing, outside-mall-dwelling pretty (but faceless) individuals who are drifting further away from each other and more toward mundane impulses. Our decadence and depravity is reaching the likes of the 80's (minus the synthesizers?). Not that I'm anyone to say any of this is a bad thing. Hell, it might be a great thing. But I think a new, young definitive rock band would do us some good.

Should we bother hoping for Rock in this flux era of digitalism, terrorism, hyper-consumption, and accepted mediocrity? All I can say is keep a sharp eye and an even sharper ear. The answers are underground.