by rudyards | July 9th, 2011
Poor Dumb Bastards (Houston, TX) - PDB was formed in March 1991 by long time hetero life partners and musical collaborators, Mike Porterfield and Byron Dean. The initial interest was to find a means to get into Emo’s for free, later they discovered Emo’s was always free. Drawing on their collective influences and experiences from some of their earlier work, bands like Cretinoid, Plutonium Flatheads and the Byron Weird Group, Mike and Byron set out create a genre all their own, hence “Texas Drunk Rock” was born. Add the non bass playing talents of Steve Scholtes and the competent, metronomic drumming of Chi Chi Macoola, and PDB were able to carve their initials on the bathroom door of the Texas music scene. Through the many years and many lineup changes, but these Ill-minded sewer rockers have stayed true to their founding principals. POWER, PERFORMANCE, PERVERSION
“Punk Rock Payback. Wear your PDB gear get in free. (in a stroke of marketing genius, t-shirts will be available at the door).
Lineup to be annouced. One “lucky” Bitch or Bastard will have the thrill of lifetime, the opportuity to design the evenings attire for the Big Bastard himself…No electricity or fireworks please… ” - Poor Dumb Bastards
The Hates (Houston, TX)
Legendary newspaper journalist Bert Woodall might just have hit the nail on the head, by giving the HATES the epithet: “Houston’s First and Last Punk Band”.
Almost 30 years since the band’s formation, prime mover Christian Arnheiter a.k.a. Christian Anarchy is the only original member left, but his band has become an institution that still wreaks some old-school punk rock havoc upon the Houston, Texas music scene.
On January 4, 1996 Hobart Rowland of the Houston Press said:
Christian Arnheiter has every excuse to sit and sulk. For two decades, his band the Hates has been thrashing away in blissful obscurity, all the while upholding the tattered flag of the punk aesthetic. And now he has to watch as bands such as Green Day, Rancid and the Offspring cash in on the resurgence of a sound that his Houston group had a hand in fashioning in the first place. If he had a mind to, Arnheiter might muster up a few putdowns to go with his been there, done that attitude. But instead of anger, all Arnheiter can come up with is indifference. True punks, Arnheiter will tell you, stow their frustration. They save it for their songs; they use it for inspiration; they take it out on their guitars. And rest assured, Arnheiter is as true as they come, a living, breathing, Mohawked anachronism.
The Wrong Ones (Houston, TX)
“The end of the world has been on people’s minds lately, what with the Mayans apparently penciling in the apocalypse next year and the Rapture rain-checked for October of this ‘un. That preoccupation with the end of the world is why we skipped straight to ‘Doomsday Transmission” on the Wrongs Ones’ new album, Deceiver (Cutthroat Records).
In most of their moments, the Wrong Ones are a textbook punk band. That’s not meant as a knock against them, but what expectations you hold in your head when you’re told that an album is a punk album will be met within standard parameters when you throw on Deceiver. True, it’s a bit angrier than modern punk, and there is a curious lack of artistic difference in that sung vitriol.” - Houston Press
