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What:
Feable Weiner w/ International Orange
When:
Friday, Oct. 29 10 p.m.
Where:
Patrick Sullivan’s
Cost:
$5
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Great Hair and Hot Chicks
Feable Weiner is well endowed where it counts
by Molly Kincaid
There must be something about having your hair stroked by adoring females in other countries that makes a musician really feel like a rock god. Though Atom Anderson, co-frontman of Feable Weiner, is fiercely aware of the band’s cultish popularity, which seems to grow like kudzu, he was taken aback when a hair-fondling scenario occurred during the Murfreesboro band’s recent UK tour with the band, Bowling for Soup.
“We walk out of the bus and they’re calling out our names and trying to touch our hair. That was just unreal. We were like, ‘How do you know us? We haven’t even played the show yet!” recalls Anderson. Due to frequent airing of their wacky video for the song, “San Deem Us Ready,” on Europe’s version of MTV2, FW has fostered much hysteric adulation overseas.
Anderson is a bit bewildered by their success, especially due to the band’s spontaneous beginnings. “We were actually a band elected by the people in many ways,” he says. “We started as just a funny side project for another harder-rocking band Josh [FW’s other founder] and I were in, just playing at open-mike nights.” Soon, their ever-present lewd lyrics and poppy panache caught on with their fellow Middle Tennessee State University students, who began pirating the duo’s live shows and circulating their tapes through the dorms.
Since that time, bassist Ben Harper and drummer Billy Slattery have jumped onboard, topping off the band’s crazed energy with dynamic beats and clean harmonies. Their first, and only, album, Dear Hot Chick, released in 2002 on Heinous Records, is an animated, unkempt riot of pop and punk that is intensely addictive.
It would be obvious to compare FW to other bands that weave bubblegum pop with punk and rock elements like Fountains of Wayne and Jimmy Eat World. While many of these contemporaries attempt to delve into introspective subjects and end up sounding contrived, Feable Weiner is refreshingly one-track minded: they focus solely on the opposite sex. Not a few, not most, but every track on Dear Hot Chick deals with women in one way or another: be it pleading for a date, daydreaming about a teacher, or falling in love at first sight.
The horny vibe that pervades the album, however, is not just the immature ranting of prepubescent boys. Anderson admits that all four bandmembers “have a very healthy fascination with women.” Perhaps this hangup, coupled with years of girl-chasing experience (from typical befuddlement to occasional attainment), accounts for the candid hilarity that characterizes the band’s loveable lyrics.
“Attorning Me On” chronicles Anderson’s year-long obsession with his distractingly leggy college professor. “I pretty much spent an entire week of class writing that song. I was supposed to be paying attention, but I was paying a lot of attention to something else... But she did it on purpose!” he insists. The song’s lyrics recount her torturous teasing: “Blessed are the shoulders that maliciously hike the teacher’s tapered hemline to a new height.... She’s an attorney and turning me on.” As do most of the tracks, this one pops with a liveliness worthy of headbobbing and air-guitaring.
The sex-crazed and farcical songwriting can’t be credited to Anderson alone, as he points out. He dotes profusely on his writing partner, Josh Watson, who also shares the band’s singing and guitar duties. “It’s a very Lennon-McCartney relationship,” says Anderson.
Though it may seem a stretch to compare FW to the legendary Brit pop icons, there is an eerie resemblance. Not only do all four members have shaggy mod haircuts, they seem to hail from a different era when clad in their FW-monogrammed tuxedos.
The band’s loyal following of fawning females is also reminiscent of The Beatles’. “Our fans go to great lengths to show us they love us,” says Anderson, citing fans who’ve fashioned their own outlandish Weiner t-shirts to wear at shows. Even the band’s Internet message board seems to have its own inside lingo, as online gabbers strive to “spread the weiner gospel.”
By no means does the sometimes-raunchy, but usually PG-13 style of Feable Weiner’s music only appeal to women. In many ways, they’re living out every guy’s dream. Case in point: in the aforementioned video, the band rocks out in the MTSU gym, while a gang of voluptuous girls work out seductively around them. The girls are obviously wooed by the bandmembers’ benchpressing, even though they can’t lift much more than the bar, reinforcing the band’s characteristic geek-appeal. Though secondary to their boisterous super-charged sound, FW’s direct humor and self-deprecating quirkiness make “putting the weiner in your ear” an irresistible diversion.
October 28, 2004 • Vol 14, No. 44
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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