Who: Slow Nerve Action
Where: Boot Pub
When: Monday, Feb. 2
It’s the second coming for local porno-party funk jammers Slow Nerve Action this Monday and lead singer Chris Berry can’t decide whether he’ll wear his trusty Speedos or a jockstrap onstage.
Good to know that some things never change.
It would be nothing less than bizarre if the band’s return featured matching slacks, shirts and sweater vests, and a lyric sheet about holding hands and exercising abstinence. As Berry’s apparel dilemma indicates Whistler’s favourite band of musical nymphos are back and they’re dirtier than ever.
After a hiatus of approximately eight months, during which they lost and regained drummer Mike Lunt, lost keyboard player Ian Lamont, and gained DJ Buddha, Slow Nerve Action is celebrating their return with a Monday Madness show at the Boot Pub. Joining the boys as a special guest will be local organ master Jordan White from She Stole My Beer, adding his trademark harmonious Hammond riffs to the band’s deep down dirty funk-infused sound. White will likely be a fixture with the Nerve for local and Vancouver performances, says Berry.
Buddha, an occasional guest in the past, is now an official Slow Nerve member and Berry says the band is excited about the DJ element adding much in the way of samples, scratching effects and throwing in the odd quirky, funny or dirty quotation/dialogue snippet. The inclusion of DJ Buddha represents another layer to the band’s sound and doesn’t mean the band has headed in a more hip-hop direction, he notes.
Monday night at the Boot is not just a one-night-stand. The band plans to continue playing B.C. shows through the completion of a new album, which they expect to finish by the end of spring, and then launch a cross Canada tour.
There’s an upside to making Whistler the band’s headquarters for the past four years, says Berry. The transient nature of the population means there are usually a couple Slow Nerve fans at each stop along the way, excited about introducing friends in their new locale to a piece of the Whistler scene.
With a lyric sheet touching on lubricants, sexual couplings, groupings and positions, and setting everything the average male thinks about 99 per cent of the time to a dance-worthy groove, the Slow Nerve boys fall on the dirty side of the average R&B loverman flexing his pecs on MTV. But Berry says they have no plans to clean up their act to find some lovin’ from milder mainstream folk.
"I think if we cleaned up, people would be scared, and they’d be thinking that we got scared and decided to change our minds, and that’s not it at all," says Berry. "We’re trying to create our own mainstream."
Now why is it that everything he says sounds so dirty?
Catch the return of Slow Nerve Action at the Boot Pub this Monday night. Call 604-932-3338 for information.
