Before there was a Times New Viking or a Wavves, Justin Champlin was putting on a rabbit mask and flailing around under the stage name Nobunny. All three acts graduated from the Guided By Voices School of Audio Engineering, but each are a bit more garage- and punk rock-minded than their instructors. Of the three, though, Nobunny studied hardest in Fun 101. Maybe it's related, maybe it's not, but of the three his stuff is also the most penetrable.
Part of having all that fun is not taking oneself too seriously, and, according to Champlin, Nobunny is the mutant offspring of a human mother and a jackalope father. By the end of most sets he's down to either a pair of pantyhose or pink skivvies or something else that doesn't cover much, so not only does he not take himself seriously, he also has no shame. He's been doing this stuff since 2001, recruiting backing bands and causing a ruckus across the country that's earned him a dedicated and weird following. According to an interview a couple years ago on www.onlymagazine.net, some fan in Cleveland gave the bunny a BJ onstage. That sort of adults-only situation doesn't jibe with the children's birthday party one might expect to surround a grown-ass man dressed in a rabbit costume, but a blog entry about his performance at the 2009 South by Southwest Festival on Paste magazine's website also describes a post-show photo session between Nobunny and a sibling set of 3- and 6-year-old fans.
Beyond the myth-weaving, though, the Nobunny catalog is pretty thin — especially for a nearly decade-long affair. But what his output lacks in depth it makes up for in ridiculousness. His lo-fi and almost-in-tune garage punk is reminiscent of Jay Reatard's earliest recordings as The Reatards, and the title of Nobunny's sole full-length, Love Visions, might even be an homage to Reatard's Blood Visions. But while both have the same knack for crafting a classic pop-punk song, Nobunny is still a long way from adopting the cleaner and clearer production values that Reatard eventually embraced.
Nobunny's Music City visit is intended to fill some of those recording gaps. An early evening "semi-acoustic" solo performance is slated at Third Man Records, which will be recorded and issued as a limited edition record through the Jack White-operated label. Attendees get a colored vinyl version of the recording, while everyone else will have to order the boring ol' black discs on the label's site. If you don't get a chance to collect on any of the bragging rights of limited edition ownership, you can still catch Nobunny later that night at Springwater with the added bonus of catching tourmates The Spits.
The Seattle trio shares a lot of sonic real estate with the bunny, studying the same Ramones, Misfits and Cramps records for direction, but the Spits take those bad attitudes and use them to muck up early synth-laden '80s new wave as well. They do the lo-fi thing, but they've been a little more proactive in the recording department, issuing four self-titled LPs on three different labels and a whole bunch of EPs, 7-inches and cassettes. Each are chock-full of tracks that hardly ever cross the three-minute mark, with the results landing somewhere between the UK Subs and a meaner-sounding Devo. As as results go, those are pretty darn good.
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