Hobosexual are a band, a loud ideal, a state of mindfucking. Formed from the remnants of Iceage Cobra and Vindaloo, Hobosexual (Ben Harwood and running mate Jeff Silva) have released a self-titled album of mad, scattered, full-frontal rock attack. It's a sound with scurvy, a creaming of fuzzed amplification that builds and fans out. Way out. Think Thin Lizzie and Black Sabbath burning on a pyre of Lincoln Logs. It's a bloodletting of wattage with loping, chunked stacks of heaving guitars. Harwood and Silva are possessed by one purpose: to deliver rock. Their creed is "Fuck anything that doesn't have some good, old, sturdy wood-grain paneling." For singer/guitarist Harwood, music is the passion of his Christ. He bleeds with it, screams with it, and fires it off. The Hobosexual sound is hard to follow, and Harwood, who went to Pacific Lutheran University on full scholarship for composition and performance, wants it that way. If you're afraid of the rock, don't listen.

Why the name Hobosexual? What does it mean?

I feel like lots of music these days plays it safe. Bands lack danger—pretty much all creative media does. That's why nothing's as funny as movies like Blazing Saddles orGhostbusters anymore. Or, say, as arena-packing charged as Kiss's Love Gun.

I toyed with cumulative, over-the-top descriptors like Chubby Bunny and Mechagodmothra. I almost went with my buddy and ex–Iceage Cobra bandmate Jordan West's suggestion to call the band Sex Destroyer.

At the time, I was working with my friend Matt Ehlers. Matt had agreed to step in and help me out on drums for a recording spot I'd reserved with producer/engineer Brian Brown [the Blakes, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head]. One night, we were sitting on his couch listening to NoMeansNo for the 400th time, and Matt said he considers me the founder of the Classic Hobo Tom Petty Motherfucker Seattle Look. Maybe it's my two-ice-cube Macallan scotch, with the boat shoes and fedora. Somewhere in there, Matt dropped the word hobosexual. We laughed pretty hard. So it came from his verbal riffery.

Matt was hesitant, as was I. We knew it could be construed as un-PC or even offensive. Then again, we knew it fit a lot of the parameters I almost subconsciously wanted, and it had happened in a creative context. We later Googled hobosexual and found it is a real, actual term used for everything from jokes to social movements.

Hobosexual, to me, doesn't really mean anything. It can be anything from funny to a literal way of living life simply. It's the kind of name that turns some people off, makes others laugh, and outright offends others. If anything, I'm making fun of myself with all this.

Describe the Hobosexual sound. Where does the magic happen?

Bearded glory. I like to get into a place with my writing where I'm slightly uncomfortable but sorta yearning to go there. I also love the idea of the 1980s. Not necessarily the actual decade or reality of the 1980s, but more the one-liners, like when Schwarzenegger throws a steam pipe through the chest of his assailant at the end of Commando and says, "Let off some steam." That whole rhetoric, over-the-top Reaganomic banter will never be seen or heard again.

In terms of the magic, I'm always thinking of the not-too-distant future, and there's this astronaut who's on one of those oxygen tethers, and he gets to the point where the tube won't let him go any further. At risk to his life, he cuts the cord so he can go a few more feet out, maybe go somewhere no one else tried to go. Yeah, he may die, but he may learn something important through his decision to push the envelope. That and they'll probably just send one of those unmanned probes out to scoop his passed-out ass up and bring him back to the station. So why not go out on a limb? That's where I like to start.

I tend to just get ideas, like riffs, and finished songs just sorta pop in there. That's usually after I've cut the aforementioned oxygen tether. And I love to write lyrics just hopping off previous syllabic cadences, trying to create an abstract, yet connected set of phrases.

All this stuff usually only happens after I've had something significant happen and/or some sort of learning experience. Most of the Hobo record came from my state of mind after being laid off from my job, staying up until four in the morning watching '70s B movies like Capricorn One and reading a lot of Dostoyevsky.

Hobosexual ll Vinyl release + MP 3 Download. Numbered.
CONDITION : NEW
TRACK LISTING:
SIDE A:
1- Annihilator   2- Sex Destroyer
3- Switchblade Suburbia   4- The Black Camaro Death
5- Squish It!
6- The Creep
SIDE B:
7- GhettoBlaster
8- Hostile Denim
9- A Motherf#%kin' Song About Robots
10- Bums of 2071
11- BMX
12- Mechagodmothra
JPHBX8-2MM


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