Motorcycle Boy
"Popcicle" -reissue
Triple XXX/Nickel And Dime Records
By Geordie Pleathur
(SugarBuzz Nation)
SugarBuzz Magazine
"IS FRANCOIS STILL THE TRUE KING OF THE HOLLYWOOD UNDERGROUND -WAS AMY WICHMANN REALLY ELVIS PRESLEY'S ILLEGITIMATE DAUGHTER- AND WHATEVER BECAME OF ALICE STARR?" (-by Geordie Pleathur)
I was not born yet when Arthur Lee, the Byrds, Zappa and the Doors were ruling the Sunset Strip. I missed Rodney's English Disco, The Runaways and the legendary Van Halen backyard parties in Pasadena. I missed the golden age of the Gun Club, Joneses, Tex and the Horseheads, 45 Grave, Disgraceland, Mad Marc Rude, Top Jimmy and the Germs as well. Sadly I never got to party with the Go-Go's before they became Republicans. By the time I finally made it out to California to seek my fortune on the Sunset Strip it was all over.
N.W.A. was the biggest band in Hollywood. Grunge was all they played on the corporate-owned airwaves. There were a small group of die-hard Crue Babies still willing to pay-to-play or show up for Thursday night cattle calls at the Coconut Teaszer but really it was already gone. The lingering metal-heads were either "Too Rich To Be Good" or had mostly already packed it and moved back to Iowa to get fat and grow a 
beard in front of big screen brainwash-machines in the franchised suburbs of the United States Of Amnesia. I was even too late to witness the early daze of Guns N Roses that Marc Canter writes about in his lavishly extravagant pricey and authoritative coffee table book "Reckless Road".
So my favorite era of Hollywood rock was all the dirty gutter punk that came along in the shadows of all the power-ballad mongering commercialized hair-bands. The unassimilated flash-metal and post-glam punk'n'roll that happened post Jane's Addiction/Guns N Roses. I deeply loved and adored the smaller club bands like the Coma-Tones The Ultras, Celebrity Skin, Redd Kross, the Nymphs, The Hangmen, Hello Disaster, The Jeff Dahl Group, and Mini-Skirt Mob. MOTORCYCLE BOY were the sleaze-punk underground's first real game-changers. With smartass anthems like "I Hate The Sunset Strip" openly mocking Poison, Ratt and Warrant they were POST-GLAM. Motorcycle Boy were the Cadillac of Dirty Hollywood Punk'N'Roll. Their Flipside 45 remains one of the most important artifacts from that whole era. What the million dollar Brides Of Destruction wanted to be. Shit-everybody wanted to be Motorcycle Boy-from Star Spangles to Red Invasion but no one comes close! The New Bomb Turks and the Dishes covered their songs and the Rapid Pulse Saviors quoted them in the fading grooves of their 45's A-Side.
The magic of Motorcycle Boy was in the undeniable combo of Swiss innovation and striking Mexi-Cali heart throb star-power! Francois was the POST-GLAM Dean Martin. Mister Ratboy was my generation's James Williamson or Johnny Thunders. Obsessive fans of the purple-haired Zeros or Glamour Punk's rabid cult-followers may disagree but in my view they by far the coolest L.A. band since "Live Like A $#@&&%$@ Suic= ide"C or "Too Fast For Love". Francois had Elvis Presley charisma that under-statedsuper cool wrecked-elegant Thee Hypnotics style and a genuine flare for fucking
up on par with oh let's say a less political Jim Morrison or Gio Vitanza from the similarly glorious COMA-TONES. He loved to have fun-he was a true rock'n'roll star.
The World Famous Mister Ratboy's unforgettable driving sleek chrome riffs, that Sun Records slap-back Lux Interior echo on the smoothly crooned vox, shocking pink leopard print melodies, Sylvain Sylvain's blessings, Eden's girl appeal, those amazing suit-jackets, multiple musical-odes to Kenney Toye, those cool hollow body guitars, Creepers and Sputnik-sized glam shags....Irritating Alice Cooper by not learning any of his songs for the audition to appear in his video replacing Kenney Toye with Blackie Onassis from Urge Overkill unsuccessfully replacing Ratboy with a string of dudes I never heard of smoking crack onstage the simply genius marketing of those once ubiquitous "Why Not Fuck A Motorcycle Boy Today?" band stickers they always looked the coolest embarrassed themselves with the most style and personality shamelessly rehashed the same dozen songs for twenty years and counting...Motorcycle Boy were the band most loved by Tinsel-Town's pole-dancers....And me and all my friends. The coolest most rock'n'roll disc you could purchase if you still have an income stream would STILL probably be this MOTORCYCLE BOY re-issue.All the old demos. All the old favorites entertaining liner notes and beautiful photographs. Nobody does it better. (-Geordie Pleathur)
http://www.myspace.com/francoismotorcycleboy