Don’t you try to cut off my supply. If anyone does, then everyone dies. I drink it. I rub it on my thighs. I’m so hot for those Arab guys.” “|"hese musicians are making a stand with this band. There will be no compromises, no formulas. Two years ago, when The Grip first began to assemble, the idea for the group was clear. “There is a place for bands that make people get up and dance," Chericone allows. “We want to do that to, but we also want to make them think. We want to take a sentence that has some meaning in it and have that go through their heads — not another fucking cliche. You can call it art if it starts giving you ideas.” Chericone joined the Army at 19, “out of a true sense of patriotism.” When he returned from Vietnam, he didn’t want to play piano (he had learned at the age of six). But Vietnam vets couldn’t get work — “they thought we were closet psychopaths" — and Chericone kicked around for several years, leaving behind the Chopin and Ravel and Rachmaninoff he’d grown up on. Finally eight years ago he started playing again, but it wasn’t the same. “Vietnam cracked open the darker side of American culture for me.” The band has come together from every part of the land. Co-founder Karen Brooks (rhythm guitar) started playing piano as a child in St. Louis, and picked up the guitar 12 years ago. She is best known locally for her restaurant column in Fresh Weekly. Bassist John Windwalker started playing drums at age six on Block Island, Rhode Island, from which his father played in big bands on the East Coast. He has years of experience playing bass across the entire spectrum of styles. And drummer Clay Woodward started out playing country and western in Enterprise, Oregon. He wanted to be a rock drummer, “but there was only one band in Enterprise and they had a drummer,” so he moved to Portland. The rhythm section produces a hypnotic effect. As Windwalker says, “It’s a pulse. We’ve got a good pulse. We try not to do it with volume. You have to do it so you can hear the instruments.” The tight rhythms allow Chericone, guitarist Peter Dammann and vocalist Mira Wilder to be adventuresome, and their solos give the band a jazzy feel in the middle of those New Wave tom toms. Mira Wilder will never be mistaken for Little Leslie Gore, Melanie or Toni Basil. She grew up in L.A., lived in Israel and Europe, and came to Portland 8V2 years ago, “disillusioned with the druggie/hip- pie scene” of the L.A. music world. Wilder can be scolding, sneering, provocative and dangerous on stage. The band’s cover of Marianne Faithfull’s “Why D’ya Do What You Did?”, a tough, ribald, scourge-of-love ballad, shows her off to good effect. And so does the band’s other “love” song, “The Motel Song.” “You’re a five dollar mirror In a cheap motel. I look into your eyes, I see the furniture of hell.” It’s a revenge song and Wilder has the long knives out, carving up the objects of her hatred. “A mistake of loneliness I won’t repeat. I get so hungry, But you’re such bad meat.” What does The Grip mean to Wilder? "I would say that we are a new political sound for the Eighties. People need to be shaken up. The coming generation will know what we mean. The world is a depressing place for people. They’ve got a nuclear bomb going off in each of their souls.” Lead guitarist Peter Dammann is another Willamette Week writer. Guitar has become secondary to the synthesizer in most New Wave bands, but Dammann is counted on for many of the musical ideas of The Grip. He draws heavily on a Chicago blues background, and jazz study with Max Roach, Ron Carter and the like. He also studied classical music for six years. Of all the band’s musicians, Dammann is evolving the most rapidly. On earlier versions of songs like “For the Rulers” (“You haven’t changed at all./Eat your lies/with the flies of the flies of the dead.”), his solos were mainly blues inspired. More recently, there crop up jazz surprises and an occasional classical reference. “There aren’t any rules with this stuff,” he says, “It’s not stylized." There’s a lot of freedom in The Grip. Songs take months to develop into their final form, and there’s give and take in the process. More importantly, there’s the sense that these musicians are making a stand with this band. There will be no compromises, no formulas, and that is liberating. “I don’t care if I’m successful anymore. I spent time begging,” says Chericone. “I’ve got nothing left to lose.” Happily that marries quite nicely with the politics of the band: “Red star burning bright in the sky./This life of chains is gonna die.” ■ Barry Johnson is a Portland editor and writer. 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