The Creamers

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The Creamers
This article originally appeared in NFH #18 in the winter of 1990.

"I'm nervous", says Lenny as he bounces up and down on the balls of his feet while talking to me and my friend Joe at the Anti-Club. It's mid September, and the opening band is tearing down their gear and Lenny's band, the Creamers, are up next. The crowd is mostly there to see All, who are headlining. According to Lenny, not more than a handful of people are there to see the Creamers. But why should he be nervous, we ask...after all, the Creamers have been playing around LA for quite a while and have a good reputation for delivering an exciting show. They've had glowing writeups in Flipside and Your Flesh in the last six months, so people should be looking forward to seeing them.

"I dunno, I just always get nervous before I play. It used to be I'd just stand still frozen while we were playing, I was so nervous". Outwardly, Lenny seems reasonably calm, but in his eyes you can see a guy who is getting ready to take off. The stage is cleared now, and the Creamers lug all their equipment up on the stage. They're a five piece with Lenny on bass, Judy and Rosa on guitars, Bob on drums and Leesa singing. Everything's ready, but where's the sound man? He's finally located, the PA comes on, and the band roars into the title track from their awesome new lp, Love, Honor And Obey. The image is unique...Judy and Rosa stand nearly still but they just wail on their guitars with chord piled on chord in rapid progression. Bob hammers away at his kit trying desperately to keep up the pace. Leesa belts out the vocals with this husky rich voice that's strong enough to mesh perfectly with the blitzkrieg music. And in the left corner, Lenny's nervousness is being released in what appear to be internal explosions that at one moment slam him into the wall behind him and then hurl him out to the edge of the stage. He pumps his bass furiously up and down surging violently around the stage at the seeming peril of anyone within yards. Rosa stands by imperviously, oblivious to everything but cranking out more of those chords while the bass fretboard flies within inches of her cheek. "I don't know why it doesn't worry me; he's never hit me...at least not too hard", she says later.

Between verses Leesa cuts loose with a variety of 60's styled dances, modified to formula one pace to match the music. The contortions she subjects her body to in the process would bring echoes of cash registers ringing (ka-ching!) to the ears of any worthy chiropractor. This is a most visual band...as if the great tunes weren't enough to suck you right in.

And what tunes they are...this night they play through most of the lp with the exception of the cover "Dead Or Alive", which they replace with the Pagans "Not Now, No Way". Impeccable taste these Creamers have; they also have covered the Eastern Dark's "Johnny And Dee Dee" and are talking about doing Wilmer X's "Down On My Knees Again". The live sound faithfully recreates the lp; no accident there as the lp was basically recorded live in the studio. Which makes me surprised to hear that they aren't too happy with the lp sound; Lenny says he was depressed for months after they finished it, but he finally has gotten to where he accepts what it is for what it's worth. And to me it's worth piles of records by almost any other band around.

The sound is simple high octane punk played at a near thrash pace but with full control and a great sense of melody. A lot of the credit here is due to Leesa, who qualifies in my book as a singer on par with the Avengers Penelope Houston or Legal Weapon's Kat Arthur. She can be rough where she needs to, but she can also be smooth when the occasion warrants. But most of all, she delivers the sort of tough, gutty vocals that you almost never hear from a female front person.

Switch scenes and it's a Sunday night in mid December. The Creamers are again about to play a show, but this time it's the XYZ Club across the street from Mann's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Either a total piece of luck or brilliant booking (...nah!) have landed the Creamers on a bill with the Hard-ons; a perfect match from the names to the music. The Creamers are billed last, so there's time for an interview in the parking lot out back. Present are the entire band, myself, and my buddy Joe, the only person I know crazy enough to stay in LA until two in the morning when we both have to be at work in San Diego at 8 AM the next day. So hold on, here we go...

NFH: So tell me the boring history stuff...

Leesa: The boring history...the Creamers started out as me, Rosa, and this girl named Sue Gorilla, who is the guitar player for Moist And Meaty. We decided to form an all-girl band, so the three of us started it and we started getting gigs right away, and we only had three people and didn't have any songs...just like three songs and they were a cappella...
Lenny: You mean you wrote them in Mexico?
Leesa: Yeah, Acappella Mexico...and people were already asking us to play gigs. So we were having people fill in on the bass and drums, and then we saw Lenny in Crawlspace and we thought he was super great on stage so we asked Lenny...
Lenny: Yeah, but did you hear all the notes I missed?
Leesa: Yeah, that's why I thought it was super great! And him and Bob were roommates and Bob played drums, and him and Bob were in this band called The Nothings...
Rosa: Plus we knew them, too. They were friends.
Leesa: Well you knew them, I hardly knew them. And we asked them to sit in, and we really liked them, and me, Sue and Rosa were all separately thinking, well, let's ask these guys to be in our band, because it's kind of like reverse sexist and bigoted bullshit to have an all-girl band. So we were all like planning how we were going to convince the other two girls that we should ask them to be in the band, but then we all got on the phone and we all wanted that. So we asked them to be in the band and they were real dumb and they said yes.
Judy: They made a BAD mistake.
Leesa: Yeah, they made the biggest mistake of their life.
Bob: Following in our footsteps, huh, Judy?
Judy: Yeah, and I followed them (laughs).
Leesa: So we were together for less than a year and we were just getting ready to do the red record and Sue got this really great job as an architect, and the band was more like a hobby for her, and the architect job was really what she wanted to do, so she decided to go be an architect, and the very same day I found this ad in the music section that said CALL RAMONA. And she said her influences were the Ramones and who else did you say Judy?
Judy: Probably the Sex Pistols, the Electric Prunes...
Leesa: So I called Judy and Ramona wasn't really her name which we thought was even better, and she came and she auditioned and we just knew right off that she'd be really great and she is and we've been together ever since. So that's the boring history of the Creamers.

NFH: You recorded your lp last spring?

Rosa: In May of this year.
Leesa: It took a LONG time to mix it.
Lenny: We were mixed up. We kept going back in to remix it because we didn't know what we were doing.
Rosa: After a while you lose perspective, you know.
Leesa: This guy at IRS was laying out the artwork for us, and Long Gone John was going to split for Europe so we had to hurry up, and everything was on a really tight schedule and this was after we had mixed for three months, sporadically, and this guy at IRS had it all laid out, and he put it in an envelope and gave it to the receptionist, and I was supposed to go pick it up, and I get there to pick it up, and it was a plain, unmarked envelope; it wasn't an IRS envelope or anything and she had just handed it to this courier from hell who took it...that's what we think, anyway. Actually, Guns'n'Roses stole it (laughs). He just took it god knows where, so probably someone at Warner Brothers had our artwork and threw it away. So we had to get all new artwork and the pictures and everything all done all over again.
Rosa: It was part our fault because we took a long time too, so it was part our fault.
Leesa: Well, we took a long time mixing, because we couldn't get it just right, just like we wanted it.

NFH: Are you getting good feedback about it?

Rosa: Yeah, before it was out we got reviews.
Leesa: Just on the test pressing. And I guess Long Gone John sold about 2,000 of them to the distributor.
Lenny: So it went tin foil...we get a pie plate.
Leesa: We've been wondering who's buying it!
Lenny: It's a mystery to us. All we know is it went tin foil.
Leesa: We've sold over 100 copies of the first record at Rhino, and we sold over 100 at Rockaway Records, too, but we don't see 200 people at our shows, so Rosa and I and Judy always joke around that we're going to go stand around Rhino and watch and see who buys it.
Lenny: I confess! It was me!
Leesa: Right...I have a feeling it was my mom (laughs). My mom just goes around and buys up all the records.

NFH: His label is really hip to be on now...lots of people buy his records just because their on his label.

Leesa: It's kind of neat; he's a real smart guy...it's like being on the Motown label or the Phillies label. It's like being part of a family in a way. Because all the bands pretty much know each other and John's just like a big brother or dad when you go see him.
Rosa: And he's a really good worker, too. He's only had that label for a little bit over a year, and he's got all these records out. And it's just one guy.
Lenny: He wastes no time, either.
Leesa: Yeah, and he's really honest. And when we go see him his wife cooks us dinner and shit like that.
Lenny: He signed us just on word of mouth; he'd never seen us or heard us.
Judy: Really? He hadn't heard the tape or anything?
Lenny: He might have heard the single once or twice, but he'd never seen us or seen how we developed since that first record. He just signed us on word of mouth. That's how he is. He just puts out stuff he likes...just rock and roll.

NFH: Do you guys have long range plans now? Where do you go from here?

Lenny: We're thinking about the next album now. We've got to write material for that. We just want to keep improving if we can.
Rosa: Hopefully tour.
Bob: We want to see how far the first album takes us. It's still fairly new.
Leesa: Yeah, the red record was a stepping stone to an album deal, and hopefully this will be a stepping stone to a little bit bigger deal, and then a little bit bigger and keep on going. Everything's going really well for us in England, so I'm hoping someone takes us to Europe. John Peel has invited us to do a Peel Session, so it would be really nice if somebody decided to fly us to Europe.

NFH: Everybody always says that Germany is the good place to go if you're a punk band, and if you're an American band and you go over there you have a big advantage.

Rosa: I guess they appreciate it a lot more.
Leesa: Yeah, that's true of everybody, though.
Lenny: Most local bands get taken for granted in their own home. Probably everywhere I bet. It's too easy to see them.
Leesa: Even if we go up to San Francisco the people are so much more appreciative.
Judy: People here aren't unappreciative. At least people don't stand around; they come up to you...
Lenny: No, people here are great, it's just hard to build your draw because there's a lot of competition. But there's some really wild crowds here that really get into it.

NFH: Do you feel like there's kind of a scene starting to come together around here?

Leesa: There's a lot of bands starting to play this kind of music.
Lenny: Well, I don't feel like there's a scene.
Judy: I think there's like Jeff Dahl and Jack Brewer...
Leesa: It's not the same, but it's the same general umbrella.
Lenny: I don't think it's a scene, though, it's too small.

NFH: It's not really the same type of music, but there are a lot of different bands that are sympathetic to each other.

Leesa: That's why we're all on Sympathy.
Lenny: There's a handful of them.
Leesa: The bands that seem to get the most people and the biggest crowds and the most press are either like the bubblegum heavy metal bands or the super trendy bands...I won't mention any names because I don't like to slag anybody.
Lenny: I guess props are big. And goofiness is real big. And that's not the way we are, so...
Leesa: Which is good, though, if you do it right. I don't have anything against that. I mean, look at the Dolls; they were pretty proppy in their way.
Lenny: Yeah, they were good.
Leesa: But we're not in, you know. We don't play at the Scream, and we don't get paragraphs written about us and la de da...
Rosa: Yeah, and we don't worry about it!
Leesa: Yeah, we don't. And a lot of times somebody will call me for a booking at one of the quote-unquote hipper clubs, and they'll be talking about bands I don't know about or people I don't know...they'll be kind of name dropping and stuff, and I'll just go "I'm sorry, I'm really unhip" and they kind of appreciate your honesty.

NFH: Do you run into a lot of the pay to play stuff up here?

Leesa: Well, we don't do that, but yeah, you do in some clubs.
Judy: There are some, but there are a lot of them that don't, but the ones that do, it really sucks.
Leesa: The people who are most affected by it are the heavy metal bands. The people that play the Troubadour and places like that. I have some friends who are in a bubblegum metal band and they paid like $1500 to open for somebody.
Lenny: I'd rather take that $1500 and make a record. Fuck pay to play. I'd rather do something positive with it.
Leesa: If you have a club, your business is to have bands play at your club, not to have them pay you.
Lenny: For $1500 you can buy some great equipment...
Rosa: You could buy a van and tour!
Lenny: To blow that on one stupid gig!
Leesa: It more affects those kind of people that think they're going to get a big record deal and get on MTV and make all kinds of money, but we're not really concerned that much with that. And the reason they pay that kind of money is they think that's going to help them get that. And yeah, I'd like to see us on MTV someday as much as you see the Ramones or somebody, but I'm not going to pay $1500 to open for somebody for that.
Judy: I think it's wrong even in the small sense for bands that don't have a draw and they're just starting out to have to sell 50 to a hundred tickets when they have ten or 15 friends to come.
Leesa: What we try to do is in some clubs that let us book our own night and book the rest of the bands...not many, but some...we try and take a band that maybe don't have that big of a draw but we think they're really good, and we let them open so they get a chance, and then the last band we book we try to make sure it's somebody with a really big draw so that it helps us.
Rosa: And it helps them too, that maybe the crowd that comes to see us will see them and like them, too. That's how you gain people.
Lenny: If the owners match the right bands they could build up their club, if they learned about the bands.
Leesa: The problem is that most booking agents don't really know much about music. They don't know bands or anything. Just recently I heard this booking agent from one of the smaller local clubs say to TSOL: "Yeah, send me a tape and maybe I'll book you". And he told her where he was from, and I knew he was from TSOL and he wasn't lying. But she just goes, yeah, send me a tape. They don't know...they're like "TSOL, what's that? Do they draw good?".
Judy: It could be like someone who is in the clubs and plays in a band and does the booking for a club, but they'll just book the trendy bands or the ones that they know.
Leesa: Which is fine; they've got to make their money, but they should give other people a chance.
Judy: Which they don't do a lot of the time.
Leesa: Well, actually, we shouldn't complain too much, because people are starting to open up and give us that chance a little more, but it's been, what, two years and two records and lots of radio play and lots of press.
Lenny: It's hard to build a following in this city. Really hard.

NFH: How many shows do you play a month?

Lenny: One or two.
Leesa: In LA, and then we're trying to play out of LA.
Lenny: We're cutting it down because whatever draw we had was dwindling because we were playing too much. After a while it works against you. At first you play whenever you can.
Leesa: At first we used to play in people's garages and in their living room. We've played quite a few living rooms (laughs).
Lenny: We played in a kitchen once.

NFH: That would have to be a pretty good sized kitchen the way you guys jump around!

Lenny: They remodeled it after we played.
Rosa: I think that living room was bigger than the Gaslight.
Lenny: I almost remodeled you the last time we played there. I guess you'll get revenge tonight. I saw that .38 in your purse!

NFH: Are there no places for all ages shows here?

Leesa: There's only two; Raji's and the Anti Club, and they're having a lot of problems with that. I think a lot of the city officials would rather see all age clubs.

NFH: In San Diego the all ages shows seem to have lots of fights.

Leesa: That is true; that is one reason why I'd almost rather play to 18 an older.
Judy: At the Anti Club a fight always breaks out.
Leesa: Yeah, every time we play there there's violence. One of our friends got totally sucker punched in the nose by this guy that outweighed him by like three times for no reason there.
Lenny: It's the testosterone factor. It's an epidemic.
Rosa: Stupidity.
Lenny: Oh, that too, yeah.
Leesa: Nobody's impressing us by going out there and slam dancing so hard that they hurt somebody. And what I hate is I always end up getting hit in the teeth with the mike somehow.
Lenny: And when you watch a band and there's a fight breaking out, your eyes automatically go to it and it's hard to concentrate on the band.
Leesa: And then I feel an obligation to stop the show and try and break it up, and that kind of ruins the momentum.
Judy: But there have been a few times that I was glad that the show stopped for equipment reasons, like my head was falling off the cabinet or I broke a string or something.

NFH: Do you have any great Creamer adventure stories?

(Everybody laughs)

Leesa: We're all thinking of the same thing. We played in this one club...
Rosa: It was a real neat club...
Leesa: It's like an underground parking garage.
Rosa: You go underneath...it's like a warehouse. So Bob was backing up, and I guess he didn't hear Lenny or me going "Stop, stop, stop!" and he kept going.
Leesa: He went to pull forward up this incline, and he has a clutch, so you know how you gun it, and he has a roll bar on his truck, and the garage door has one of these doors that slide, and his roll bar caught on it, and all of a sudden he popped the clutch and shot up the driveway and pulled the door with him, just woosh! And Lenny's just standing there with his mouth open.
Rosa: He just ruined the door.
Bob: We got the whole door that night!
Rosa: We made all this money and then we gave it back.
Judy: Yeah, we had to pay for it.
Rosa: We didn't have to, that guy was saying no, it's OK, but we gave it to him anyway.
Leesa: Yeah, but he paid for the door and fixed it, and I think we got about $95, and I'm sure it was about a $400 door. What else? We have lots of Creamer adventure stories...
Judy: The night my head fell off my cabinet and Bob tried to catch it in the middle of the show. The stage was really wobbly and bow-ey. And Len jumped and the head flew off and all of a sudden I see Bob playing and grabbing it. I think my head fell off three times that night.
Leesa: And then the time we played at the Anti Club and I did the crab dance on the floor, and jumped off into the slam pit, and all these really big guys jumped on me and knocked me on the floor and they wouldn't let me up. I'd start to get up and they'd knock me down again.
Rosa: She was rolling all over the stage.
Judy: It was right in the lead break...
Leesa: And then the doorman and Chris pulled everybody off me and they threw me back on stage just in time to sing the last verse. And then Lenny has this big set list on the edge of the stage and he goes running up and goes woosh (makes like she slips on a banana peel) and flies up in the air.
Lenny: When I was in another band I stepped on a giant song list and fell on my head. You were there, right Rosa? Right on my head.
Rosa: (laughs) Yeah, and you were still holding the bass in your hands.
Leesa: And one time he was jumping up and down at the Swizzlestick and he was right by the wall, and he went BONG and hit his head on the wall and got a big goose egg. And then another time Jeff Dahl was right in front of Judy and Judy was playing and lead, and Judy just goes POW, and cracks him over the head with her fretboard! He hasn't been to a show since!
Lenny: No wonder our crowd is dwindling...they're all in the hospital!
Leesa: Our last show we played at Al's Bar and Lenny was hopping around and he smashed into Rosa and she flew backwards into the drums, and she's laying there playing and I picked her up and I picked the cymbals back up, and then I was just playing with Lenny, but you know how when your adrenaline is flowing you're stronger? Well, I pushed him really hard and he fell in the audience, and after the song he goes: "What'd you do that for, you asshole!" and we had to do another song right away, and through the whole next song I'm thinking and then the song's done and I go over and say "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you that hard". And he goes "Oh, OK".
Judy: This one time I wore this Thai necklace with all these things dangling off it, so we start the first song, and the first song's great, and the second song I'm playing and out of the corner of my eyes I see my necklace go flying, and it lands right by Leesa's feet, and she's jumping like BOOM, BOOM, BOOM around it, and I'm sure she's going to smash it! And she smashes it and it goes flying.
Leesa: Did I smash it? I thought I missed it.
Judy: Oh, it just went everywhere.
Leesa: Oh, I thought it was your ear ring and I missed it. Oh, that was another time. I did this Mexican hat dance around her ear ring. But Bob never has any accidents. We're the only ones who get hurt on stage. And then we've had other little exploits on the road. Like we went to San Francisco and this guy tried to claim that I rear ended him. And I didn't have time to have the insurance company take pictures of my car, because I didn't rear end him and the front of my car was fine, so we're parked in a gas station, and Bob pops it in reverse and goes SMASH, right into to the front of my car, and smashes the front end in, so now I can't prove that I didn't rear end this guy.
Lenny: Pretty goddamn wild anyway.

Joe: As children did you guys envision yourselves in a band as adults?

Lenny: Nope. I like music, but I never thought I could play it. And I still can't...no!

NFH: But you found it's not necessary, right?

Lenny: Bob, you have a story about that right...didn't you get a guitar when you were a little kid, and a leather jacket to imitate Elvis?
Bob: Well, he was my first guitar hero...no, actually my parents said I was bugging them ever since I was three years old to get a guitar, so they got me one, and I started taking lessons.
Leesa: Yeah, and Bob's a good guitar player even though he's our drummer. He's a good guitar player but a shitty drummer (laughs).
Lenny: I played cello! Third grade.
Leesa: You played cello? I didn't know that.
Lenny: It was taller than me (laughs).
Leesa: Rosa played the radio.

NFH: How long ago did you start learning your instruments?

Lenny: When I was 21, but that was a long time ago, though.
Rosa: I started about two months before we began!
Leesa: Yeah, when we first formed Rosa could play two chords, sort of.
Judy: Now she can play three of them!
Bob: We're not real technical musicians, put it that way.
Lenny: Needless to say!
Bob: Judy's a really great player, Lenny's a great player.
Lenny: Segovia Toy!
Judy: Yeah, I'm going to sit down in a chair tonight (laughter).
Joe: What's your approach to writing songs?
Leesa: We just try to be really lame and bogus and stupid.
Lenny: There's different ways. One time one person will write the whole thing, other times we collaborate.
Leesa: Yeah, if it's really bad it usually means that Lenny wrote the whole thing.
Lenny: Or Leesa will come up with the whole melody and we'll put music to it.
Leesa: And then scrap the melody and rewrite all the lyrics to make it good. It's done all different kind of ways, whatever works. Driving in traffic jams.

Joe: What's "The Wrong Embrace About"?

Lenny: It's about how people are attracted to the wrong things.
Leesa: Yeah, like fancy cars.
Lenny: Bad marriages.
Leesa: CD players.
Lenny: Bad everything, and they're attracted to it for some weird reason. Goofy clothes.
Leesa: And the Beatles.
Lenny: It's about me and my first wife...no.
Judy: His first boyfriend.
Lenny: You can edit that one (laughter).

NFH: I have it on tape forever!

Lenny: Thanks, Judy!
Leesa: The lyrics say it all, if you just read the lyric sheet. It's pretty straight. A lot of people take our songs...it kind of makes me mad, when somebody reviews us they should say what the music's like, they try to interpret what our songs are and they get it all wrong and twisted and it pisses me off, especially on the first record, because either we were like castrating feminists or we were like rock sluts.
Lenny: Yup, I'm a castrating feminist.
Leesa: This woman actually called me and she was trying to give me a compliment, she liked the record and she said "Leesa sounds like she would just as soon castrate you as sing for you", and it's like "Yeah, let me go get my knife".
Lenny: You can put this in big print...we just like playing rock and roll period, whatever.
Leesa: Yeah, and people always try to interpret, because there's girls in the band, our lyrics to have a sexual twist and stuff, and we don't really write them with that intention at all.
Judy: They just write the easiest thing, you know.
Leesa: Half the time you read a review, you wouldn't have any idea what we sound like.
Judy: That's true with any band.
Leesa: I just take it more personally because it's us.

NFH: What else ought to be said?

Leesa: Buy our record! I'd just like to say don't be sheep and don't be afraid to be yourself, and try to be decent to other people.
Lenny: That's hard to do.

At this point everybody is freezing so we all give up and head into the club. After a horrible set by the opening act, a brilliant one by the Hard-Ons, and a misplaced one by the Leaving Trains, the Creamers finally take the stage at about 1:30. They're tired, cold (the club has no heat), and pissed because the promoter has them playing so late. But they still burn through an abbreviated set, waking me totally out of the stupor induced by the previous band. The crowd is mellower than the Anti Club show; nobody's slamming, but the Creamers don't back off one bit. Lenny is in Olympic form; at one point he even replicates his set list slip and ends up flat on his back, still playing madly. There's three new songs as good as any of the older material and all in all I left feeling well rewarded for the pains I knew I would endure the next morning.

The Creamers at the moment have two records out; a 7" four track ep and their lp Love Honor And Obey. Both are impossibly great pieces of melodic yet manic punk rock, and you've got a gaping hole in your collection if you don't have them both. They've also recorded a couple of new tracks that will be appearing on compilations...one on Triple X and the other on an English label with a bunch of Blast First bands. In addition, January should see the release of a four track ep on Dave Laing's Dog Meat label in Australia which you'll have to scamper for as an import. Demand that your local shop gets them all!