UUVVWWZ: Alphabet Soup

 
story by tim mcmahan

Lazy-i: Aug. 27, 2008

UUVVWWZ w/ The Show Is the Rainbow, Stolen Kisses Friday, August 29, 9 p.m. Slowdown Jr. 729 No. 14th St. $7

In existence for only a year, Lincoln's UUVVWWZ already has its share of road stories.

Frontwoman Teal Gardner provided a brief sampler, phoning safe and sound from somewhere in the Capitol City. "The tour really delivered when it came to previously unmet levels of debauchery," she said, adding that tour mate Darren Keen a.k.a. The Show Is the Rainbow was "our ring leader."

It was Keen who booked the tour in such places as a cavernous hall in Jacksonville, Florida, that was magically transformed into a scene from Miami Vice. "We were chumming out with guys in the other bands and got the 20-minute head's up to start moving toward the stage," Gardner said. "Then Darren blew past me with a terrified look on his face."

Men flashing shields barged into the club, but these weren't your typical cops, these were members of DART -- the Drug Abatement Response Team. "It's apparently this drug enforcement group of guerilla party ruiners who came to shut down this club because there's this huge problem with drug trafficking in Jacksonville," Gardner said.

She and her band mates were hustled outside as the cops ransacked the place not only looking for drugs but also for code violations. By the time they left two hours later, notices had been posted on windows saying the building was slated for demolition.

The tour wasn't all cops and drugs. There was the show at Mellow Mushroom Pizzeria in Tuscaloosa, where the drummer of the opening band got naked and threw up off the stage (but still managed to finish the set). "People there were frighteningly drunk," Gardner said. "I almost got thrown up on twice just walking down the street."  Merch-wise, however, Tuscaloosa was a gold mine.

There was the house party in Charleston where Gardner crowd surfed for the first time. "I went for a ride with a long mike chord. No one groped me," she said. "The whole room ended up in the kitchen."

And there was New York City, where the band played at Lower East Side venue The Cake Shop. "It was nerve-wracking and difficult," Gardner said. "The sentiment was 'Whoa, I'm playing in New York and there are a lot of frighteningly hip people here.' I finally got to the point in the tour where I didn't want to be in any more bars and I didn't want to memorize any more names. I felt grossed out."

Thankfully, her New York experience was redeemed the following evening when the band played at edgy Brooklyn art space Death by Audio. "I got a good lesson on the kind of spaces I feel more comfortable performing at," Gardner said, adding that the band isn't turning its back on bars. "They're necessary for what we're trying to do -- get a reasonable level of exposure for the product."

"The product" is the band's self-titled debut album released this past June on Keen's It Are Good Records. The nine-song collection was recorded by J.J. Idt (Eagle*Seagull) and Andy Koeneke (Spring Gun) at Fuse Studio in Lincoln (the old Presto! Studio space). The vinyl-only recording (it comes with a CD) captures a band that owes as much to blues and psychedelic music as New Wave punk.

Consisting of Gardner, guitarist Jim Schroeder, drummer Tom Ambroz and bassist Dustin Wilbourn, UUVVWWZ is next-gen post-modern, the natural continuation of a tradition that began with bands like Talking Heads, Gang of Four and Siouxsie and the Banshees and more recent acts like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Deerhoof -- a band that they're often compared to thanks to such wonky songs as the abstract "Jap Dad" and "Green Starred Sleeve," where Gardner is as apt to chirp as sing as scream over the band's blaring, rhythmic calisthenics.

Balancing out the post-punk are shimmering post-blues rockers like "Neo Laño" and "The Sun," where Gardner croons like an unsteady drunk trying to walk a straight line in a cop car's headlights.

The band came together only 15 months ago, though Gardner said the Lincolnites have known each other for years. "This band is a relationship we're in," she said. "Any artistic collaboration is a relationship. We just had our one-year anniversary. We should have had a party and brought each other macaroni salad, but there's too much other stuff going on."

So much stuff, in fact, that the band has no more tours planned in the near future. Gardner said she's going back to school at UN-L, switching her major from fine art to biology, carrying on the tradition of her scientist parents. The album will have to sell itself, which it's done pretty well considering they're having a hard time keeping it in stock at Omaha record stores.

"We've had such wonderful support from friends and local music lovers alike," Gardner said. "It's encouraging, because we have a pretty good thing going on musically around here."

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Published in The Omaha Reader Aug. 27, 2008. Copyright © 2008 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.