By Metal Dave
It’s tough to get noticed in a world of rock’n’roll loudmouths, but calling your band the Toilet Boys will surely arch some eyebrows.
Firm believers that no publicity is bad publicity (the name says it all, right?), New York’s Toilet Boys were a sleazy blend of transvestite vampire bikers meets KISS and Blondie. Add a singer who was a boy that looked like a girl and answered to the name Miss Guy (confusing, eh?) and you got the hell-bent-for stardom Toilet Boys.
Bold or shameless, depending on your view, the Toilet Boys were going to milk shock value for all its fame and/or notoriety (and with any luck, both!). They would either be the next big thing or else die of commercial suicide (see Marilyn Manson versus GG Allin).
Toilet Paper: My Metal Edge spread
The picture above is taken backstage in Houston on a second-day tag-along with the Toilet Boys following a previous gig in Austin. As usual, there tends to always be one guy in the band who shares the mutual pull of gravitation. In the case of the Toilet Boys, it was always Sean who was eager to hang (and on at least one ocassion expound on the virtues of truck-stop pick-me-ups). The band is long broken up, but last I heard “Skyscraper” Sean continues making music with his wife, Theo, of Lunachicks fame.
The lesson here, kids? It’s better to go down in flames with a cool band name than to be remembered as R.E.M. Class, dismissed!
It’s an incredibly small world. I remember reading this article back in the day and I’m sure there are plenty of others that I have read that you penned back then. I need to come by one day and peruse the vault.
Am sure i read this feature way back in 2001, I remember at the time you going on about them to me.. I was wondering what happened to them.. Now I know!
Cool stuff!!!!!!