Jett Rink

listen to Jett Rink: another kind of danger AKOD mittens

by Finn Cohen
Durham, North Carolina

We've got basketball, we've got barbeque, we can claim that Kevin Costner filmed his masterpiece Bull Durham here. If history is truly cyclical, we can hope that one day, when we declare that Jett Rink came from our city, the whole country will be on its way to breathing the word "Durham" with the sort of credibility-providing vocal lilt reserved for larger metropoli. The whole town thing is significant because this band couldn't have happened anywhere else. They might resent this, but I think they're kind of a flagship band for the renaissance of D-town. With few rivals, the five men of Jett Rink have made it not only safe to dance in Durham, but difficult not to. Consider the cast: On bass, Dave Perry, a contradiction in terms-uses expressions like "gayer than an Elton John fanny pack" but dances to "What's New Pussycat"; not only owns a BC Rich "Warlock" bass, but owns a BC Rich "Warlock" copy. Hobbies: beer, Bojangles, being nicknamed "The Sweets". Tim Ristau has a homemade guitar amp; he knows about electronics and shit and has got some serious tone. He hops on one foot when excited and is one step away from leather pants. In fact, this whole band needs some fucking leather pants.
They have keyboards, too. They sound a lot like the keyboards from the Dr. Who theme and their master, Mike Walters, resembles Dr. Who almost not all-he kind of resembles Sammy Davis Jr, if Sammy were white, not Jewish, younger, taller, and modified vintage keyboards to make them sound like sirens. He plays like Dr. Demento, though. Viva Cohen is the nom de stage of their singer, who is really really tall and blacks his eyes with mascara and that stuff that football players use. In the winter there's often a sequined boa around his neck on stage, and his between his best overwrought-punk-singer-from-the-UK-in-1979-impression and his American Gladiators stage moves, one can't help but be swept away or get the fuck out the way while standing enrapt at the lip of the stage. Thus far, we have some volatile, disparate players in this melodrama. The quarterback, the enzyme that stabilizes these various chemicals, plays the drums, and his name is Tony. That's Mr. Stiglitz to us numbnuts. The Beastmaster. Terminator T. You know at the beginning of Fear of a Black Planet, when Chuck D says, "On the count of three, I want y'all to tell me the name of my dj….ONE..TWO..THREE!" and the London crowd (why the fuck were they in London?) yells, "TERMINATOR X!"? Well, Tony's the white boy who deserves that sort of lauding.
There, you've been introduced. For spicy reference points, Jett Rink sounds like the band that would have still been doing what they're doing regardless of the current rehashing of pop deconstructionists Pere Ubu, The Cars (isn't everybody compared to The Cars, though? Let's try something a bit wittier, like…Magazine. Yeah, actually, Real Life is maybe the best way to describe Jett Rink), and Serge Gainsbourg. And you know, every band gets a revival by those inspired by them, so when Fishbone gets their turn and everyone from the age of 19-24 starts dressing like Angelo Moore and tells you that "Truth and Soul was way better than Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Think He's the Center of the Universe, or whatever the fuck that one was called", Jett Rink will be the band that was "Bonin' in the Boneyard" before anybody else. They'll be sitting on a brick wall, smoking cigarettes, scowling, and sneaking swigs of Ol' Grandad whiskey and laughing "Fishbone was gayer than George Michael's Hypercolor biker shorts! Do you see any bruises, cosmetically applied or genuinely earned during shows, on their singer? What a bunch of schmucks." Jett Rink is rocking for all of us who, even when Everyone Else said we weren't cool, we fucking knew Everyone Else were mouth-breathing cretins. They're the only band I know who would be equally comfortable drinking martinis on stage as they would Schlitz.