Hey Suburbia Records Reissue on Color Vinyl.
Boris The Sprinkler were formed the night of the 1992 ShopKo
fireworks in Green Bay. Veterans of numerous local bands (including
minor Beer City sensations Suburban Mutilation), they opted to forgo
most then-popular musical routes — long-stale hardcore, vaguely melodic
emo-esque muttering, dull strummy plugged-in acoustic guitar crap — for
the then highly-unpopular music they grew up playing: The punk rock of
the late 70’s and early 80’s.
With vocalist and Maximum RockNRoll columnist Rev. Nørb (once
memorably described by Ben Weasel as “a grown man who resembles a
gigantic grasshopper”) flailing around the stage in a variety of
increasingly ridiculous costumes and mighty guitar titan Paul #1 acting
as a sonic anchor amidst the high-energy lunacy, punk rock inexplicably
got big again – that wasn’t exactly Boris’s doing, but it floated their
boat accordingly.
When label-shopping the band’s first album – 8-Testicled Pogo Machine
— proved to be too slow and annoying a process for the band’s liking,
Nørb launched Bulge Records, thereby releasing Boris product himself and
bypassing the whole record label bit entirely.
Now augmented by the madcap drum antics of Paul #2 – a man
occasionally led to the stage in chains while clad in nothing but a
wrestling mask, trunks, and boots – the band released their second
album, Saucer To Saturn, and exported their thoroughly Midwestern hijinx
to a nationwide audience on a summer tour with the Riverdales and the
Mr. T Experience.
With charming science-nerd bass whiz Ric Six entering the picture for
the band’s third album, Mega Anal, the classic Boris lineup was
complete, and the Earth wobbled on its axis to the group’s cheese-punk
clamor.
Figuring (somewhat correctly) that punk rock wasn’t a particularly
stable gravy train for thirty-somethings to permanently hitch their
wagons to, the band never quit their day jobs. This neverending cycle of
forty hour workweeks and weekend road gigs led to a high turnover rate
among band members; amidst overly-frequent lineup changes and flagging
enthusiasm, the band sputtered to a halt in 2003, leaving a legacy of
five albums, nearly twenty 7-inches, a double live record, and Ramones
and Circle Jerks tribute albums.
In 2009, the classic lineup of the band was cajoled out of retirement
for an appearance at Insubordination Fest in Baltimore; in 2017, they
started playing more-or-less annual shows. In 2019, they found
themselves (under mysterious circumstances) in a recording studio
together, with Vespa To Venus being the result. The band enjoys socks,
soup, and most polkas.
