Be Your Own Pet
Fox & Hound, Saturday, March 18
One of the more hilarious sights witnessed during Be Your Own Pet’s set was a suited, music-exec type stagediving into the crowd. This at the advice of spunky blonde singer Jemina Pearl, who instructed us to move our asses, pronto, halfway into their set. No problem. The Nashville teens sounded like they’ve been on a steady diet of Pixy Stix and Ramones albums for the last 10 years, romping through blasto-punk rants. Pearl was a blur onstage, shaking her head, pulling her hair, shimmying, and screaming. The band kept close to the Ramones’ two-minute mark, as one song catapulted the next like they had just graduated from the Nirvana School of Thrash and Teenage Kicks. The quartet doesn’t even have a proper album yet, but when they do, it will probably have 53 songs done in 15 minutes. Pearl took the bratty-punk stance onstage, spitting and antagonizing the crowd (best heckle by an audience member: “Go back to Canada!”). During the closer, the band disintegrated for the first time all night, falling into a frenzied instrument attack as Pearl screeched, “I’m so young, I’m so goddamn young.” This may be true, but their punk lineage is as old as dried spit and broken glass.
This article appears in March 24 • 2006.