The Chumps

Invent Rock ‘N’ Roll (’95-00) (Mortville/Super Secret)

After the Motards, no other band epitomized the screeching essence of Austin’s mid-Nineties garage punk renaissance more than the Chumps. Packing enough raw power to float a small brewery, the Chumps boasted a charismatic extra weapon in frontman Sean McGowan. Crossing David Johansen’s petulant vocal sneer with the lizard-brain grunts of Darby Crash, McGowan’s delivery rivaled that of a crazy man at the laundromat. Invent Rock ‘N’ Roll fleshes out the Chumps’ 2000 LP, R.I.P. Good Times, with a couple of authentically tinny singles mastered from vinyl, a stray compilation track, and some extra-sloppy live QuickTime video. Seven years after the fact, the quartet’s theme song “I’m a Chump” remains a natural audience scream-along with the refrain, “I’m a fuckin’ Chump, I’m all fucked up. I wanna be demoted!” After lamenting unwieldy teendom on “13 Rocks,” waging class warfare with “Fuck You, I’m Rich,” and paying penance to their local punk forbears with a cover of “Dicks Hate the Police,” the Chumps jet on down to “Needle Beach” for a Beach Boys-style romp that would make Mike Love cry. Invent‘s flailing crapload of beery vitriol is a must for locals who remember when punk bands could still afford to live in Hyde Park. (The Chumps destroy Beerland, Saturday, Feb. 10.)

***.5

This article appears in February 9 • 2007.

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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.