You must confess your own sins first, and this we do freely. There was a time, only a few years but a million markers by other, weightier (though less journalistic) measurements that we were rather firm in our stance that bands like The Homopolice were what was wrong with music in Houston. A side project of a side project. The offspring of greater momentum. Part of a twisted man-weave of people who recycled one another into new projects. Slapdash in composition and execution with an fetischisement for the fringe. Songcraft that could barely hold water, let alone cut a fine jib. A study in not studying. A lack of practice in practice. So close were we to declaring ourselves exile from this nonsense and making for pastures where there were sonic textile more akin to those we were making that we moved to a small, questionable efficiency and plowed away money for Williamsburgh. But something kept us here, though nearly all our dearest plowed the field for us and waited with open arms and couches a short flight away.

There is something, after all, about this place that makes the comp title I Hate it Here I Never Want to Leave not just prescient towards the evolution of our own attitude, but part of the very bumperstickered hook that held us home. After moving from a mere observer to inside the shark tank, we became to love bands because they were like this. Not because they were slapdash, but because they embodied an attitude of “Hey lets do a thing and get it out there. Right now.” Does it really matter that someone has ideas enough to bridge several projects, even if some of those projects might have done better just as ideas? It’s fun. Who cares. If people don’t like it, they won’t respond to it, and we’re doing it for us anyways. Like we really want to cross the thermocline between fun and work with this. Like we ever expect to tour and be pro about it.

That The Homopolice’s shows regularly descend into a testosterone leather-sweat baccanalia of homoerotic fantasia, GLARP (Gay Live Action Role Playing), headstock-wrecking abandon, and general male disrobament (audience and band alike) may be all the success that they care for. That people, people they know and count among their friends, absolutely loose their mind in pure fun – well we think we could all count that as a success. And that so many people here find success like that, success that is only about themselves on the stage and the people right in the front row (care less even for the wallflowers in the back!), and don’t give a damn about if everything is worked out and worked on and practiced made perfect, well that’s why we hate it here and never want to leave.

This duo of tracks is from The Homopolice’s recent live set on KTRU’s local show Mutant Hardcore Flower Hour,  recorded right into the sound board John Sear’s 4-track just as it went out on the air, in all its hairy imperfect glory. It includes their psychedelic punk original “Violent Homosexual” and a cover of “Learn to Hate in the 80s” by Dallas punk Bobby Soxx (in his one and only solo recording; he usually fronted a band called The Teenage Queers). It’s just as visceral as having them in front of you, though it wouldn’t be much of hazard to say its no substitute. Word on the street is that they’ve got at least studio release in their future, and while we look forward to inevitable discipline that a proper recording will bring to what they’re doing, we’re very conscious that that is a lasting hangover of the old us. As it is with us now, the gay devil may care.