Scene Creamers forced to change their name

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

According to the L.A. Weekly:

Due to the ridiculous fact that ‘60s Parisian radicals Lettrist International, coiners of the term “Scene Creamers,” were threatening to sue, look for the next Creamers record, If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em, to be filed under their new name, Weird War, when it comes out this January.

There's also a similar item in Rolling Stone online.

And, indeed:

http://www.dragcity.com/bands/weirdwar.html

???

― Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 26 September 2003 22:56 (twenty-two years ago)

The only other Google result for "Lettrist" and "scene creamers":

Paris 1968 was rich in nameless wildness. . . . It was marred by a small group of embittered scene-creamers, who called themselves the Situationists, and who tried in typically French fashion to intellectualize the whole mood out of existence, and with their very name tried to colonize it. Failed activists and mini-Mansonettes who boasted that all their books and pamphlets (Leaving the 20th Century, The Veritable Split in the Fourth International, etc.) had been produced from the proceeds of a bank robbery when even the most lavish of them could have been produced for the price of a few tins of cat-food from Safeways (one tiny exception being “Ten Days that Shook the University” by Omar Khayati). . . . Their heroes are a legion of mad bombers: Ravachol, Valerie Solanas, Nechayev, the IRA, et al.

—Heathcote Williams in International Times (Autumn 1977)

― Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Very bizarre. It's got to be a stunt (obviously the "coiners" of the phrase would have no legal recourse whatsoever), but what an odd stunt, even for Svenonius. Also weird because the band for Weird War was different than the Scene Creamers, right?

― Ben Boyer (Ben Boyer), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but it also had Svenonius and Michelle Mae, so for all intents and purposes...

I guess it must be a stunt, huh? But WHY?

(You going to see them Sunday night at Spaceland, Ben? It'll be grrreat!)

― Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Sam J. - did I ever tell you that when I was in college, I worked during the summers at Starbucks in Dupont Circle in D.C., and Svenonious would come in all the time. He was quite a character. He always gave the name "Jose" when the register people asked him, and he'd look around nervously and shuffle his feet. He was also infamously flirty with every girl he came in contact with.
As for Sat., I have a damned work function... if I get out in time I'm going to haul over there though. I haven't seen them since the Make-Up days.

― Ben Boyer (Ben Boyer), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw them at the Troubadour awhile back, and it was hilarious. Plus, the album's pretty wonderful.

Though apparently they've lost their drummer, who was great - a skinny blonde guy with a sweatband around his forehead, playing thump-a-thump-a-thumpthump on a drum with two mallets.

(Oh and it's SUNDAY, not Sat. Hope you can make it!)

― Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.