The Traditional Fools - Please
The Traditional Fools - Rock and Roll Baby>

Orange County has a tendency for squelching the creative flame and the two possible means for survival seem to be either clustering into niche groups or taking any chance to just get the hell out of town. One of the most frustrating things with trying to continue to live in OC is that whenever a good band just starts to get going, someone moves away or decides to go to college. But sometimes these can be fortuitous departures or new beginnings.

Moving away from home can be isolating and lonely and sometimes loose knit friends can be brought back together. Andrew, David and Ty were known to be seen and heard around the scene, or at least my corner of it, in bands like The Epsilons and The Clamour but it wasn't until all three of them relocated to San Fransisco this past semester that The Traditional Fools were born. David ran into Ty at Amoeba and once Andrew moved up, it was on.

Load up the USF dorm room with drums, guitars and amps, borrow a four-track, upload the mp3's onto your new MySpace page, and, viola, you're a 'real' band.

The trio shares an obsession with garage rock past and present, from the Mummies to Redd Kross, from Link Wray to Billy Childish. But the marked departure from a simple clone or neo-revival, is Traditional Fool's strangled sound and lyrical approach.

The guitars wail away at the same blues progressions that have echoed out of suburban garages for the past five decades or so, but they don't sound like the drenched-in reverb or Blues Screamer Distortion you're used to. The sound is closer to Jon Cougar Concentration Camp or Scared of Chaka than Chocolate Watch Band or The Troggs.

The lyrics, when audible, are far removed from the clichéd garage rock material. And this is where the missing piece 'falls' into place. The other shared obsession among the band is The Fall. The focus of the lyrics seems to be more on surrealism or absurdity and how they sound rather than conveying a simple message or telling a tale of unrequited romance. I'm told the ridiculous lyrics to "Rock and Roll Baby" were inspired by Guitar Wolf, and at times I'm even reminded of Pere Ubu.

Maybe it's quite simple: garage rock goes to university.

Two more songs are available at The Traditional Fools' MySpace.