My name is Magnum P.U. (real name: Phillip Ulysses Magnum) and I have been the drummer for naivé rock outfit The Legless Crabs since we formed in early 2020. I’m 22 year old and grew up listening to my dad’s classic rock CDs — you know, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, In Living Colour, Liz Phair, etc. Frankly I wasn’t aware rock n roll existed before 1992, until I met the Crabs’ lead singer/guitarist El Borko at a Sweet Frog we both happened to be vandalizing at the same time back in late 2018
. El Borko, who is 4 years older than me and once lived in Austin for 3 months so you know he has cred, is legit like a suppository of outsider music history. He taught me about his rock heroes, The Shaggs, Wesley Willis, Hasil Adkins, Larry Fisher…but not Daniel Johnston, who El Borko claims is the reason he had to leave Austin.
When we met the Haircut (Haircut Augustus, our bassist) doing community service after we got caught vandalizing the Sweet Frog (The Haircut was still a minor so the reasons for his community service are sealed), he turned both of us onto the Jesus and Mary Chain, “the only band that matters,” as he puts it, and we quickly decided to form The Legless Crabs.
None of us owned any instruments or even knew how to play, but we decided that shouldn’t stop us from becoming, as the Haircut calls us, “the only other band that matters.”So after finishing our community service time, and once we finally earned enough from working at the Sweet Frog to buy our own instruments, we all quit the same day and started cranking out hits. We are learning to play as we go, because frankly, if we learned to play first, civilization may collapse before we were actually able to release anything. Now we have 36 songs released on Bandcamp over the last six months, each one better than the last. Or at least as good.
So here’s ten tracks from ten LPs I adore that we played for each other and said, “yeh, let’s try to ape that.”
Essentially, every Crabs song starts with us trying to do a Shaggs or Wesley Willis cover of a Jesus and Mary Chain or Pussy Galore song. So the Shaggs’ “Philosophy of the World,” Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Darklands,” Pussy Galore’s cover of “Exile on Main Street,” and Wesley’s Willis’ “Greatest Hits Volume 2” were all in heavy rotation during the early weeks of recording the first Crabs releases.
The Shaggs: “You’re Something Special To Me”
J&MC: “Darklands”
Wesley Willis: “They Threw Me Out of Church”
Pussy Galore: “Just Wanna See His Face”
For the instrumental tracks we’ve done, we thought, “what would Mogwai sound like if they were unfamiliar with their instruments?” And then we pressed record. Each of us are Mogwai fans and each has their own favorite album, but mine is “Young Team.” “Like Herod” makes me jump every time it kicks in.
Mogwai: “Like Herod”
Unlike Mogwai, The Legless Crabs try to keep our songs brief, and in that regard we were very much inspired by Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices. Pollard’s most recent output with the current line-up has been pretty formidable, and is as good or better than anything he’s released in the past, including the classic line-up years. Of the most recent stuff, my favorite is “Warp and Woof.”
GBV: “Cohesive Scoops”
Bill Rieflin passed away back in late March and his drumming for bands like Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, and REM has been a real influence on me in that I’d really like to play like him one day. But drumming is hard! Have you ever tried to keep a beat? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Rieflin played electronic drums alongside drummer Martin Atkins on the excellent Ministry live album, “In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up,” which is one of the best live albums ever.
Ministry: “Stigmata”
Speaking of REM, The Haircut ripped the bass line we used in “Turd Immunity” from their song “Circus Envy.” “Monster” is such a killer-diller album. Hits from front to back.
REM: Circus Envy
Metal Postcard Records’ Sean Hocking, who put out our first full length One People One Mind One Death, compared us to the Butthole Surfers. Both bands are from Texas and noisy, so that’s fair. I suspect the Surfers had some idea of what they were doing when they recorded their craziest stuff; tbh The Crabs have no idea what we’re doing, so any imitation is unintentional in this regard. But I’m pleased about the comparison nonetheless. El Borko claims Gibby Haynes stole his wallet and that was why he had to leave Austin. I love “Electriclarryland.”
Butthole Surfers: The Lord Is a Monkey
The Crabs would love to do a garage revival album, a la The Mummies, the Oblivians, or the Gories, but neither El Borko or The Haircut have been able to ape that sound yet. We’ll keep practicing and recording until we do. Or until we give up in frustration. Playing music is hard! The Mummies’ classic live show on a San Francisco public access in 1991 is tough to beat. Our first live show we wrapped ourselves in toilet paper as an homage to this, but by the end of the second song it had all dissolved due to our sweat and we played the next song mostly naked with little bits of wet tp clinging desperately to our bodies. Then they threw us out of the Sweet Frog.
Thank you very much Magnum P’U
The wonderful debut lp by the legless crabs can be downloaded and streamed from all major sites including Metal Postcard Bandcamp site https://metalpostcard.bandcamp.com/album/the-legless-crabs-one-people-one-mind-one-death
here is the spotify link .
In the Mind of a Bordello 