Most of what’s known about the band Sheer Smegma, later rechristened “Teddy and the Fratgirls,” could fit on a 4x6 index card. Their scant biography can be assembled from various defunct punk blogs scattered throughout the internet, but it all boils down to this: they were an all-girl four-piece whose self-released debut 12-inch got picked up by Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles (allegedly behind the back of the band’s bass player and chief songwriter) and who, shortly thereafter, disbanded and were never heard from again.
The five-song EP that comprises the entirety of Teddy and the Fratgirls’ recorded output more than lives up to its legend. It’s the audio equivalent of a John Waters film, complete with scaterotica, sex change polka, and whatever the hell is going on with the “Egg Man Don’t Cometh.” The crown jewel of the whole set, and perhaps the only song on the record worth coming back to for more than the lulz, is the opening track “Clubnite.”
The word “primal” gets bandied around a lot in the world of indie rock journalism, but few songs earn it as hard as “Clubnite.” Its melody consists of little more than a single chord and a martial drum beat, and it sounds like it was recorded in an airplane hangar. The principal lyrics are divided into three short verses, repeated three times in sequence:
You wore black leather
You took my number
You left me horny
Clubnite
I gave you quaaludes
I held your cock
We spoke in diphthongs
Clubnite
My girlfriend blew you
I said I knew you
Little boy whore
Clubnite
On paper, the song is no different from the dirty-minded juvenilia that characterizes the rest of the EP, but Cookie Mold’s delivery elevates it to another level entirely. At her most controlled, the 16-year-old singer screams like a rabid animal treading water at the bottom of a well, and with each successive repetition of the lyrics, she becomes a little more unhinged. By the time the song starts to fall apart at the one-minute-eighteen-second mark, she’s barely even forming words through the larynx-shredding wails. It casts a sinister light on the otherwise slight lyrics: the repetition becomes unnerving, suggesting a single-mindedness bordering on obsession, and Mold’s tortured shrieks exude a rage totally out of synch with anything she actually says. It’s truly one of the most psychotic ditties ever set to vinyl and as fine freak-baby to crawl out of punk rock’s diseased womb as any other.