CLEAN AND MEAN

Meet Philly’s most hated band.

by Brian McManus

John Sharkey is not having a good night.

The singer/guitarist/provocateur of punk rock noise outfit Clockcleaner is sharing a bill at the Khyber with New York City’s Bad Wizard—a band he doesn’t care for, at a club he doesn’t like. It’s cold out, and his furious playing style has caused him to throw out his shoulder again, something he fears is becoming a problem.

After his band’s set, he has a drink. As Bad Wizard begin the night’s last set, he has another.

The show wraps up and Sharkey, still in pain, does what he can to help load gear into the van. He has another drink and goes upstairs to retrieve his coat from the green room. There Sharkey finds Bad Wizard’s “fat, Mr. Kotter-looking” lead singer sitting on his coat. The singer moves when asked, but only slightly.

Suddenly “Mr. Kotter,” who hasn’t made an attempt at conversation the entire gig, lets out a hearty chuckle about the night’s payout. He and his Sweathogs: $600. Clockcleaner: considerably less.

Sharkey, outweighed and an arm short, decides throwing a punch would be less than a smart idea. So instead he takes a breath, goes downstairs and walks toward the exit. To the right of the door sits Bad Wizard’s merch table: CDs, T-shirts, stickers and vinyl all laid out carefully for consumption. It’s unmanned.

Sharkey could walk out, but he doesn’t. Instead he pulls out his penis and, in his own words, “unleashes a bladder-full of the night’s beer piss” all over their merchandise.

“There’s some revisionist history going on now where people think I did it only to garner a reputation or some sort of publicity,” Sharkey says, lighting another cigarette, “but that just isn’t the case.”

What was the case was that Clockcleaner was banned from the Khyber for life. They also lost the right to play all rooms booked by Khyber-affiliated HeyDay Entertainment. North Star, gone; M Room, ditto.

And clubs that would book Clockcleaner ran up against a problem of a different kind. Local bands, perhaps in the interest of keeping their merchandise dry, didn’t want to share a bill with them.

But in the three years since Sharkey fireproofed Bad Wizard’s merch, the roar about the whiz biz had finally begun to quiet.

People were telling new Clockcleaner stories—like that they play music.

And then Sharkey started running his mouth to the national press.

In both, Sharkey unloads, naming names, taking aim at some of the heaviest hitters and ridiculing Philly’s newly budding—and for the first time in a long time, nationally breaking—music scene.

In the article and video Sharkey espouses the following: Man Man, PW’s 2006 band of the year, “suck horse dick”; Dr. Dog are “fine if you’re a parent and want to bring your infant to the show with you”; Philly music is “mediocre and privileged,” “humorless” and “full of thin-skinned crybabies.”

He’d said these same things many times to those who knew him, and sometimes he even said them from the stage. But this was different. Those who knew him in passing as an ornery guy with a penchant for juvenile humor were upset that he’d say such things about their music community publicly.

In the comments to the online version of the article (which also rehashes the Bad Wizard pee-pee lore—title: “A Full Pouch of the Night’s Urine”), the reviews of Sharkey’s barbs go from threats of physical violence to questions about his sexuality to assertions that he has AIDS. “These guys suck almost as much as Philadelphia does,” says “dee.”

Still, there are supporters. “It’s okay to hate your scene, especially if you’re good. These guys are,” writes “Hater of German Language.”

“[Sharkey] is always right. He is amazing,” testifies “thatgirl.”

But one who didn’t think Sharkey was right is publicist Derek Meier of Solid PR. Shortly after the Vice article ran, he dropped Clockcleaner. (Solid also reps Man Man.)

Sharkey has a hard time understanding why people take these matters so personally.

“Dude, most of my friends don’t like my band. Won’t listen to us. That’s fine. We’re not everyone’s thing, and I get that. Dr. Dog isn’t mine. So what? To each his own.”

Fair point—one most rational people might agree with. Sharkey knows this too, which is why he adds, “Seriously though. My dad would think Dr. Dog is pussy shit, and he listens to Dan Fogelberg.”

Clockcleaner's John Sharkey

When he and Sharkey started Clockcleaner, he had no way of knowing he’d end up being part of a vilified group. Still, he’s fine with it. But one thing he’s tired of is being asked about new indie up-and-comers by reporters hoping he’ll bag on them. “It forces me to consider bands I don’t care about,” he says.

His point—no one asks the Teeth if they like Clockcleaner, so why should he be asked if he likes the Teeth? The music they make is worlds apart. Why would he like the Teeth’s Beach Boys ethereal pop if he plays in a band that worships the punk rock hysterics of the Dicks?

Some four years ago Charles ran into Sharkey on the street. Sharkey, an old-time pal back from a two-year stint living in Cleveland, began flirting with the notion of starting a band. When the two began seeing one another out on the town, the talk would inevitably turn to music.

Charles bought a drum set. The two toyed around, discovered a sound and recorded The Hassler, an EP that in hindsight makes Sharkey taste a bit of his own medicine.

“It’s awful. We had a couple songs and were dumb enough to let someone record them,” he says before realizing he may sound like the thin-skinned local musicians he despises. “Whatever—it was a learning experience. No biggie.”

The guys lost a bassist, gained a new one, and wrote more songs. Songs they actually liked this time. The new bassist quit just before they recorded their new album, so Sharkey assumed the role himself.

The result was Nevermind—and yes, it’s named after Nirvana’s 1991 genre-creating holy grail of alternative rock. “That album was such a sacred cow, we thought it would be funny to fuck with it,” Sharkey smirks.

Reptilian, a Baltimore label, put out Nevermind, and label boss Chris X, a “satanist who drives a hearse,” soon found himself on Clockcleaner’s mock enemies list they often joke about but don’t really keep.

“He’s just the worst businessman I’ve ever met in my life,” groans Sharkey. “You can’t find that record in stores.”

But the press did somehow find it, and Nevermind scored stellar reviews.

The Yale Herald gushed that Clockcleaner “seem intent on offending every demographic out there” after quoting the record’s first line: “I saw your girlfriend leaving the abortion clinic the other day/ With another man.” Two of the album’s song titles are “Gentle Swastika” and “Missing Dick.”

Dusted magazine fitted Clockcleaner with “Next Big Thing” status. Decibel sang Nevermind’s praises. And Maximumrocknroll, still around after all these years, put them on the cover.

After Nevermind’s beaming press, the search for a new bassist began.

Karen Horner

They found Karen Horner, a longtime Philly bassist (formerly of Ready Set). Horner has big eyes and an infectious laugh, and is the only person in the history of music who’s ever looked cool playing a six-string bass. She’d actually played a show with an earlier incarnation of Clockcleaner in a basement with another band.

“I just remember it was one of the first times I actually liked a band we played with because, you know, most bands you share a bill with usually suck.”

She was the perfect fit.

Stay in Richmond long enough (an hour or more), and you’re bound to run across something odd.

The odd something tonight happens to be the crowd that’s gathered at a spot called Nara Sushi for a Clockcleaner performance. The band has never played Richmond before, and both crowd and Clockcleaner don’t know what to expect.

A generous spread of sushi has been laid out for the band, and despite the suggestion that it might just be a clever ploy for the restaurant to get rid of all its on-the-verge-of-rotting fish, the musicians woof it down.

“If I puke while performing tonight because of this California roll, it’ll just add to the show,” says Sharkey, always the man with a plan.

Nara has a nice wooden deck. As it starts to fill, Clockcleaner get a good sense of who’s making it out to the show tonight: i.e., Richmond’s finest freaks.

After overhearing a couple conversations Charles starts to get an odd look about him. He wonders if Clockcleaner’s bad-boy (and -girl) rep has followed them to the commonwealth’s capitol.

“Sometimes we get some goon in the audience who’s just there because he heard we start fights or pick on people or something,” Richie almost whispers. “They’ve never heard the music but just think we’re assholes, so they come to the show just to, I don’t know, out-asshole us.”

Charles insists he isn’t complaining. On the contrary, if the person attempting to out-asshole the assholes does it well, it makes for a better show.

“I appreciate a good heckle,” he says. And then, after assessing the patio once more, a sigh. “I just don’t think, based on some of the conversations I’ve overheard tonight, that anyone here is going to offer much of a challenge.”

Some of those conversations, in short, go as follows:

Richmond resident No. 1: “I just got busted stealing celery from 7-Eleven!”

Richmond resident No. 2: “No fucking way! Dude, why were you stealing celery?”

Richmond resident No. 1: “I don’t know. I hate celery. But I haven’t eaten a vegetable in weeks, so I thought I needed it.”

And:

Richmond resident No. 1: “I bought a live chicken on eBay that I picked up, feathered, killed and ate today.”

Richmond resident No. 2: “I’ve been wanting to do that too. How was it?”

Richmond resident No. 1: “It was gross. I think it was a just-for-laying-eggs chicken or something. It was really gamey, rubbery.”

“Oh, now that we know you don’t want it, we’re definitely leaving them on,” Sharkey says with a smile, picking up his strobe and holding it closer to the faces in the crowd.

“Asshole!” someone yells. People laugh.

“We’ve been in Richmond a few hours today. Seriously guys, you’ve gotta move. There’s nothing to do in this town. It’s a shithole,” Sharkey deadpans before breaking into the churning thud of “Caliente Queen” from their new album Babylon Rules, to be released in October.

The crowd is just inches from the band. When they lurch forward, Sharkey and Horner get banged into. A few songs into the set the out-asshole makes himself known. It’s the would-be celery thief. His mind deranged by lack of proper nutrients—or an abundance of a few too many alcohol-spiked wrong ones—he starts to cause a ruckus.

He bear-hugs Sharkey, making it impossible for him to play. A couple of Celery Thief’s friends pull him off. Sharkey takes an impressive gulp of beer between songs, kicks in the next riff and sprays spit all over Celery Thief, which makes Celery Thief happy.

To show his approval, Celery Thief picks up a chair to throw. His friends wrestle him to the ground. Thwarted, he soon returns with a generous stack of paper towels from the restroom, balling them up one by one and throwing them at Clockcleaner.

Sharkey picks a few up, places them on top of his amp head and lights them on fire in advance of the night’s last song.

Richie Charles

The sight of fire drives Celery Thief’s thirst for mania. He pumps his fists and bounces into those around him. Horner unexpectedly throws Celery Thief a brutal and sturdy hip check that knocks him to the floor. Debilitated or humiliated—or both—the floor is where he stays. When he finally gets up, he makes his way to the Clockcleaner merchandise and begins recapping the night in a very loud play-by-play. He buys a shirt, a CD and two 7-inch singles.

A friend tries to get him to pipe down, tells him tonight’s near chair-tossing crossed the line.

“Throwing a chair wouldn’t be crossing the line,” says Horner. “If you’d pulled a knife, that’d be crossing the line.”

Through it all, Celery Thief keeps rambling, “And then, ha, you lit that shit on fire! That was cool, man!”

Charles interrupts, “Hey, could you please shut the fuck up? You’re really annoying. Like really annoying.”

The Celery Thief’s eyes begin to water. Spirit broken, he mopes off to retrieve his ride. “I thought we were all having a good time until that drummer asshole told me I was annoying!” he yells before staggering out.

He smokes too much, and even when in the presence of infants or the elderly, curses too loudly. He revels in making people squirm, finding their comfort zone, and pushing right past it. He’s the kind of guy who would get a giant tattoo of a pineapple on his arm on a dare—and has.

At 19, Sharkey was sick of Philly, so he moved to Cleveland, where he was, by his own account, “a raging asshole.”

“Believe it or not, I was more infantile than I am today,” he says. “I was a total mess. I remember my boss in Cleveland telling me one night, ‘It’s like you’re climbing the mountain right now, seeing how far you can push people and fuck with them.’”

Sharkey showed up smashed at parties frequently, refusing to leave until well after quitting time. He might punctuate his drunkenness by spiking a host’s toaster to the ground.

Raging asshole or no, he found a few guys willing to let him play music alongside them in a band called Nine Shocks Terror.

“He was notorious for his antics,” says Lamont “Bim” Thomas of Cleveland’s This Moment in Black History. “But he was a Nine Shocks homie and musical collaborator too. They toured Japan. That was a pretty big deal around here. I guess he had a right to fuck around to a certain extent.”

Personally, Thomas continues, “I thought the dude was funny. But yeah, certain people probably felt he was a bit much. Hey, when you’re young, wildin’ out, drinking beer and playing punk rock, that’s just how it goes. I saw him at South by Southwest this year, and he was kinda laid back just being a super swell dude. They played a good set, had good tunes.”

Reviews of Nevermind aside, that good set and those good tunes often get lost in the near-debilitating noise surrounding Clockcleaner—the constant shit talk about the shit talk that, surprisingly, no one will go on record about.

The instances of “did not return calls by press time” for this story are too numerous to mention, and twice PW heard the phrase “I don’t want to be a part of this story in any way.” Asked if he’d sit down to talk about Clockcleaner, Ryan “Honus Honus” Kattner of Man Man offered a simple, “Nope.”

Sharkey talks frequently about the “back-slapping bullshit” the fraternity of indie rock traffics in, which makes musicians afraid to speak their minds because of any collateral damage it might cause in a community where everyone is connected to everyone else.

Take this telling snippet from the New Orleans music blog soundingoutthecity.blogspot.com, for instance, and watch how gingerly the Teeth’s Peter MoDavis dances around offending anyone. Ellipses are the blog’s own.

Soundingout: “Do you read Vice?”

MoDavis: “The one with the Clockcleaner interview?”

Soundingout: “Yeah, that issue. Is there really a tension between Philly bands?”

MoDavis: “I see that as a tough question because it seems like there is sometimes. I don’t want to name what I’ve heard. I’ve hung out with a lot of different bands, and it seems some of them might … I mean I won’t … man, that is a hard question. Some of them quietly say things about who they don’t think should be popular like they are.”

Maybe MoDavis is just a nice guy. Sharkey would contend he’s an indie hand-holder who should stop playing music. Of course Sharkey contends a lot of things.

Either way, Mike McKee, a sometime PW contributor and friend of Sharkey’s since ’96, thinks the publicity given to Sharkey’s ideas and antics might soon slow to a crawl, and their music and live show will finally be what gets tongues wagging.

“Sharkey knows how to push people’s buttons. He loves it,” he says. “But I saw girls at Clockcleaner’s last Johnny Brenda’s show. Girls. That blew my mind.”

Sharkey’s reaction to the old-school insult comedian’s name suggests this may be true.

“Holy shit, that reminds me,” he laughs. “I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of his new book. It’s called Rickles’ Book. I. Love. Him.”

Rickles’ face is pictured on Clockcleaner's MySpace jukebox when the song “Vomiting Mirrors” is dialed up. And no doubt the band’s response under the “Sounds Like” query on the same site, “Horny sadness, punctual racism,” could be used to describe Rickles’ own act.

“At this point,” Sharkey says, “I’d say we’re more influenced by standup comedy and talk radio than we are music. I never listen to music in my car. It’s always talk radio or a comedy album from my iPod. It’s entertainment.”

The Kidd Chris Show, Howard Stern, Philadelphia sports talk and WFMU’s Best Show are more often than not what you’ll find pumping from the Clockcleaner minivan, a sad maroon affair, made sadder still because an angry someone took time to key the words “Solid Bitch” on the passenger side door and hood.

If not for standup comedy and Sharkey’s white-hot devotion to those who’ve mastered it, being booted off the island of Philly’s music class might be harder to deal with.

“We truly are a peerless band in this city. And that’s fine. The comedians I like, if they’re bombing, they just ratchet up and start mowing down the crowd. They’re vicious.”

When asked, Sharkey can rattle off the names of a dozen or so comedians he follows and adores: Bill Hicks, Jim Norton, Patton Oswalt, Doug Stanhope, Patrice O’Neal, Andy Kaufman. These are the men seated at Clockcleaner’s table of influence. Still, none can hold a candle to the comedian at the table’s head: Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. isn’t just an influence on Sharkey (and by extension Clockcleaner)—he’s a way of life. Like someone suffering from comedy Tourette’s, Sharkey often quotes the man’s bits like a nervous tick. “How would one go about sucking a bag of dicks?” he’ll ask to no one in particular while waiting to pay the bill at a diner.

Spend any time around Sharkey, and questions like that—or the occasional misplaced aside (“I would blow Ewan McGregor”)—become commonplace.

In many ways Louis C.K.’s one-and-done series of HBO’s Lucky Louie is to standup what Clockcleaner want to be to music: gifted, original, shocking, offensive. Reviews for both include the same words: brutal, honest, painfully awkward, unflinching, sick, twisted, unforgiving.

“Some of the things Louis C.K. says take balls,” Sharkey says, seriously considering for a moment why he likes him so. “Sometimes I don’t even know if he’s trying to be funny. He’ll say something that’s so horrifically honest or awkward that it’s just great.”

Horner has another explanation. “He does rape jokes!”

“That’s what I mean,” Sharkey seconds. “He’s doing shit no one else is doing. It’s almost like he’s fucking with the audience sometimes.”

The show’s promoter introduces himself and says he’s excited about the show. It’s a Monday, school has let out for the summer, and he’s still somehow managed to presell some 75 tickets.

“I think we’re going to have more than 100 people here tonight, and that’s just really great this time of year,” he says cheerfully.

Clockcleaner are the openers. Tonight’s headliner Deerhunter have recently been fitted for indie rock royalty by the kingmakers at Pitchfork, and despite Sharkey’s insistence upon calling them “Queerhunter,” they get along swimmingly.

“They have a sense of humor,” Horner says. “That’s a rare quality in music these days.”

After some time passes, the show starts and, considering the previous night’s mind-melter, it’s relatively innocuous. Clockcleaner cover the Breeders’ “Divine Hammer” to close their set, and as it concludes, Sharkey takes off his guitar and picks up an aluminum bat, which he keeps against his amp.

There’s a garbage can hugging the side of the stage. Sharkey grabs it, empties it onstage and starts sifting its contents for plastic bottles, coffee cups or anything else that can be safely batted into the audience to a soundtrack of his guitar’s feedback.

The show ends, and the promoter who’d been so friendly earlier in the night is now visibly perturbed. He calls on staff to sweep up the stage, and picks up bottles batted throughout the ballroom with an exaggerated motion and an audible moan.

Deerhunter play, gear is loaded out, hours pass, Clockcleaner collect payment.

The promoter, over it now and still beaming about the turnout, thanks Clockcleaner for their time and asks them to please consider coming back to sleepy ol’ Charlottesville. “But you’ve gotta leave the bat in Philly,” he says.

Pulling out onto a Virginia highway on the way back to town at well after 2 in the morning, Sharkey is asked if he ever stops to think what it might be like to play a show free of drama. Could he possibly daydream about pulling into a town like this, greeting a promoter, playing a show and getting paid without some sort of commotion?

“A couple of those kids in there came up to us after the show and thanked me for not mailing it in tonight,” he says. “But I see your point.”

He takes a long drag on a cigarette, and contemplates the prospect a second more.

“Nah, fuck ’em,” he says, before driving off into the night.