|
Listen, if you dare, to a story so bizarre that it
has been known to make women faint and grown men shriek
in terror! Out of a time-rotted tomb crawls an
unspeakable horror, The Tremors, the Scourge
of the South...
The dark and twisted tale of the tremors begins in
1957, when AWOL marine and cough syrup addict, Stretch
Armstrong (drums), met escaped mental patient, Jimmy
Tremor (guitar, vocals) and former alligator wrestler,
Slim Perkins (bass), at "The Happy Gizzard" a tar-paper
shack that served as the local honky-tonk for the
citizens of Sibly, NC. The trio was often seen blasting
out the new Sun records of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee
Lewis and Carl Perkins on the club's jukebox.
By 1958, the boys had their own band and toured
extensively on the "Chitlin' Circuit" of the deep south.
Then came the fateful night in Birmingham, AL when the
band was paid entirely in booze, resulting in the
alcohol poisoning deaths of all three members. When the
bodies were shipped back to Sibly, the townspeople
refused to let the Tremors be buried in the sacred
ground of the church cemetery. As the stand-off between
the next of kin and the towns-people ensued, the corpses
began to mummify (probably due to their over-zealous
consumption of "Pappy's corn juice" as Jimmy puts it)
and the Tremors were soon back in show business touring
with "Col. Bolt Upright's Cavalcade of Freaks and
Oddities" out of Shreveport, LA. "The Zombie Hillbilly
Band", as they were billed, was a strong draw (better
than they ever did when they were alive) until the
1970's, when freak shows went out of public
favor. |
|
In 1981, the band was "abducted" (for a sum of $50)
from Col. Upright by extraterrestrials, from the planet
Zorcon, who had recently received broadcast transmission
of new singing sensation, Elvis Presley, and had set out
across the universe to bring back a rock'n'roll
specimen. Telepathically sensing the vibrations of the
"big beat" from Stretch's left hand, the aliens
re-animated the boys, feeling that the "mummy" angle
gave the band a much needed gimmick.
Once again the Dixie-fried deviants were drawing
crowds at their new home in the Zorconian Museum of
Natural History. The Tremors were number one on the
inter-planetary charts and there was even talk of a
feature film. They had the galaxy in the palms of their
hands and then disaster struck. Broadcast transmissions
of the Beatles on the "Ed Sullivan Show" reached Zorcon
and the Tremors were returned to earth and exchanged for
a band with a more "mop-top" appeal.
Since their return in 2003, the trio has released
their earth-bound debut "The Scourge of the South", the
"Uranium Rock EP" (in "Glow-in-the-Dark CD & vinyl
formats), "Invasion of the Saucermen" (with 3-D
"Tremor-Vision" graphics) and "Demon Boogie Fever" on
Brain Drain Records and moved to the thriving metropolis
of Greensboro, NC, "where they have them new-fangled
movin' picture shows" says Stretch. They also frequent
the city's many tattoo parlors, where, as Slim says "the
needle reminds us of the pain of the living." Jimmy sums
up the feeling of the band, "I'm sure glad they didn't
bury us." |
