Triplefastaction....Scene, May 2-8,1996

"We're getting more air play in Cleveland than in any other market," Triple Fast Action drummer Brian St. Clair says. The song that is garnering a lot of air play is "Revved Up," a searing slice of punk pop from Triple Fast Action's debut album, Broadcaster. The Chicago-based quartet -- St. Clair, lead guitarist-vocalist Wes Kidd, bassist Kevin Tihista and guitarist Ronnie Schneider -- came together about three years ago out of the ashes of two bands that had been playing regularly on the Windy City punk circuit. St. Clair picks up the tale.

"Ronnie and Kevin were in this other Chicago band called Wood, who didn't really do a lot," he recalls. "They never ... They really don't like that band, they say. I don't know. I never heard 'em.

"Me and Wes grew up in the punk rock scene," St. Clair continues. "We were in Rights of the Accused together, and prior to that, we were in this other band, Political Justice? That started in junior high, so me and Wes have been playing together for a long time, something like 16 years."

That's a long time to be playing music with someone.

"Yeah," he agrees. "It's real passion. You kinda get hooked on it."

Produced by GumballŐs Don Fleming, Broadcaster features the slightly psychedelic "Never Ever Care" and a tune called "Aerosmith" that has nothing to do with the Beantown hard rockers. Though St. Clair considers the band "a work in progress," he does think of his band as more of a live band than a recording band at this point in time.

"We havenŐt really spent that much time in the studio," he admits. "We did our typical demo thing and put out a couple of 45s before getting to do Broadcaster on a major label.

"We're just a rock band," he concludes. "You can do things in the studio obviously you can't do live. You can't make all the sounds the same. Like in 'American City World,' there's that watery dropout part that kind of adds to the whole Beach Boys type of feel that we were trying to get.

"You can do a lot of stuff in the studio that bands can't perform live," St. Clair continues, "but when you get down to the roots of everything, we wanted to try to keep it in the true sense that we are a live band. We didn't want to fool people thinking, Oh, well, this is how we are live."

You can find out for yourself this Friday, May 3, at the Grog Shop, when Triple Fast Action play with the Figgs. St. Clair has very definite opinions about recreating the sound of a record live on stage.

"If a band went out there and used all sorts of keyboards on the record and they don't have a keyboard player in the band, it just doesn't seem right," he says. "We try and keep a true sense of what we are as a band.

"I think when people see us live, they definitely will not be disappointed. We tend to rock harder live than we did on the record."

Bands look at debut albums in different ways. Some think of them as only the beginning, while others look at them as the purest musical statement that they will make in their career. For St. Clair, Triple Fast Action approached Broadcaster like it was their definitive album.

"We kind of went into this album thinking that it was, not our first album, but our only record," he explains. "It's gonna be the first taste of Triple Fast Action to everybody as a whole. We really wanted it to be something special and something that we were very happy with. We didn't want anything to be disappointing about it, so we really took a lot of time to get everything right. That's why it took such a long time to come out. Even though it was done, we wanted to make everything perfect, so we wouldn't be disappointed a year down the line.

"Like you read interviews with the Pumpkins or whoever, and Billy Corgan will say, "I never thought Siamese Dream was good representation of the band." Well, why did he release it? You should be really happy with everything you do. Everything the band does... if you're not happy with it, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."