Spunk Rock

"We've pretty much done everything ourselves, kept our own sound and not tried to be popular," Shattuck says. "We've always just been ourselves. People say, 'Oh, you're on a major label .... ' Yeah, but we're smart. We do everything we want to do, and we do it our way. No one tells us what to do."

Shattuck was only looking for a venue for her songwriting when she launched the Muffs. She had just quit L.A.'s notorious Pandoras, the all-female band led through a confounding progression of pop, punk, dance and metal by the late Paula Pierce. The Muffs initially included Shattuck, ex-Pandora Melanie Vam-men, drummer Criss Crass and, unexpectedly, boyfriend Barnett. "After three years, he's like, 'Did you know I played the bass?' " Shattuck recalls. " 'What?! That bass at your brother's house is yours?' 'Yeah.' So he kept that little [fact] from me."

Barnett also ended up providing inspiration for the anti-love songs on the Muffs' first CD when he and Shattuck broke off their relationship. The lyrics to "Saying Goodbye," for instance, erupted after a call from Barnett concluded with him ranting about some problem Shattuck had nothing to do with. She hung up and started scribbling, "I've got better things to do / And better things to listen to / Than all your ranting and raving on me ...."

But on this afternoon, the former couple seem like the best of friends. Barnett has since married a member of the Vancouver band Cub (who, critics note, have a strangely Muff-ish sound). So Barnett's a friendly, funny presence here. But on-stage, a certain tension re-emerges as the pair sometimes trade insults, shoves, kicks and spitballs. The bassist then comes off like a moody, gangly punk, lugging his instrument across the stage like a mastodon bone.

Early on, that explosiveness caused the Muffs to be banned from a long list of dives. They had been together six months before they were first paid: 15 bucks for a show at Club Lingerie, a venue from which they were immediately blacklisted when they started screaming and smashing chairs. At another early gig at Los Angeles's Palomino, drummer Crass reacted to not being paid by shouting, "I just want everybody to know that nobody got paid tonight! The Palomino's fucked!" before smashing some beer bottles and escaping into a waiting car. When they were banned from the Club With No Name, the Muffs were warned, in proper B-movie fashion, "You'll never play in this town again!"

Crass and Vammen ultimately quit the band, and ex-Redd Kross drummer Roy McDonald joined in time for 1995's Blonder and Blonder CD. Now they're courted by the occasional TV star (George Wendt, the ubiquitous Norm from Cheers) and fellow rockers. During one recent show in New Orleans, the Muffs met the members of Marilyn Manson, and guitarist Twiggy followed the trio to an all-night bar, where he spent the entire evening trying to get Shattuck to go to bed with him.

"Then he got all depressed," Barnett says. "And he was talking to a guy from the Queers: 'She won't go with me! I can't believe it! I fucked Courtney!' "

Shattuck laughs. "He wasn't my type," she says. "Guys with messed-up makeup and scary-looking old lady dresses are not my type."

She doesn't spend much time with other rockers, and even leaves the radio off when she's writing, worried that her brain is being invaded by pop melodies floating through the air. How can she be sure where her song ideas come from? "I always have to ask Ronnie: 'What does this sound like to you? I just wrote it, does it sound like anything?' " she says. "One time it was just like a Bob Mould song. It was identical, and I only maybe heard it once. It just stuck in my head so much."

She laughs again.
"I wrote the bridge better than he did, though.