Joe Strummer might roll over in his grave at the sacrilegious notion that a punk band would use a cheesy keyboard to carve out its signature sound. Then again, ol’ Joe might just pogo past the pearly gates when he hears the sloppy, helter-skelter melee that is Philly’s Low Budgets, led by another Joe, ex-Dead Milkmen guitarist Joe Jack Talcum, a.k.a. Butterfly Fairweather. (His mama calls him plain ol’ Joe Genaro.) Talcum makes no excuses for his trusty Teisco keyboard — the decidedly low-budget clone of the famous Farfisa helps him conjure a ’60s garage rock sound. And despite the cheesy keys and the fact that they’re older folks with jobs, the Low Budgets certainly do exude some qualities of the punk life. After all, they still play impromptu house party gigs and sell copies of their music on recycled Hanson cassettes. As for the music on those former “MMMBop” tapes, it’s alternately clever, energetic and occasionally just plain bad; their album Go for Broke includes ditties about beer for breakfast and the horror that is pop-punk, not to mention a lament or two about the low-budget lifestyle from which they take their name.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2004.