Dangerous, Not Safe: The Bourgeois – “Summer Of George”
The Bourgeois
“Summer Of George”
Designer Genes
What a great band. The Bourgeois come at you like The Hulk, destroying apathy all around them. This is a band that was tired of the “toothless” of alt rock and decided to spice things up, bring back the danger, that same danger Nirvana, Iggy Pop, MC5’s, Joy Division, the Bauhaus brought. This is not safe music; this is brave music.
Zach Mobley and Ty Clark grew up in the bowels of rural Oklahoma and dealt with the oppression of the Bible-Belt in different ways. Zach (guitar/vocals) spent most of his adolescence holed up listening to punk rock and plotting his escape. Ty (drums) also took solace in music but fell victim to the opioid epidemic that plagued his community.
After a stint in one of the state’s many overcrowded and underfunded prisons, Ty reclaimed control of his life and responded to an ad placed by Zach. The two quickly realized they shared similar tastes in music and a similar distaste for the hypocrisy surrounding them. Another small town pariah, Vance Young (bass), was added later to complete the lineup.
“Summer of George”, produced by Trent Bell (Flaming Lips) and mixed by Brad Wood (Smashing Pumpkins, mewithoutYou, Placebo), is a dark look at how the hope and optimism that accompany summer can quickly be replaced by laziness and apathy.
This is exactly what the alt rock/indie community needs. Enough of treading the old ground. It is now time for a Bourgeois revolution. Side note: the name comes from an episode of Seinfeld where George Castanza (played by the marvelous Jason Alexander) announces that ‘this is the Summer of George’. Of course, nothing works out.
