i-coastal dance-rock septet !!! (pronounced chik-chik-chik or pow-pow-pow or whatever three consecutive sounds you like) threw a record release party earlier this summer on a paddlewheel boat trip around Manhattan. Turns out nothing thaws hipster cool like commandeering a tourist trap. What looked like all of Williamsburg, clad in nautical gear, came together over their shared posession of that rare, inexplicable trait that makes one scream, "Boat party? Hells yeah!"

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And !!! — who look like chaos and sound like The Clash doing dub while a crazed Christopher Walken screams "I've gotta have more cowbell, baby!" — rocked the boat with ferocious nine-minute jams like "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard" and "Pardon My Freedom" off their new album, Louden Up Now. A week later, I met up with singer Nic Offer and guitarist Mario Andreoni at New York's Bowery Ballroom. The last I saw of the boys, they were running off to finish sound check. But I prefer to remember them at the end of the boat party, standing tough as the throngs spilled onto the dock. "Where's everybody going?" wailed Nic, drenched in sweat. "I was just getting started!" — Jada Yuan I've never been to the Bowery Ballroom when it's light out. It's gorgeous. Is this a secret room?
Mario: This is the little band's dressing room. This is where they used to put us. How have things changed for you in New York since you first came here from Sacramento?
M: When we first got here, I remember begging for shows on Ludlow. There was this place called the Pink Pony and we were trying to convince them to let us play there and it was almost gonna happen and it didn't work out, so we ended up playing someone's party in a loft space.
So even though some of you are now married and some of you live in California, you all seem pretty close. Do you talk to each other about girl problems?
M: Nic calls me about girl problems.
[Nic gets up to leave for a minute.]
What kind of girl problems?
M: Deep emotional shit. Not sexual prowess. I wouldn't want to say what I think is the cause of his problems. He's got weird standards.
What does he complain about?
M: The lack of women he can sleep with because of his weird standards. He would probably get laid all the time if he would fuck any girl who wanted to fuck. A lot of guys don't care. Women are just objects. And I think Nic still treats them as objects, but as prized objects.
[Nic returns.]
We were just talking about your girl problems.
N: I don't have girl problems. I just believe in love, and anything less than that is just fucking. I mean, of course there's different levels of emotional involvement, but some girls want to act like they're your girlfriend after you fuck, and that is my only problem. Right now, I'm fine with just fucking. Love will happen when it happens.
I'm always curious about how much guys actually talk about that sort of stuff.
M: Oh my God. In the van, it's like sixty-five percent of the time. We all talk about sex constantly, like dick size, you know, getting laid, how certain people were in bed — all those sorts of things that people talk about with their best friends.
Why does sex come up so much?
M: I think that you get horny on the road. Going without sex for a while, you get stir crazy.
What's the straight-gay ratio in your band?
N: It's ninety-five percent straight. A few of us have sucked a dick now and then, but that's very minimal.
That's interesting. You might be the best white straight male dancers I've ever seen.
N: We listen to a lot of black gay music. Maybe it worked its way in. Actually, the last girl I had a crush on thought I was gay.
M: There's a definite sympathetic homosexual side to all of us in the band. We're somewhat effeminate when it comes to a lot of things. I wanted to be a baseball player ever since I was a kid, but I hated jocks. The only thing we're macho about is that we talk about dicks and women and fucking a lot. But that's the limit. I don't like to be in testosterone-filled rooms.
But you are all guys. How does that work?
M: We're really affectionate with each other.
You mean you make out?
M: Well, sometimes. It really depends. No. We're not afraid to hug each other. We're not super touchy-feely, we're just always there for each other.
N: I have made out with a couple members of the band, but it was years ago and it was more like drunken party stuff than sharing feelings and then making out. You'll cry on each other's shoulders?
M: So to speak. Nobody really cries. I haven't cried in years, But if we're having some sort of emo moment, maybe someone will. It's just that we get to do a lot of things together, things that we never thought we'd be able to do. When we're jamming together and stuff, we all look at each other every once in a while and go, "Can you believe we're in Norway right now?" It's not very sexual; we're just reflecting on something rad that's happened to us. But very quickly it turns to sex. Literally within thirty seconds, it's like, "Holy Shit! Look at the rack on her!" You can't believe how many blond haired, skimpy-clothed, big-breasted women there are in Norway.
Has everyone experimented with men?
M: We're definitely all straight, but we definitely went though a period of curiosity.
What's the craziest thing that's happened on your stage?
N: Some girl got up on the stage in Amsterdam, grabbed the mic and gave a big speech about how she wanted John to take his shirt off. The audience then pointed out that maybe she should take off her shirt. She teased but didn't deliver, and John finally took off his during the last song. So that was cool because it was wild and crazy and I like to think that anything can happen at our shows. Oh yeah, and the mushrooms I had taken were kicking in wildly at this point.
M: We've also had fifty people onstage by the end of a show. That's fucking crazy. There's dirty dancing. Lots of grinding.
How do you play with somebody grinding against you?
M: I don't know. Actually, there was one show in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where it seemed like the whole town wanted to grind. It was fun. Nic is the usual target. I mean, you can try and grind the drummer, but it's not going to mean a lot. He's sitting down, and he's pretty busy.
Do you get lots of tit flashage?
M: We've started to. The other night in Chicago, after we were done, some girl totally raised her shirt up, but we don't get it that often. It's not like we're Bon Jovi or Motley Crue.
N: I haven't met anyone who could break my concentration yet, but I am waiting. I always think it's funny at festivals when girls get on shoulders and flash their tits and all the guys are like, 'Yeah, baby!' and all the girls are like, 'Oh my God, her boobs are so fake!'
M: Yeah, girls are catty.
Why do you thank Lou Reed's tits on your album?
N: We were at this wicked orgy once and Alan runs in and is like, "Guys, I just fucked Lou Reed's tits!" We just high-fived him: "All right, man."
How is that possible?
N: Because it was a wicked orgy. We were listening to Sister Ray. And we were on acid.
M: I think this band picks its slots with drugs. We're always sober when we're playing and if anything after the show, it's mainly alcohol. Drugs like acid, ecstasy, mushrooms are all once-in-a-while type of things. It's just a sort of fun thing to do, like going bowling.
Speaking of orgies, do you guys get girls easily?
N: I'm still waiting for the massive groupie-fucking onslaught.
M: We did have a girl ask us to come to her house for an hour. We were like, "We really have to go." And she was like, "How about twenty minutes?"
N: She said she just wanted to give us some water.
M: It's more like those singular girls than a mass. I don't know. It just seems like other bands have girls hanging around all the time. Maybe there's too many of us.
N: You know what, the truth is that if you want that, you really have to work for it. You know, go around and be like, "Yo, baby, what's up?" And we really don't have the time for that. It's cool if it falls in your lap, but it's not worth putting in the effort. It's worth putting the effort into someone who's rad. But just for a groupie? It's not worth it working all night just to fuckin' go home with someone who's not that smart. It's really available to bands who want to do that, but we're just not those kind of guys.
Your name came from the subtitles of The Gods Must Be Crazy. Were there any other names you were considering?
N: We did think of calling ourselves Totally Fired or Pirahnna Pants. I think we definitely picked the best one.
Does anyone actually refer to you as three sounds other than Chik-Chik-Chik?
N: We do. All the time. Don't you?
I say Pow-Pow-Pow. I love that you can't search for three exclamation points on the web.
M: When you're able to search Google and find us, then we've made it. We couldn't even use it as an email address. We had to use yaoyaoyao. Everything like chikchikchik and powpowpow was already taken. Do you have a rivalry with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?
N: No, but the New York Times tried to manufacture one. They said we stole the show from them when we played with them on Halloween.
Who do people compare you to the most?
N: We don't want to talk about that any more.
The Rapture?
N: And LCD Soundsystem. Those seem to be the most common.
Do you sense that the New York scene is dying down, with everyone blowing up and doing these massive tours so they're never actually here?
M: I never really looked at it as quote-unquote a scene. There was definitely a group of bands that were all inspired to move here and/or lived here and ended up making something that comprised the scene or whatever. But everyone sounds so different from everybody else. When I think of the scene, it seems like the Strokes and bands that sound like them were considered the New York sound and then it's the Rapture and then it's the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
N: But if you look at the scene in the late '70s, I don't think the Ramones sound like Television sound like the Talking Heads. It's not a scene so much as it is a town. You bump into people on the street. People have this idea that a scene is supposed to be like this happy family and we're all having potlucks.
Can you set down for all laymen the difference between !!! and Out Hud?
N: Out Hud has two girls and !!! has seven guys.
But you have three members in common.
N: I guess it is all danceable music. In the beginning with Out Hud we were trying to do dub and get it wrong and with !!! we were trying to do funk and get it wrong. But then we both started getting interested in doing house music and it all moved toward similar territory. Of course there are going to be similarities, but I'm certain that the new Out Hud record will settle the debate once and for all.
What do you mean you were trying to get funk and dub wrong?
M: We didn't want to be a cover band. We didn't want to be like Kool & the Gang.
N: We didn't want to be like Brand New Heavies.
Nic, when you perform, are you still yelling at people to make them dance?
N: I had to stop. [Fugazi's] Ian McKaye gave me a lecture and that really stung. I felt like it was necessary in the early days because then we were playing punk shows and people really didn't know what to do and it was like we were right in their face and we had to shake them up a little. But now it's like so many squares come to our shows, what are you really going to do? I'm not going to save the square population. I just want people to feel good. But still, I almost did it last night. We had a really cold crowd. And we were good.

You obviously have a political bent. You don't like Giuliani. You don't like Bush. Do you have plans for the Republican Convention?
N: Everyone quotes our song "You can tell the President to suck my fucking dick," but no one notices the following line: "Does that sound intelligent, oh like I give a fucking frick."
M: We were actually asked to play something for John Kerry.
N: Really? We were?
M: Yeah, it was something like Music for Kerry, but I just can't see us getting to the point where we're behind a single candidate. There's a lot of us in this band and we all have different views. But we share a common hatred for things we think are fucked up.
N: But we're not the dance U2.  n°

The other members of !!! are John Pugh on drums, Allan Wilson on percussion and horns, Tyler Pope on guitar and keyboard, Justin Vandervolgen on bass and electronics, Dan Gorman on percussion and horns, and Jason Racine on percussion. Mario and Allan live in Sacramento; the others live in New York City.

© 2004 Nerve.com.