Pink Filth puff piece

Pink Filth lives in a continuum that stretches like a wad of gum over the last half of the 20th century. If you ever watched an ABC After School Special, Pink Filth was there. If you saw the band of the future in Paul McCartney's "Give My Regards to Broad Street," Pink Filth was there, too. And Roxy Music's first album, well ...

Riff Rambo, Baby Jessica, Nick Velvet, (and Bazooka Joe - ed ) will throw their pop machine into overdrive on Friday at Sala Diaz with their multimedia show "Sugar Shock!" Live music from their new album of the same name (on Uncle Buzz Records) will frontline the installation of artifacts from the band's many incarnations.

The band is a collaborative effort to mine the memory banks of pop culture and redefine it through its own peculiar relics. A fetish for vinyl LPs and glam imagery points to the '70s and '80s influences that were transmitted largely through television and especially through the soundtracks of cartoons. Jem -- a Saturday morning cartoon about an all-girl band -- and the Archies are the most obvious springboards for their style, both visual and musical -- a style that plays on (and preys on) the ephemeral, two-dimensional character of TV and film content. "Pop is similar to bubblegum because it is sweet and colorful but loses its flavor quickly," says Baby Jessica.

A dominant theme of the ensemble in their recordings and performances is the transformation of what is assumed to be primary source material into something truly personal. People can absorb images and sounds from different media and accept those images, unanalyzed, as part of their own perspective without realizing or admitting the unconscious assimilation. The band uses images in equal proportion to sound to define themselves. "The music comes from the image," asserts Riff Rambo. "Ask any dead person." By initiating a visual overload of pop iconography, the message in the medium is descrambled and the thing that is truly important and touching to Pink Filth -- the music -- can shine through.

"Sugar Shock!" will feature games and prizes in a kid's birthday party atmosphere intended for all ages. The video "Bubblegum Fiesta" will also be shown, documenting the band's adventures in the King William Fair parade. Pink Filth plans to concentrate in the near future on touring to promote their record and solving creepy mysteries at the same time.

-- JOHN NAVARRO