THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 25, 1995 TAG: 9503240100
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
IT'S A TWO-BANDS-for-two-bucks Thursday at the Abyss. The beer is cold, the music loud, the crowd sparse. There's room, in fact, for a good fight between the small, black-clad cliques. That is, if anybody cared enough to get mad at somebody.
The cavernous Virginia Beach club recently hosted packed houses for hot alternative-rock buzz acts like Hole and Oasis. On this night, the headliner doesn't hail from the West Coast or Manchester. Combine's place on the map is closer, as you'd guess from the title of its debut album: ``Norfolk, VA.''
But before Combine goes on stage, a power punk trio called Trauma Kamp reigns, their singer bellowing: ``A LOT OF GIRLS WON'T GO OUT WITH ME BECAUSE I PLAY GUITAR! A LOT OF GIRLS WON'T GO OUT WITH ME BECAUSE I LIVE IN MY CAR!''
Combine guitarist Brian Pafumi appears unbothered by the miniscule crowd and the bottom-of-the-billers' crummy songs as he takes in the scene from near the bar.
At midnight, he rallies his band. ``All right,'' he announces. ``I guess we'll start playin'.''
To call what follows the best music to come off the stage all night is a backhanded compliment.
There are probably too few listeners gathered at stagefront to start a decent mosh pit. But they listen intently, with a few bodies moving appreciatively to the rhythms. It's another night in the life of a band - the latest band hoping to rise above Norfolk.
So why's the record named after the old hometown, anyway?
``First, it has to do with the fact that this is basically what we decided to do to entertain ourselves,'' Pafumi said. ``One of the problems this town suffers from is a lack of self-esteem. And not having a decent college radio station.
``Boredom necessitates creating your own fun. It's our own little tip of the hat to the catalyst for our getting this far.''
Another reason, he says puckishly, is to conduct a gullibility test.
``We figured it was gonna get seen by a lot of magazines. I wanted to see if, in magazines, they would start talking about the Norfolk `scene.' ''
``Norfolk, VA'' is one of hundreds of independent-label rock releases that will appear this year. But there is reason to believe it could break out of the pack. Since the disc's February release on New York's Caroline Records - which was responsible for Smashing Pumpkins' initial release, ``Gish,'' among other alt-rock touchstones - Combine is stirring some out-of-town action.
Their low-budget video for ``Cattle My Rage,'' featuring Pafumi, bassist Darryl Lewis and drummer John Corbett romping in a takeoff of ``King Kong,'' is No. 2 on video-music magazine VMJ's alternative-rock chart. It will be submitted to MTV early next month.
The album's ``acerbic post-adolescent noise'' was praised by the influential CMJ magazine.
And just seven days after the grueling Virginia Beach show, Combine played for a more interested audience at the prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) music convention in Austin, Texas.
``It can mean a chance for a good part of the music industry, the taste makers, to see the band and form an opinion about the band,'' said Caroline A&R (artists-and-repertoire) head and product manager Brian Long.
Combine's Caroline deal was signed last June, following what, by all accounts, was a barn-burner of a show at the Norfolk watering hole Friar Tuck's.
``I basically got a tape from their manager about a year ago,'' Long recalls, ``and in the course of the next few months, I just kept putting it on. I just grooved on - their groove, really.''
With Caroline president Lyle Preslar in tow, ``I came down to see them play, and basically, they proved everything that the tape showed - that they're a very tight, very loud live band.''
Every band's a little time bomb,'' says Pafumi. He's given a lot of thought to the commercial heights reached by all '90s alt-rock groups, and to Combine's possible place in the machine.
``On one hand, you wanna think you can have a huge audience and sell a huge amount of records to pay back the huge amount of money we've spent already,'' he says. ``You basically, for the most part, get played on college radio and go around loading your own equipment.''
Pafumi insists that low-cost is the only sensible route. The video cost only $10,000, a pittance in MTV terms. With the attention Combine's getting, the road calls more and more each week. After recording the followup to ``Norfolk, VA'' next month in New York, they'll pile into their 1985 Dodge conversion van for a 52-day tour that'll put them in clubs about the size of hometown haunt Kings Head Inn. Not a bad thing, either, given the per diem money they'll make on tour, their lack of day jobs and the singer's current digs.
``Darryl has been living in the same place for seven years, so it's frozen rent. John lives with his parents,'' Pafumi says.
And the voice of ``Norfolk, VA''? He's been staying in an extra room in his sister's West Ghent home, where, he says, static has been flying. That Dodge's ``plush seats,'' as he describes them, are looking pretty good to Brian Pafumi these days.
``I'm essentially functionally homeless,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: Gary C. Knapp color photo
Alternative-rock bank Combine is gaining attention with its album
"Norfolk, VA"...
by CNB