From obscurity to life in My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult
Jacky Blacque is just minding her own business, sharing a drink with a few girlfriends in a dimly lit, smoke-filled Chicago cocktail lounge.
In walks Buzz McCoy, a filmmaker turned leader of the self-described tabloid-rock band My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. He sees her from across the room, and without knowing her name or whether she had a passable singing voice, recruits her and the others to become the backup Bomb Gang Girlz.
Like right out of Hollywood, he tells Blacque, “I’m gonna make you a star.”
Now she’s a firm disciple of the Kult. When she’s not singing, she’s working audiences into a frenzy with her leather hot pants and go-go boots.
Sounds like an idea for an ABC sitcom? Anything’s possible.
“They didn’t know us from Adam,” Blacque says of McCoy and Thrill Kill Kult cohort Groovie Mann. “I hadn’t heard of them, and this was even before they had gone to Belgium to record their first album. I just thought, ‘Ah, it’s just another drunk guy coming up to me,’ but little did I know.”
Behind the zaniness of McCoy and Mann lurks boundless creativity. The pair, originally setting out to make a post-punk gothic thriller movie with a friend’s video camera, also put their offbeat ideas down on lyrical paper for a soundtrack album.
Wax Trax Records somehow heard the demos, signed them, and eventually, the movie fell by the wayside. Six years later, the Thrill Kill Kult have unleashed their fourth frenetic album, “13 Above the Night” (Interscope/Atlantic).
Like the Kult’s other efforts, “13 Above the Night” is a techno cum disco concept, complete with endless samples of dialogue from bad B-movies.
Many fans of the band’s early metal-like sound were turned off by the Kult’s ’91 near-disco album “Sexplosion!” and are likely to stay turned off by “13 Above the Night.”
“Since ‘Sexplosion!’ is probably the only thing that they’ve heard, it’s just one album among a whole bunch,” Blacque says in defense. “It’s not the same as the one before that, so I guess you have to roll with the changes. I think all of our albums have a different flavor to them.”
McCoy and Mann’s fixation with everyday happenings and pop culture have rubbed off on Blacque.
“Well, I’ve always been a fan of those bad slasher movies, so I guess they could tell, without knowing me, that I fit the bill for them,” Blacque says with a laugh. “A lot of the movies they watch, I hadn’t seen before. But when I sat down and watched them, I just had to laugh.”
Blacque also unabashedly admits to buying supermarket tabloid magazines, much of which fuels the ideas for the Thrill Kill Kult’s sleaze-based songs.
“What, don’t you read the Weekly World News?” she asks.
As for the long-lost Thrill Kill Kult movie, Blacque says 90 percent still remains fresh in the minds of McCoy and Mann. In the meantime, Kult followers can look for the band’s cameo appearance in the upcoming film “The Crow.”
BWF (before we forget): Blacque is no longer with the Kult. The band returned in 1997 on Red Ant Entertainment with the album “A Crime For All Seasons.” … The Thrill Kill Kult album discography – “My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult” EP (1988); “I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits” (1988); “Some Have to Dance … Some Have to Kill” EP (1989); “Kooler Than Jesus” EP (1990); “Confessions of a Knife” (1990); “Sexplosion!” (1991); “13 Above the Night” (1993); “Hit & Run Holiday” (1995); “A Crime For All Seasons” (1997).
About the Author
Gerry Galipault Gerry Galipault debuted Pause & Play online in October 1997. Since then, it has become the definitive place for CD-release dates — with a worldwide audience.
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