Hey, Kids!

To reveal the rhythmatist, click on the face you suspect belongs to the tub-thumper. (Be advised that the "Theory of Beards" is unproved.)

BA-DA-BOOM! More ways to win stylin' Washington City Paper Web T-shirts.

1. Tell us the name of the band.
   Or...
   
2. Tell us which band member will quit the band, and why.
   Or...
   
3. Tell us which band member will be fired, and why.
   

Answer any of those questions to our satisfaction and a T-shirt is yours. E-mail your best guess to webmeister@washcp.com.

LAST WEEK'S MYSTERY BAND: "Hey!" said Kip Shepherd, of course. "This week's band is the Scrubbing Bubbles. They specialize in punk covers of old TV commercials. The drummer—Madge—is the first to leave when she gets tired of watching her career go down the drain."

Ba-da-boom, baby! Kip adds, "Joyeux Noel! Have a nice vacation!" We did, thanks. Perhaps everybody was on vacation, because nobody recognized BABES IN TOYLAND, Kat Bjelland, Maureen Herman, and drummer Lori Barbero. Surprising, really; They used to be something.

In fact, let us quote from Neal Karlen's bio Babes in Toyland: The Making and Selling of a Rock and Roll Band:

"You are a dumb shit, Lee Ranaldo," Lori said softly with the cadence of a David Mamet monologue as she sat unhappily behind her drum set. Who the fuck was Lee Ranaldo of the fucking Sonic Youth, excuse me, a guitar player, telling her maybe she should use a click track? Lori knew Kat's beat better than Kat did, and she was also learning how to play into Maureen's rhythms as fast as she could. I keep the beat for Babes in Toyland, Lori stewed, not a fucking click track, a machine, a robot!

• • •

In the coming year, Lori's incendiary tribal banging would gain grudging respect from rock critics who'd never before written approvingly of a woman drummer. But her fire that worked so magically in a rock club wasn't all the band needed from Lori in the studio. Each song on the album had to have a rock-steady beat—and Lori didn't have it.

• • •

Both [Warner Bros. A&R man Tim] Carr and Ranaldo sensed there was no way they could use a sub for Lori. She was the heart and soul of Babes in Toyland, and she would quit the band before letting anyone—let alone some hired-gun guy studio musician—play her beats. "Have you thought about the click track, Lori?" Ranaldo asked again.

Sitting behind her drums in the recording room, Lori shook her head and continued banging alone, beat after beat, for four new songs, seven takes each. Her eyes were glazing over, as were those of Ranaldo, who was glaring at her through the glass.

"You can do it, Lori," Kat said, then resumed making out with [Stuart] Spasm on a couch at the side of the room. "I don't even need to be here," the lead singer then whispered softly to her boyfriend, disgusted. "They're not even going to be recording my parts until we get to Minnesota."

Lori looked at the entwined couple and was repulsed. Not so much by Stuart Spasm, whom she found disgusting, but by Kat, her best friend, who'd only said about two sentences to her in the three days since she'd announced she was hopelessly in love. And forget ever getting her alone again for a private word: Kat and Stu seemed to be permanently stapled to each other.