Artist description Intelligent 3-piece power pop that's cooler than the other side of the pillow!

Music Style Alternative, Power Pop

Musical Influences Cheap Trick, Guided by Voices, Loud Family, Morrissey, XTC

Similar Artists Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, Elvis Costello, Guided by Voices, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Sparks, XTC

Artist History Too long to think about. Formerly known as Sugarbomb. Changed to avoid heavy fines & gulag internment.

Group Members Scott Coker, Bert Hughlett, Jerry Murphy

Instruments Scott Coker - backing vocals, bass, keyboards; Bert Hughlett - backing vocals, guitar; Jerry Murphy - drums, vocals

Albums "Hits From the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen"

Press Reviews Sugarbomb drops into city 2001-04-20 By Gene Triplett Entertainment Editor Any band with nerve enough to turn Patsy Cline's "Crazy" into a punked-out power-pop rocker deserves a round of beers for sheer audacity alone. But when they pull it off successfully, actually transforming the Willie Nelson-penned, country torch-song classic into a tune to which you can gleefully bounce off the walls, these are musicians worth one's attention. Meet Sugarbomb, a mighty little trio of age 30-something guys who work Ward Cleaver jobs by day and save the world from musical mediocrity by night. They'll be performing their harmonic heroics tonight at the Samurai Restaurant and Sakihouse, 7502 N May, sharing the bill with Dolly Braid. "It's a fun one to play live," Jerry Murphy says of Sugarbomb's "Crazy" cover. "It's just neat to look out at the people's faces and watch their reaction. It's 50 percent like, 'Oh, yeah!' and the other half is like, 'I can't believe they're doin' this. What the hell are they thinking?'" Murphy, 39, isn't worried about pleasing all the people all the time. While metal and mainstream are the choices of the local masses, he and bandmates Bert Hughlett (guitars, backing vocals) and Scott Coker (bass, backing vocals) dance to a different drummer - literally. Murphy handles the sticks, lead vocals and songwriting chores, and his original tunes are influenced by decidedly alternative sources. "We're kind of like, Morrissey takes Cheap Trick out to dinner with Elvis Costello, and Andy Partridge and Robyn Hitchcock are the waiters." This guy is so quotable. And Sugarbomb's music is so listenable. Songs such as "Kari Drives a Jeep," "Pulse" and "Everybody Hates the Tourists" are propelled by spring-loaded percussion and colored with nimble guitar fills, irresistible rhythmic twang, razor-sharp hooks and high, earnest vocals reminiscent (to these ears at least) of the Undertones' Feargal Sharkey. Samples of these and other tunes can be heard on the band's Web site, www.crowcreation.com/sugarbomb. "We're very big on melody and harmony," Murphy says. "That might not be a popular thing these days, but it seems to work for us. If I had my way, we'd be a Badfinger cover band, but it's a democracy, so there you go." It's certainly not easy being Sugarbomb, at least on the Oklahoma City music scene. "When it's multi-band night, we get lumped in with a bunch of Stone Cold Steve Austin look-alikes, screaming rather than singing into the mike, telling you what a bad day they had," he says. "The music du jour, soup of the day, what have you. "It's challenging for us to go into the midst of that and still come out smelling like a rose. I mean, we'll have a couple of people there going like, 'Oh, this is wimpy, what the hell is this?' But we make a lot of new fans." The fans can look forward to Sugarbomb's debut album sometime in late summer or early fall. It takes a while to record an album when there are full-time jobs to work, suburban house payments to make and families to feed. Murphy is a structural designer of corrugated packaging and point-of-purchase displays; Hughlett builds and remodels homes; and Coker works at a sports car dealership. They don't kid themselves about rock stardom, especially after their hopes were dashed in a previous band called Manic Pop Thrill, which dissolved in a mess of legal problems with management and internal strife. After a long period of not speaking to one another, grudges faded and the three renewed their friendships and their musical partnership 2 years ago. Now, they're older and wiser, and determined to play for the fun of it - and play it their way, no matter what. "I mean, we've got everything to gain and nothing to lose by sticking to our power-pop guns," Murphy says. Sugarbomb's ambition is nothing more than to be "a really good little cult band. You know, something like Guided by Voices" (headed by 43-year-old Robert Pollock, by the way). Meanwhile, Murphy says they'll keep throwing in the occasional oddball cover song with the originals, just to keep the audience a little off-balance. "We do 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' We do a really mean version of it, too. We don't have it recorded yet. We might." At this moment, Judy Garland must be spinning like a Kansas tornado.

Location Oklahoma City, OK - USA

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