luckyPRICK

The Visitor

Alternative Press
By Robert Cherry
Transcribed by D. Sticher

Scans:

"Do you have any thyme?" The waiter doesn't clearly hear the soft-spoken visitor below the sounds of the Austin deli."Thyme. Fresh thyme," he clarifies.

Kevin McMahon wants the spice for his bagel and lox. He's already changed his order twice before the latest request, but the harried waiter is amused rather than exasperated and very willing to do his job.

McMahon likes words and the confusion they can cause through their ambiguity. He named his group Prick, after all, a name many people hate upon first hearing. Kevin, of course, thinks "it's the best name *ever* for a band, just because of the irony. People who are the most against it are of the fundamentalist mentality and are giving more credence to the slang definition than the word that's in the bible - you know, 'prick your hearts.'"

Similarly, some music critics will listen to Prick and initially hear only Nine Inch Nails, ignorant of the fact that Trent Reznor's last gig as a sideman before becoming "intergalactically famous" was in an industrial-inflected reunion of McMahon's former group Lucky Pierre. The association became even closer when McMahon signed to Reznor's Nothing Records label and Reznor produced half of Prick's self-titled debut. Understandably, Kevin won't point out elements of his style that might have influenced Trent.

"A lot of times there's an affinity for the same type of vibe in music," Kevin says diplomatically, "so it comes across in someone else's tunes. [The record's] a collaboration. It's not like I wrote something and then tried to give it [Trent's] sound without the sound coming from the guy who *does* the sound."

Regardless of the production, which Reznor refers to as "a garage band with synthesizers," the songs McMahon recorder with Reznor in New Orleans and Warne Livesey in England have more in common with vintage Bowie and Ray Davies than anything you heard in an electronic band. McMahon is a songwriter's songwriter, a rare breed in "industrial" music. He actually cares about the basic components of a song - words, melodies, "hitting shit" - and the way they can add up to something larger than their individual parts.

"That's what I like about music: it transports you to someplace or some thought where you're more alive. Something's going on other than just putting your socks on," he laughs, "and going through the drone of daily life."

Onstage for a SXSW showcase, McMahon resembles some messianic marionette with the handsome but weathered face of young Syd Barrett, the charisma of T.Rex's Marc Bolan and the corkscrew hair of both. The other musicians in Prick are hired, competent guns, but McMahon appears comfortable with these relative strangers who are "all very different."

"That was part of the reason for choosing them besides their musical abilities," he says. "If I was in a certain mood, I could go talk
to a certain guy. The bass player Sebastien Monney [for instance] is Swiss. He's pretty young So...a 22-year-old illegal alien Swiss guy, you know?" he laughs, amused and perplexed by his choice. "Why didn't I just get a jar of mustard to play bass?"

Kevin apparently thrives on strangeness and variety. You can't imagine his skin exposed to the sun and pollution of Los Angeles, yet that's where he resides. He wears earplugs to mute the noise when he leaves the apartment building where tenants are occasionally held-up in the hallways and then told to "be careful. Remember this is Los Angeles."

After the show, clutching two bottles of Guinness Stout, McMahon appears uneasy fielding the praise of fans and industry types, and a few come-ons. He soon leaves. Women, attractive and used to getting what they want, will not share his bed. Regardless, he'll only sleep for one hour, concerned he may slip into the void from where his songs appear, and never awake.

The next day he must return to Los Angeles. Though he'd like to stay in Austin and hear a few bands, Kevin says he's afraid he'll "get lost and give up music." He's probably joking. Nonetheless he's anxious to return home. It makes you wonder if he has any animals to feed or anything that would miss him if he stayed."No, but I left my equipment on," he laughs. "That might be a problem."