Just Call It Thrash for the Thinking : Young, Raw Beard Rattles Some Walls

Ed Ruscha, son of the famous Los Angeles artist of the same name, is on the floor writhing. He holds a bass guitar and manages to play just the same.

The other members of his band, Beard, are playing too. It is a testament to electronic technology that three guitars and a set of drums can rival the loudness of a construction site.

When the song ends, the band members are asked the name of their type of music.

“It really doesn’t have a name,” the dreadlocked Ruscha says.

“It’s thrash/jazz,” guitarist Adam Lara says.

With its repetitious half-step melodies, Beard’s music has more structure than thrash, the earsplitting musical nihilism that has spawned a subculture in New York. And the all-original songs are more jarring than all but the most strident jazz.

Fans who want to hear for themselves can catch the band Saturday at 8 p.m. when it plays at Bebop Records & Fine Art in Reseda.

“They’re young, and they’re raw, but I feel there’s a lot of potential there,” said Bebop owner Richard Bruland, who is booking Beard for the second time. “Give them 2 or 3 years and they could be really good.”

Bruland compared the band to Jane’s Addiction in its “hints of metal and thrash, but it’s more complex. You could call it thinking man’s thrash.”

Beard has been rattling the walls on weekends at a Burbank rehearsal studio and figures to be at its angry best for the performance.

Ruscha, 19, is a student at CalArts in Valencia. He said he founded the band with friends 5 years ago while living in Sherman Oaks. Adam Lara, 18, of Agoura Hills remains from the original group. He attends Santa Monica City College.

Newer members are Jason Krause, 17, a senior at Grant High in Van Nuys, and Jim Putnam, 21, of Tarzana, like Ruscha a CalArts student. A fifth member, Matthew (Mattyboy) Sevareid, may fly in from San Francisco for the show.

In addition to its Bebop Records performance, the group has played on the CalArts campus twice and once at the Anti-Club in Hollywood.

Father Is Fan

Ruscha (pronounced Ru-shay) lives in a guest house at his parents’ Brentwood home. “I like his music a lot,” his father says. “I guess he and I have the same sensibilities. We like music that makes your palms itch.

“I notice him changing a little. He used to be all new wave punk. Now he’s getting into jazz and other forms of music that he wasn’t a year ago.”

Ruscha junior is proud that all of Beard’s members paint or draw. He said his work isn’t like that of his father, who helped put Los Angeles on the international art map with paintings and prints that featured written messages. The Hollywood Sign and Standard Oil signs in particular became Ruscha trademarks.

“I’m more into video, comic books, other kinds of drawing,” the younger Ruscha said. The band publishes its own fan magazine on an irregular basis, and many of the sketches are done by the younger Ruscha. The subjects often are misshapen nudes.

Despite the grotesque nature of the drawings and the aggressive pounding of his music, Ruscha says he is not an angry young man. Neither does he come across as one, although his humor tends toward the ironic. Asked to name the band’s influences, he mentions pop singer Tom Jones.

He said he has no career plans after graduation.

“At this point I’m just waiting to see,” he explained. “I do whatever I’m into at the time.”

The band has changed over the years, Ruscha said. Unbelievably, the music used to be louder.

“We were a lot noisier and crazier back then,” he said. “We’re a lot more melodic now.”