What should be unquestioned is Perry's musical ability. His brain child, The Bad Daddies, is a ripping eight-piece ensemble which has a tightness, musical sophistication and flat-out drive that call to mind a collaboration between Fishbone and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. In my eight years in Eugene, I've never heard anything that approaches what the Daddies put out, from the warp-speed swing of their "Drunk Daddy," to the pumping Ike and Tina-esque "You Better Move," to the '40s-style, big band-inspired "Shake Your Lovemaker." This is a sensational band, amazingly versatile and thoroughly professional.

Front and center is Perry, a loquacious, hyperkinetic performer whose pelvic-powered dance style and gonzo theatrics are attention-grabbing, to say the least. He has performed in drag, has been tied to a nine-foot cross and carried on stage, has done a phallic shadow dance using a giant pickle, has appeared shaved-headed, appeared with a bevy of gyrating female dancers--the list goes on.

Not surprisingly, in a city like Eugene where many are acutely sensitive to any behavior perceived as sexist, some of Perry's antics have met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. The most persistent problem had to do with the band's original name, Cherrypoppin' Daddies. While Perry felt the name conveyed a swingin' male bravado, many community members found it offensive.

Some even insisted that the name clearly implied support for the idea of fathers raping their young daughters, a notion that Perry says never occured to him until it apprared in the letters column of What's Happening. Another flap came to a head at a Max's Tavern show. UO Jewish Student Union picketers protested the band's use of a Warsaw Ghetto photograph on a publicity poster.

Though the band gave in to community pressure and changed its name, a shadow of bad feeling still exists in some quarters. It's rare to see a Bad Daddies poster around town; poster vigilantes rip down and trash them as soon as they hit the poles. There have been threats, demonstrations and harassing phone calls directed against the band as well.

The financial impact of the rift has been significant. Manager Rob Waldman has been unable to crack the band into the Northwest college circuit, a potentially lucrative source of income, and he's sure it's due to the controversy that surrounds them. Add in the increased cost of producing hundreds of extra posters per show, and the money aspect becomes still bleaker, especially for an eight-piece band in a tough music market.

Still the beat goes on. After taking some time off to break in new members Brian West (on drums) and John Fohl (on guitar), the Daddies are back with a vengeance, playing live, as well as preparing for an upcoming album. Tentatively titled The Enemy Within, it will be recorded locally this month at Gung Ho studio.

Also in the pipeline is an animated music video of "Teenage Brainsurgeon," Perry's thrashing foray into the world of adolescent male fantasy. It is being produced by animator Steve Reddy.

I talked to Perry several times over the past two months in his incredibly cluttered campus area apartment. Musical instruments, cassette tapes, dirty dishes and full ashtrays vie for space with old laundry and paperback books--the artist's den.

RG: Steve, I want to start with what I think is a fairly typical reaction to your band. I asked a friend of mine, "Have you seen the Bad Daddies yet?" He said, "No, but I don't like their politics." Any comment?

SP: My opinion of those people is that they're just as bad as Jesse Helms, and I'm disappointed in those people whom I consider my cohorts politically, who are the liberals. I'm disappointed with them because they seem to be doing the exact same thing to us as was done to people like Lenny Bruce or Frank Zappa or the Dead Kennedys or Mapplethorpe of the makers of The Last Temptation of Christ.

If your friend doesn't do any critical work on our body of work, then he's going to be stupid about it. I mean, I'm a subtle fucker. I'm not this kind of person who's going to get up and say, "Look, really what we're trying to say is this." That's the listener's job. I like things that have the element of mystery in them, that make you think. If I just say, "Free South Africa," if I say, "The U.S. is a repressive environment," and "High school is a microcosm of the society where everyone puts on their little outfits to become this that and the other thing," well, I could say that, but it's bullshit. I'm an artist, I do my thing. And satire has been around forever. I'm talking about the world as it is, no utopias. I'm telling stories about how I see it. And I'm not telling it straight because the music that I like was music that hits you sidelong, you know what I mean?

RG: Like who?

SP: Fear, The Dead Kennedys, Zappa, people of mystery, The Meat Puppets, people who didn't give away the riddle. That music--I had to go into it to figure out exactly what their position was. Sometimes it wasn't even clear, but when I did that critical work, I was closer to the piece itself because I had done the work. I didn't go, "That's a nice thought." You can make a piece of art that you can hang above the couch, lots of water lilies, a mountain scene...that's sort of like "politically correct" music, like, "We all believe the same thing, we're all together." That's not art that challenges you.

RG: I get the feeling that part of you enjoys stirring things up.

SP: Sure. I think it's important. I mean, this is democracy in action. On an artistic level, our art is music and media and social interactions--that's what we do. I think it's good that the whole debate raises the question of censorship, what is allowable, how a community works, and that it stirs up trouble. But some trouble should be stirred up.

RG: Why did you change the name of the band.

SP: Because the liberal people, or whoever they were, put a lot of pressure on the clubs, and certain clubs were more in bed with that sort of attitude than with others. Basically it just kind of became a carte blanch where they said, "We don't want to get heat from these people any more. Everybody knows who you are; just call yourselves something else." That's why we did it. I personally like Cherrypoppin' Daddies as a name. I think if it was a different time in history, it wouldn't have been a problem.

RG: Why is it so hard to come up with a new name?

SP: Because every time we come up with a new name, it just doesn't ring like Cherrypoppin' Daddies. That name is jazz age; it sticks in people's craw and has a ring to it. Every other name we come up with...it's tough to make it ring and not be super beige. We hate the name Bad Daddies; we wish we'd never come up with it.

RG: You seem really different on stage than off, like there's something that takes over when you hit the spotlight.

SP: Yeah, something does happen to me, but I think the pressure of the stage situation brings out the repression that I feel every day. It just intensifies the situation. I mean, I get frustrated by the community, trying to explain myself, and the position that I'm put in. When we had the show at Max's Tavern with the big protest, I was an ornery guy because I was put in a position where I wasn't given the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't respected; I was objectified just like we had supposedly been objectifying everyone else. But that's my whole point, which is to satirize this objectification.

RG: There seems to be a recurring theme of father-son conflict in your work.

SP: It's less the father-son motif and more the authority figures, moral high-ground versus the young, innocent, fresh-faced kind of thing. I see fathers as being rigid and stultified--I mean economically, in the government and also the community--old people suppressing the young people. The father-son theme works to express that. There is a generation gap, you know. That's what rock and roll is all about; that's what my life's been about. The reason I sing about it is to transcend that gap. I don't like the division, I don't like it at all. I want full understanding, but I have to be able to say it in my own way. The father-son thing rings true, especially considering what we've been through in Eugene.

RG: What do you do when you're not playing in the band?

SP: What I do with my life is--I get up (my mother is paying my rent, which is super sweet of her) and I write music and write and write and write, and then I search for food because I'm so fucking broke. Then I write some more, then I find some more food. If one of my friends needs money, I loan it to him if I have it. If they have it, they loan it to me. And I'm not alone, not in this town. Most of the people I know in this town who aren't in the university are struggling like that. Rents are insane and it's driving away a lot of people in the art field.

RG: Is there a certain discipline you follow to keep on track?

SP: I do it every day, but it's not linear. Lately I've been waking up with ideas, you know, I have a dream and there's a lick in there, so I wake up and record it. I don't do, "OK, today I'm going to do lyrics." If a song is nearing completion, I work on that. If I'm in a swinging mood, I work on the swing stuff, or if I'm in a funk mood or rock--it's sort of haphazard. I'm the guy who has his shit all over the place. I'm really into it right now; it's what I want to do really bad. So I'm disciplined as far as doing it all the time.

SP: No, no, no. Right now I'm sort of an obsessive more than a genius. It's not like that, I hate that. I don't believe in that bullshit. I just like music, you know. I hear something and I want to have it come out. I enjoy being inside the music. It's like creating an environment for yourself that you find fun and exciting. It's like having a big house, and I don't mind if the rooms clash. Sometimes I'm into being in the hard rock room and sometimes I'm into being in the Tonight Show room.

It takes a lot of energy for me to write a song; for some people it doesn't take as much, but I doubt myself all the time, the enemy within again. It's like, not only is it about finding the enemy within the nation, it's also in myself. The constant doubt, the conflict within the community--it eats away at me, it gnaws and keeps me up at night. And it keeps me hungry, which is sort of a good thing to be, because I mean what I say.

RG: I'm picking up from you a real change in your rap. Six months ago you were very much, "This is true, and it's the audience's problem if they don't get where we're coming from," whereas now I feel like you're much more concerned with not offending people, getting accepted and putting the controversial stuff behind you. Is that fairly accurate?

SP: I'd say yes, it's accurate, and this is the saddest thing I'm going to talk about in this interview. It's not like I'm becoming this ultra-sensitive new age guy. I'm not. But I think originally I gave people a lot more credit than I do now. I can predict what people will think now, predict their absolute lack of sense of humor. They win, basically, but I have no respect for them. Obviously I want the romantic, idealistic, no-holds-barred trust and faith that I'm going to put forth a good product. If people are going to latch onto words and different things and not see the whole, and it's going to hurt my band, I don't care about the hurt for me, but for the band, I care. And I think it's so ironic, because what I'm talking about is exactly that type of behavior. I don't think people should give in, but the world makes you give in. The fact that I've done things that are distasteful, I see as an enema for a constipated society. That's what I'm trying to do; I only mean the best for everyone and that was my mode. It just doesn't wash, people don't want it. They want things to just go down easy.

RG: Steve, who is the "teenage brain surgeon"?

SP: It's part of a story about a young guy, kind of a geek who has a lot of anger and retreats into a megalomaniacal fantasy world, where he holds dominion and total reign. Of course it's not reality, it's in his room. At first he's this young kid, but as his mind goes on, his room turns into this hellhouse where he has his minions who are cartoony creatures. He changes himself from this wimpy little guy into this huge beast. The big question was whether the teenage brain surgeon would return at the end to being the young man, and we decided he should stay in the world of fantasy, because that's giving him victory, victory for the imagination, you know. It's like saying, "We're not going back, we're going full tilt," which I cheered when I thought about it. Yeah, you know, Teenage Brain Surgeon isn't going back to that world, he's going to stay in his nether regions, which he likes better and where he has power.

The Bad Daddies are offering $100 to the person who comes up with a new name for them that meets their approval. Send suggestions to P.O. Box 5192, Eugene, OR 97405. Boxes for entries also will be at upcoming shows: Friday, August 17 at the WOW Hall, and Saturday, August 18 at the Lane County Fair. Be sure to include name, phone number, address. Deadline is September 1.