Sound Of Lead Pipe Cinch Is Heavy-Duty As Its Name

Who is Lead Pipe Cinch: Joel Herbert, drums Lenny Burnett, guitar James Phillips, vocals Mark Walker, bass

Let us now address, for a moment, the similarities between rock-'n'-roll bands and the plumbing industry. Plumbing apparatus regulates the flow of water through a space. Rock is music one listens to. Plumbing features components made of lead. Led Zeppelin was a rock band.

It doesn't really seem like we're getting anywhere, does it? Yet here we have a rock-'n'-roll band called Lead Pipe Cinch who describe their music as heavy and, yes, one could also use the same adjective in regard to plumbing stuff.

Together for about a year now, the band has played several gigs around the Northwest and received airplay on local radio station KCMU on the strength of their first demo tape.

Not content with riding that wave of success, the Lead men have hitched up their tool belts and pounded out some new music.

The band's new tape leads off with "Winnipeg," which has a crunching bass and drum line that sounds like someone running up a long flight of stairs - but tripping on every third step. The accompanying first synth notes create an aura that seems to evoke Rush, and when the vocals kick in the picture is complete. Only Rush frontman Geddy Lee could match an echo-chamber vibrato like that of Phillips.

Lead pipe Cinch has been accused of having the same heaviness on stage, this big banging assault noise (as the sound gradually

seems to grow into) comes across just as forcefully through their live shows, they say.

As the tape rolls along, a hard-hitting "live" feeling remains apparent. "Winnipeg," with its tag line of "Winnipeg brings me down" repeated more and more forcefully as the song winds down, evokes an image of the band members crowded on stage, hair-swinging and sweaty, ripping out the chorus with feeling and angst and a lot of help from a scrunchy guitar.

On to the next tune: "Gun." More synth, wailing like a siren, brings in slow thudding bass that is at first pursued, then caught by speed guitar that brings the whole mash together in another rhythmic crunch. Phillips's vocals are more intimate (no echo chamber is apparent), and "Gun" is one more song by Lead Pipe Cinch that twists and grinds to blinding speed and repetitive hook and all-out whiz-bang finish.

Well, perhaps the plumbing analogy was discarded too soon. Imagine fixing a slow, dripping leak in the kitchen faucet. At first you'd take the monkey wrench and begin to slowly twist the errant washer . . . but the more you twist the tighter you're crunching the faucet, until you're twisting and twisting at such a speed that the pipe is bent three ways to hell and the washer isn't going anywhere. But at least the faucet is fixed. Perhaps Lead Pipe Cinch has found the ideal band name after all. Where to hear Lead Pipe Cinch: Thursday, Nov. 10 at RKCNDY, 1812 Yale St., For club information, call: 623-6651