Boston Phoenix Article transcribed August 5th, 1999

It was hard to miss the Fuzzy Pinks last week; both the Globe and the Herald ran photos of the three local 19-year-old girls flanked by their two much-older male mentors. Although the Fuzzy Pinks do not yet have a record label, a proper demo, a single gig under their belts, or even a drummer, they pretty much have everything a band need these days in order to get signed: snazzy T-shirts, stickers, a Web page, a drink named in their honor, and a Chili Pepper in their corner.

The Fuzzy Pinks -- bassist Lulu Neville, from Waltham; guitarist Audrey Coyle, and her cousin, singer Rachel Jacobs, both from Clinton -- recorded with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith at Cambridge's Fort Apache studios last week while Woodstock was still smoldering after the Peppers' closing set. The trio are being tended to locally by Jon Cohan, who plays with Boston's Tarbox Ramblers and grew up on the same street with Smith in suburban Detroit. In 1995, the Pinks met Smith at a signing for Cohan's drum book Star Sets. Through Cohan, the girls managed to get a tape of their old band, Muddy (a tribute to the Muddy River, as well as their self-professed favorite band ever, Mudhoney), into Smith's hands.

Asked exactly what he heard in the Fuzzy Pinks' music to get him excited, Smith mumbles a few things like "raw energy . . . Sonic Youthy . . . Stooges . . . raw emotion." But let loose on the gals during a photo shoot, his enthusiasm is apparent in other ways. "Yes!" he shouts, coaching the girls with an orgiastic impersonation that seems part Austin Powers, part Butt-head. "More tongue! More lips! More rubbing! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Nooooooooo!"

At first glance, the Pinks appear to be Smith & Cohan's answer to the Donnas. "As far as that goes," says Cohan, "these guys are definitely a girl group, and it's obvious that we can use that as an angle. I mean, the Donnas, Sleater-Kinney -- it's just there."

The girls nod enthusiastically. "Sleater-Kinney is cool," they say.

"Not that these guys are lesbians or anything," Smith clarifies, then, perhaps sensing he's just lost a marketing angle, reconsiders. "I mean, I've seen 'em make out with girls and stuff, but y'know . . . "

In practice, the three songs the band recorded last week are much less commercial than their image. It's a far cry from the Donnas' bubblegum Ramones impersonation -- a more dissonant, noisy affair with a nod to Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing," or maybe a more ladylike Cake Like. It needs work, but it ain't bad. Musically, at least, it's not quite as crass as it appears on the surface. There is no label involvement as yet -- though the band have a song on a forthcoming Thirsty Ear compilation -- but Cohan hopes to release the Fort Apache session as an EP, Honey Dipped Baby Cakes, by year's end. And for the record, a bartender at Pignoli coined the Fuzzy Pink in the gals' honor; Cohan won't reveal the recipe except to say it's a vodka drink ("with some sweet stuff to make it pink"), which means it'll be another couple of years until the girls are able to taste this particular fruit of their labors.

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