Normally, the weekend sounds you expect to hear wafting through a church’s windows are angelic choir voices and vibrating organ pipes. But if the parish of the International Community Church in Brighton had walked by their house of worship last Saturday night, they would have been in for quite a surprise.
What spewed from the ICC last weekend was not the sounds of hymns or psalms, but the sounds of thrashing guitars and lightning-fast drums. There was a sermon, alright, but it wasn’t given by some preacher. Rather, it was delivered to the congregation by the screams of Rich Perusi and his band of defilers, Sex Positions.
A band called Sex Positions playing in a church was really only the second weirdest facet of the night. What takes the cake is Perusi himself. If you know him-and many of you do, considering he is a Boston University senior majoring in advertising in the College of Communicationsyou would be shocked to find out that Perusi spends his weekends leaping up and down, swinging a microphone and belting out songs named ‘You Better Start Running’ and ‘Worse than the Plague.’
Perusi is not a physically intimidating person. He stands at about five foot six inches tall and compliments that by being both quiet and almost freakishly nice. But get him on stage and he becomes a madman, ranting about anything and anyone that pisses him off.
‘It was weird at first to see him act like that on stage,’ said Dave Saladik, who, in addition to being Sex Positions’ bassist, also goes to BU. ‘But now that I know Rich, he seems to have that side to him.’
‘When I first started singing, I didn’t know how people were going to take it,’ said Perusi. ‘I wanted to create an enigmathat people would see me and think, ‘This guy is out of his mind,’ but then be a completely normal person in real life.’
Sex Positions are more than just an attention-grabbing name and some stage presence. Perusi, drummer Larry Anzoni, and guitarist Eric Marcelino were all in the defunct band The Dedication, which managed to sell 6,000 records in their brief history. The three of them decided to form a new group, and Perusi added Saladik, a junior majoring in architecture who doubles as a West Campus omelet chef, on bass.
Hardcore musica hybrid of punk and metalmay not be for everyone, but if you are into hardcore, then Sex Positions is the band for you. Their songs are fierce and urgent-thematically dealing more with relationships than the politics that dictate most punk bands’ repertoires.
‘I like the intensity of hardcoreit’s one of the most honest genres,’ said Perusi. ‘I mostly write about what I encounter in lifegirls, friends, even people in the band.’
Perusi is in an interesting position (pun intended). The hardcore scene is filled with resentment toward anything driven by money, but here he is, studying how to make better ads.
‘I get some flak for being an ad major, but I just explain to people that advertising isn’t only about selling products. It’s also about the [anti-smoking] Truth campaign or letting people know about new records,’ he said.
Sex Positions have been together since July, and they’ve released a four-song demo and played about 20 shows. The band has a 6-song EP coming out in March, and went on their first tour over the winter vacationborrowing Saladik’s dad’s minivan and playing 11 shows in ten days down the East Coast.
Most of the band’s activities are planned around the academic calendar, which is a burden because they practice every week at drummer Anzoni’s house in Plymouth, about a 40-minute drive from Boston.
‘There are times when I can’t go to practice because of school,’ said Perusi. ‘But school doesn’t always win.’
Saladik agrees that a college workload becomes even more difficult when playing music takes up so much time.
‘School is really holding us back,’ he said. ‘Practicing once a week is just not enough.’
It may have to be enough, but that doesn’t really bother Perusi. His aspirations for the band are modest and realisticafter all, you’ll never see any hardcore bands on ‘TRL.’
‘Basically, I’d like to just put out a well received full-length album,’ he said.
Saladik echoes Perusi’s sentiments about the band’s future: ‘I just want to play regularly and have a big enough fan base that there are people at the shows that are having a good time.’
Oh, and what about that name?
‘We just couldn’t think of a better name,’ said Perusi. ‘When I told my parents, my dad started chuckling, but my mom just walked out of the room.’
If there’s one thing you can learn from Sex Positions, it’s this: whether it’s the guy making your omelet or your partner in class, they could be playing at a church near you.
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