Sweet Apple’s John Petkovic Remembers: Undies

Sweet Apple is more than just a question of Cobra Verde’s John Petkovic and Tim Parnin having some teenage kicks with Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Witch’s Dave Sweetapple. It’s the answer to the heartache, grief and depression that led Petkovic to drive from Cleveland to Vermont, where he rediscovered the healing powers of rock ‘n’ roll with some help from his friends. Love & Desperation (Tee Pee) isn’t a fountain of youth, but it’ll do in a pinch: a combination of stomping ’70s arena-rock riffs, Petkovic’s well-honed T Rex swagger and Mascis’ hard-wired guitar leads servicing lurid tales of sex, drugs and vampires. The members of Sweet Apple will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with Petkovic.

Petkovic: Never has so little revealed so much. Adam and Eve were the first to wear intimates, at least in our depictions of them. So it’s not like they’re the latest trend. And yet people seem afraid to talk about undies. I’ve never understood that; it makes no sense. My first attraction to undies—aesthetically, that is—came with Underoos. They made me want to take my pants off and run around the sprinkler in the backyard. My interest became more sophisticated when I saw the photography of Elmer Batters, who would shoot women in erotic attire posing in the most mundane, suburban settings, like the laundry room or the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove. The idea that you could turn the mundane into a romp was inspirational. It also made me wonder why are undies so taboo. It’s so absurd, which I discovered first-hand when I decided to go to a beach in my undies instead of a bathing suit. Someone I know well-versed in this subject said that I was “into juvenalia.” But what’s the difference between undies and a bathing suit? Really. Another time, I entered a bikini-boxing contest in a bar and stripped down to my undies. (I had to wear a bra to qualify.) It was a rough-and-tumble joint in Cleveland. At first, I thought some of the dudes were gonna kill me when I took my clothes off in front of them. They had baggy-ass wigger jeans that hung so low that you could see most of their boxer shorts. They hurled insults at me when I entered the ring to box a woman. She was half-crazy and totally violent; she wanted to kill me. But by the time the match was over, the dudes who had wanted to beat my ass sought me out to congratulate me, saying they admired that I could get in the ring in my underwear. But I didn’t feel victorious. Or that I had broken down barriers. It was like dancing around the sprinkler as a kid, that’s all. Why repress having fun?

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMgk9_wQQw