But he does a recall a particular moment in the early ‘90s that encapsulates Dwarves’ volatile and colourful career. They had signed to SubPop, and were headlining a College Music Journal showcase. Grunge had permeated the mainstream music industry discourse and the crowd was littered with A&R representatives from major labels, searching for The Next Big Thing.
“Half way through the show I realise everyone’s looking to my right,” Dahlia recalls. “I look across and [Dwarves guitarist] He Who Cannot Be Named is standing on the top of a big stack of PA speakers and he’s peeing off it. I’m like ‘What was I thinking?’ ”
Born Paul Carafuro, Dahlia grew up in Chicago. As a teenager, Dahlia formed a garage punk band Suburban Nightmare. By the early ‘80s, Suburban Nightmare had morphed into Dwarves and left garage behind for hardcore punk. “At that time if you wanted to see something new, and something alive, you had to go see punk, hardcore punk, new wavy sort of stuff,” Dahlia says.
Dwarves became notorious for their wild stage antics. Led by Dahlia and guitarist He Who Cannot Be Named – in his now-classic stage attire of mask and studded leather underpants –Dwarves straddled the line between hardcore punk and garage rock, taunted audiences and sneered at the music industry. “In the early days, people would take our shows as an insult. It was a very adversarial relationship with the audience,” Dahlia says. “Then as you soak in and people start to love you more, it becomes strange because people love you but they still want you to be adversarial.”
Dwarves album art was equally provocative. The cover art to their 1991 album Blood, Guts and Pussy features two women and a dwarf, naked and covered in blood. It’s an image that would almost guarantee social media outrage in today’s more sensitive political climate. “I’ve been getting all these PC complaints my whole career. Dwarves were always a little too nasty for whatever was around them. I got a lot of complaints about that cover,” Dahlia says. “But what I loved about about Blood Guts and Pussy was that it wasn’t a cheesecake shot, it was an art photo.”
Even when they were signed to SubPop, Dwarves didn’t want to dance to anyone else’s tune. In 1993 Dwarves issued a press release announcing that He Who Cannot Be Named had been stabbed to death in Philadelphia. But when SubPop discovered this was an elaborate hoax, the label responded by dropping Dwarves from its roster.
Dahlia still won’t admit that there was a hoax. He Who Cannot Be Named is “an other worldly creature” Dahlia says. “He transcends life and death so it’s impossible to know when he was born or died or if particular deaths were just way stations to review life.”
By Patrick Emery
