White Trash Nation

"Bottom line, it's good comedy," Eddie laughs. "It feels like something we just stumbled upon naturally. Just like the idea that all of a sudden like, wow, look where we're from. 'Cuz when we moved to Seattle it was eye-opening to see ... 'Boy, God,' " he draws out his words with a thick hayseed accent, " 'we sure are stupid. We're from the sticks compared to this big city.' "

But the big city didn't change the Supersuckers.
"We wear the same things, we still dress like dorky heavy metal guys with black concert T-shirts and ripped-up jeans," says Eddie.

"That's not even a conscious effort," Dancing Eagle says of the heavy metal connection. When I ask him what bands he used to listen to, he and Eddie run down some of the familiar pantheon of cock-rock greats. "Van Halen, Scorps, Ozzy -- all that shit," they answer.

"But I can't listen to most of it now," Eddie says almost mournfully. "I really can't, I try to. I love the old record covers. 'Oh, I loved this song!' And you put it on and it's good for, like, two seconds, and you're like, 'Gawd, I forgot about this part.' "

Speaking of album covers, the jacket on the last Supersuckers CD, The Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers, depicts Eddie dressed as a devil, a cherubic female angel with cardboard wings reclining on his stooped back. It's a clever pastiche of the male adolescent satanic fantasies that used to worry so many white trash parents and talk-show hosts. (At the beginning of the Supersuckers' set at the Troc, the roadies toss into the crowd a bunch of those big foam hands you see at football games. Instead of signifying "Number 1," the fingers form that heavy metal standard, the Sign of the Devil.)

Members of the white trash nation -- both those to the manner born and those who voluntarily descended a few classes to embrace its values -- seek authenticity, a sense of place, an accepting community, and a hard-rockin' time.

I ask Eddie Spaghetti about the Supersuckers song "Double Wide." It's a picaresque snapshot of life in the mobile home, that most succinct symbol of white trash culture, as well as an unabashed celebration of the abject roots of the trash heritage. "I'm a son of a bastard and a son of a bitch," Eddie sings proudly.

"Now, that's a song about being, y'know ..." Eddie pauses to search for the right words. "You're white but you're not treated with the same sort of respect that they blanket the white populace as being treated with, some sort of higher respect than black people, Hispanic people, whatever. What is that John Lennon song, 'Woman Is the Nigger of the World'? Just anyone who's allegedly beneath."

Eddie takes a hit from the Pepsi can.
"White trash for me is like an underdog thing. It's a good way to identify with these people who don't quite fit in anywhere but on the edges of town. For me it's kinda like to celebrate my past, because to deny it would be death."

In other words, you can take the kid out of the trailer park, but you can never really take the trailer park out of the kid.