Royal Trux-->RTX

Royal Trux was always one of the more interesting Nineties bands. They started out as an offshoot of NYC scum-rockers Pussy Galore and became junkie icons while they scuffled in San Francisco. The result of that sojourn, Twin Infinitives, is a great candidate for the Weirdest Albums Ever Hall of Fame, a double album filled with incomprehensible moaning, bleeping synths, wah wah guitar, paranoid sci-fi lyrics, and production that made Exile on Main Street sound like Dark Side of the Moon. Then they cleaned up and released albums that ranged from the damaged-but-heartfelt (Cats and Dogs) to pastiches of Grand Funk-styled stupid-rock (Thank You, their most visible album when released on a major label) to actual ass-kicking southern-style dirt-rock (Accelerator), all centered around Jennifer Herrema's Keith Richards snarl and Neil Hagerty's twisted guitar heroism. Then they imploded when Jennifer's dad was diagnosed with cancer, she started relapsing behind her dad's painkillers, and she and Neil split up after 13 years as a couple and seven months as a married couple.

Neil went on to make a bunch of albums for the Trux's final label, Drag City, after moving to New Mexico. Jennifer dropped off the map until the past year, when she moved to California, took up surfing, and formed a new band named RTX, with a bunch of 12-years-younger kids. (She explained that she'd left Neil the O-Y-A-L-U part of the original name.) From the sound of it, she's also taken up some serious boozing--but that's rock and roll, right?