Whipping a Soiree into Shape by Jennifer Maerz On one of Coachwhips' previous visits to Seattle, they played in the Sit & Spin laundry room. And by "in," I don't mean "near," I mean inside the laundry room: Then-drummer John Harlow crowded into a corner between washers, then-keyboardist Mary Ann McNamara perched on a ledge behind a row of industrial dryers, and frontman John Dwyer performed a one-man stampede across a row of machines, breaking light bulbs and marching across the glass like his path was strewn with feathers. The actual Sunday-night laundry patrons acted as shaken as if Dwyer had kicked a pitcher of Pabst across their folding area. The guy is nothing if not a showman, rattling the white-boy blues, trash rock, and garage punk like a row of tin cans behind a newlywed's car.

The Sit & Spin show was nothing unusual for Dwyer, who's also played the Sunset and the Crocodile with Coachwhips, and who I've seen playing in matchbox-sized bars in his hometown of San Francisco, toppling rows of tiny tables by playing guitar on their uneven surfaces. And that's just this band. Dwyer is the ringleader for the mustachioed, faux-gay, techno-noise fuck tank Zeigenbock Kopf (who played Pho Bang earlier this year), and was the peach-tinted half of the color-coordinated noise-punk duo Pink & Brown. Although Dwyer definitely has West Coast fans, Coachwhips' national popularity should rise when they release Bangers Vs. Fuckers on Narnack Records January 27. The album is more of the same teeth-grinding, ass-shaking, epileptic rock and roll--except that some of the players have changed since the album was recorded: Val-Tronic is on keyboards now (she also performs with San Francisco's Double Dutch jump-roping troupe on occasion) and Matt Hartman of Total Shutdown plays drums.

Dwyer's a huge fan of the Seattle post-punk and trash-rock scenes, so it's fitting that he's matched up with Tractor Sex Fatality and the Dipers for this weekend's show at the Fun House (Saturday, January 3). I've written about the Dipers in this column before, although I screwed up some of the facts: Although the band includes Erin Sullivan and Lars Finberg from A Frames--along with Dean Whitmore, who played in the Intelligence with Finberg for a while--the group did not precede A Frames, like I wrote. But that's not as important for you to know as the fact that their CD, How to Plan Successful Parties, is a collapse of post-punk structure into a trashy, fucked-up soiree of sound. You want to map out an event based on their album? It's gonna turn out dented, black and blue, with lampshades mistaken for stocking caps and acid mistaken for postage stamps. This show is their CD release, and the disc is more vital to your homemaking skills than anything Martha Stewart on bottles of cheap pharmaceuticals could ever wig out far enough to create.

jennifer@thestranger.com