The Trouble Makers

Many do-it-yourself rock ’n’ roll band Web sites are aesthetically retarded, to put it politely. This talented local garage-rock combo’s site, however, is tops. Credit the group’s bassist, Stan Tindall, who designed the retro-leaning graphics, which tap into a ’60s English beat-group feel (think the Who, as in “Maximum R&B”), Batman, Josie & the Pussycats, Daniel Clowes’ Eightball comics and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s period illustrations (“Rat Fink,” et al.). The site is loaded with Flash animation—Tindall’s smoke-belching ’64 Ford, band-member caricatures that turn monstrous when you mouse over them, a turntable that you have to cue to play excerpts from various Trouble Makers’ boffo recordings. There are links to pix of a recent European tour, along with a diary by the band’s front man, Tim Foster. As the late Bobby Burns might have put it: “Swell gimmick, a really swell gimmick, you know!”