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Lost moms

From page 18 of Classic Rock Magazine September 2007

Cover of September 2007 issue.

BANDS THAT DIED TOO SOON

DINO LEE

WORDS: SLEAZEGRINDER

Austin, actually. Dino Lee was a crazed Elvis-meets-James Brown sleazeabilly mutant with a rune-piece band of fistfighting trailer park rejects called The White Trash Revue

While most of his brethren in the 80s Austin punk scene were content to thrash out noisy odes to teenage angst in grubby jeans and greasy hair, Lee sported an 18inch pompadour, dressed like a Roman centurion and concocted stage shows that crossed Caligula with a Wild West rodeo His 1985 album King Of White Trash, a wild mix of Tex Mex, soul, swing, punk and high-octane rock'n'roll, was his definitive album of that era,

It was. Until it wasn't. In 1986 Dino Lee agreed to play a benefit for multiple sclerosis at local Austin club Dino was supposed to go on early, but got pushed back to after midnight, and by the time he hit the stage he was drunk, surly and looking for a fight. He got one, In fact he got several. Dino And The White Trash Revue battled the rowdy Austin audience as they threw fists and beer mugs at the band. Dino barely escaped alive. After that night, the legend of Dino was over.

Dino moved to Hollywood, where he took a stab at an acting career. He played himself in 1987's splatter-comedy Blood Diner In a film already lousy with outrage, Dino took things even further over the top, sodomising a cow on stage while his zombie Hitler band blared away behind him He also appeared in a weirdo puppet movie called Population 7 in 1987, and as Mad Fag in shock-comedy Gross Out in 1991 And that's it. The acting thing didn't really work out.

But

Then Dino reemerged in 1992, Except he wasn't Dino any more. Now he was Mr. Fabulous, a velour-jacketed smoothie who channeled Sinatra and Dean Martin. And he's still wowing 'em nightly back in Austin. Fabulous!