BOWLING WITH A BOWLCUT

Tonight Total Slacker, Brooklyn's bowl-cuttest band, is playing with Wavves, leader of some of the world's most Brooklyny and bowl-cut fans, at Brooklyn Bowl in what some are already describing as "a show that'll have a lot of kids from Brooklyn at it who look like they cut their hair using a bowl."

Last week the Vice blog described Total Slacker as "that band that everybody hates because the skinny guy has a bowl cut" so I decided to get the lowdown on the haircut on everybody's lips straight from the horse's mouth themselves (Total Slacker).

What is it about the bowl cut? It seems to be a polarizing haircut. People clearly have feelings about it.
Tucker (guitar, vocals): There's some animosity. I think they're just jealous. She cut my hair, though, so it's actually her fault.
Emily (bass): I just helped maintained the haircut you've always had.
Tucker: It's true. I feel very comfortable with this haircut and feel that it personifies me. It's very concise and articulate but at the same time free-flowing in its veracity. This way if I wake up in the morning and it's shaggy, I just put the bowl over it and just kinda trim the edges and it works fine.

If you find that haircut that works for you, you've got to hold on to it.
There are plenty of other people who have bowl cuts, like… Anakin Skywalker.

Is he a major hair influence?
I kinda like him. He seems to know what he wants to do and feels passionately about it.

There's Warhol, but I guess that doesn't count because he was wearing a wig.
Warhol was a complex person, so that was kinda his duality. Simple haircut, complex human.

But it wasn't a haircut at all, it was a wig.
Really? What? Are you serious?

Are you serious?
You're tripping me out.

Those were wigs. He was bald.
Wow. I didn't know that.
Emily: He had all the choices in the world and he chose the bowl cut.
Tucker: There it is. Speaking of bowl cuts…we were in the dollar store yesterday and I found some old Aqua-Net from the 80s. It's like really thick hairspray and I was thinking of doing something different with my hair at the show tomorrow night just to freak people out. Because lately it's like "Oh, there's the bowl cut dude." But if I changed it up they'd be like, "Hey, where's the bowl cut dude?" Maybe I'll do the inverse and stick it up. We're gonna debut our first performance of the New Kids On The Block song "Hangin' Tough" tomorrow. It's gonna be pretty wild.

MATTHEW CARON

PHOTOS BY NICHOLAS GAZIN