Geeks Bearing Gifts

It’s not supposed to end this way for rap-rock, the chest-thumping top dog in the battle for rock supremacy. All that testosterone-fueled aggro-rock seemed invincible, with its muscular, angry leaders presiding over the moshing legions.

But look what’s slipped into the stronghold.

“We have always felt like the five guys in the Trojan horse,” says Tony Hajjar, the drummer for the band At the Drive-In. Meaning that they’re out to get you, and they might not look like a threat until they show you what’s really there.

Their target is the rock status quo, and they confront it directly. Before their shows they go onstage and, like their role models in the punk band Fugazi, ask the audience to refrain from slam dancing or stage diving or crowd surfing, or else they’ll stop playing. A simple gesture, but one that strikes at the heart of the Limp Bizkit constitution and offers a blueprint for a kinder, gentler but still fiercely rocking world.

“As far as I’ve learned growing up in the punk community, new ideas should always be embraced and old ideas should always be ditched out the window,” says singer Cedric Bixler, wearer of one of the band’s two trademark Afro hairdos. “And that is an old idea.

“I guess sometimes we have to play the role of the principal in high school, but it’s for good reason. I don’t want it to be a predominantly boy-oriented show with a big circle gap in the middle of a crowd where the violence is taking place.

“I don’t want people floating on each others’ heads and knocking people around because that’s what’s normal and acceptable on the television today and that’s what kids are learning from. They should be doing their own thing.”

There’s no guarantee that At the Drive-In’s challenge will prevail, but until recently, few people would have even noticed this voice from deep in the American rock underground.

At the Drive-In was one of those bands on an eternal no-budget tour, five kids from El Paso, Texas--not even a speck on the rock map. They had no career strategy beyond touring and then working menial jobs so they could record a few more songs to sell on the next road trip.

What they did have was an uncommon and unmistakable intensity, and a bond forged by their isolation from rock’s centers. Gradually their audiences grew, and suddenly they are being shepherded by the people who do (or did) the business for Nirvana and Beck, Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys--all examples of underground figures who became cultural movers.

Now there’s a new album, “Relationship of Command,” on the Virgin-distributed Grand Royal label, and with word-of-mouth and rock press coverage snowballing, At the Drive-In is one of the most buzzed-about bands in rock.

It might still be David and Goliath, or the geek facing down the football team, but it might not be wise to bet against them.

“I think they’re one of the truly brilliant live bands that I’ve seen in the last decade,” says Gary Gersh, a partner in Grand Royal with manager John Silva and the Beastie Boys. “When you see somebody who’s powerful as they are live, and if your belief is they’ll continue to make better and better records, then it’s only a matter of time until a large audience catches up with that.

“I continue to say this to everyone that will listen--I just think they’re gonna be one of the biggest, most important bands in the world.”

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Ground zero for At the Drive-In’s insurgency is a cluttered rehearsal studio in Gardena, a spot they picked because it’s midway between the Long Beach storefront Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez share and Hajjar’s and bassist Pall Hinojos’ homes in the Hollywood and Los Feliz districts. Guitarist Jim Ward still lives in El Paso, but the other four moved west a year ago.

“We needed new inspiration,” explains Bixler. “A change of surroundings helps musically, and I needed to get out of El Paso. I walk around Long Beach and people will crack jokes, but”--he reaches up and gives his Afro a little shake--”I find a lot more black people come up to me and they’re like, ‘Right on.’ I’m a little more at ease here.”

At the Drive-In formed in 1994, and the current lineup has been together since late 1996. There were no tricks or shortcuts in their progress--a combination of tireless touring and independently released EPs and albums expanded their audience slowly and steadily, and by the time the major record labels came sniffing in the spring of ‘99, the band was selling out such clubs as the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

Grand Royal’s band-friendly offer, along with Gersh’s and Silva’s record of working with such esteemed acts as Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Beck, put Grand Royal in the driver’s seat, and the label signed At the Drive-In in July 1999.

Bixler and the wiry, dark-eyed Hajjar sit on a bench in the rehearsal room, unwinding after another day of preparation for a seven-week U.S. tour (including a show at the Palace on Nov. 20). That will be followed by European dates and then another U.S. swing. They’ve kept up this kind of pace for three years, but this is the first time they’ll be out there in the glare of a major-label album and under the magnifying glass of next-big-thing expectations.

“I think when bands start believing the hype around them, that’s when they’re starting to destroy themselves,” says Hajjar, 26, who was born in Beirut and moved to Texas when he was 5. “There’s so much hype around us right now that it’s almost frustrating. If we ever started believing it, we wouldn’t be a band right now.

“We’re human, you see it and you get happy, like wow, people are starting to notice us. But at the same time, you know, in the end people are gonna stop saying nice things about us. People turn on you. In the end we’re just gonna be us five anyway, so if we keep it tight as we are now, that’s good.”

It’s not unusual for rock bands to close ranks against the world as an aid to bonding. But for ATDI, that attitude is at its foundation. These are the musicians who played the most intensely in whatever bands they were in, and they were the ones who stayed behind in El Paso when bandmates moved on to Austin, the nearest musical hot spot. It was only natural they would get together.

“Most of us have always been the outcasts,” Hajjar says. “So we always had the mentality of we’re gonna go up there and we’re gonna show you everything we have, all our emotions and anything that we want to express to you.

“We went out four months straight in February of ’97 playing literally to two or three people a night if we were lucky, and living on $2 a day. So we’ve always had that feeling of us against them. I think that has kept us striving to always try to push the envelope in whatever we do. . . .

We’re not fake. We’re not five guys that can go onstage and fake their moves and fake their emotions. If we’re not feeling good, you’ll tell.”

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At the Drive-In also owes a lot of its edge to El Paso.

“We grew up in a border town, and you see a lot of injustice,” says Bixler, whose father teaches Chicano studies at the University of Texas, El Paso. “Tony being from Lebanon and Omar being from Puerto Rico, you kind of see what it’s like being ethnic and American at the same time, being treated differently even by Mexicans until you speak their language. . . . Texas has some crazy stuff going on, and I think that really translates in our writing and the way we play too.”

At the Drive-In might not want you to knock down your fellow audience members, but don’t get the idea that the group’s music is timid. Produced by Ross Robinson, who’s worked with Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and others, “Relationship of Command” is one of the year’s most ferocious-sounding albums. The taut arrangements lurch in all directions, seemingly kept from flying apart only by the sheer force of the band’s will.

It’s a sound that refuses to be ignored, with Bixler’s urgent yelp (the main culprit in the frequent comparisons to Rage Against the Machine) voicing evocative but cryptic lyrics. In “Arc Arsenal” he tries to get inside the head of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. “Invalid Litter Dept.” mourns the many unsolved murders of women in Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

“There’s some subject matter that is pretty straightforward, and some of the lyrics are just born unto themselves,” says Bixler, who sometimes employs the “cut up” method of random word-matching championed by one of his favorite authors, William S. Burroughs.

“I’m into that aspect of it simply because it opens up a bridge of communication with people who come to our shows,” adds the singer, who is as soft-spoken and unassuming in person as he is amped-up on stage and record. “If they want to know the meaning of something, they can come ask the band or come ask me.

“It goes back to the point of being grass-roots. . . . This is the band, go up to them and ask them. There’s no level of, ‘You’re unattainable, I cannot talk to you because you’re in a band.’ Please come talk to us. We love to communicate.”

Their signing with Grand Royal might allow them to buy more “toys” for making music and give them a little more time to make it, but that link with their roots seems unbreakable.

“It’s just an interesting lifestyle,” says Bixler, who dropped out of high school to pursue music. “There’s this whole underground railroad system, and it’s interesting to be part of it. Whether it’s showing up at the show and helping the kids make food or going to the show and [silk-]screening your shirts at the last minute, stuff like that.

“You get onstage and you say, ‘Hey, we don’t have anyplace to sleep, can we sleep on your floor tonight? We won’t steal anything, we promise.’ People make a nice dinner for you, you watch TV with them, sleep on the floor, go to the next town and hope you meet somebody else.

“It’s like the Jack Kerouac approach. . . . It’s just one adventure after another. You meet crazy people and you have the weirdest experiences and they’re all in your head forever. It’s crazy, but I love that life.”