Photo by Raul Rubierra, Sr

 Link to band website or contact - www.myspace.com/secretpeclub

Secret P.E. Club members have maintained this impassive sense of assurance from the beginning, when they would hammer out their feminist pop punk aesthetic in an abandoned gym. After the group spent a year and a half crafting its debut album, Hot Plastic, and released it this past April, guitarist Mindy Hertzon abruptly left. As usual, SPEC kept its cool. "Usually when there's a change, it's a touchy situation, but it wasn't at all in this case," says Hertzon's replacement, Mark Zolezzi, who then took over Vigil's place on drums when she switched to guitar.

Choosing Mark also liberated the group from the expectations of its "chick band" moniker. "We weren't trying to find someone who sounded like Mindy. No one, for example, can do 'Fake Jake' but Mindy," Trelles says of Hertzon's 23-second "fuck you" to a boy who had done wrong, "but Mark brings something different to the band." It's a good kind of different, because SPEC, despite its songs about identity, relationships, and love gone to shit, was never about the "chicks that rock" label. "All we've ever wanted to do is play music," Trelles says, reaffirming SPEC's inclination to keep things simple, "and now that there's no more vagina factor, we're able to just be a band!"
 

NEW TIMES MAGAZINE
Article Published Sep 1, 2005

Subtropical Spin
Hot Plastic (Spy-Fi Records)
By Abel Folgar
 
Secret P.E. Club came to be shortly after a 2002 Street Miami collaborative article among Emma Trelles, Mindy Hertzon, and Andrea Vigil about Spy-Fi Records mogul Ed Artigas. The story goes that post-interview, Artigas was plagued with fantasies of an all-girl, power-pop, literary/artsy trio and approached the girls with intentions of being their "daddy." Vigil (drums), Trelles (bass), and Hertzon, a ten-year veteran guitarist of the Laundry Room Squelchers, jumped at the chance to rock, and the rest is history.

Taking their name from the abandoned gym they practiced in, SPEC carves their own alt-pop niche with a patient, stripped-down attitude that has endeared them to many audiences across South Florida. This debut, Hot Plastic, is a grand accomplishment. From the stop intro of bass plucks, drum detonation, and midtempo fuzz of "Revenge of the Book Girl" to the melody-laden tunedown of "The Goodbye Song," SPEC scores on simplicity and honesty. The title track is a rocksteady, surrealist narrative on relationships and abandoned drinks. It's followed by the ride-cymbal-heavy, one-two punch of "Moves in a Happy Way" and "Four Minutes Till Summer" before making a turn toward seedy Miami nightlife with "Porno (Airport Executive)," featuring a moaning call-and-response between the girls and "daddy" Artigas, à la Black Flag's "Slip It In." The 20-second, hardcore blast of "Fake Jake" is this slab's only example of female anger, and it's a welcome, hectic change of pace. I don't envy the ex-boyfriend, "fucker, fake Jake, red-headed woodpecker," who takes this sonic beating. Mark Zolezzi has since replaced Hertzon on drums, and Vigil has switched to guitar, but there's more zing than ever to the band's sound. Smart, sexy, and poetic (Trelles just did a brilliant job editing the third volume of Tigertail, A South Florida Poetry Annual), Secret P.E. Club fails in having given us only eight songs: These sultry larks owe us a lot more.