I Hate You When You’re Pregnant

It’s been going on five years since Flagstaff musician Phil Buckman subjected Valley audiences to his outlandish alter ego I Hate You When You’re Pregnant, and, boy, have a handful of local fans been jonesing for another fix. It’s with good reason, as their minds are likely etched with colorful memories of the off-the-wall antics unleashed by this one-man tornado of techno-rock terror. A standard IHYWYP show saw Buckman, typically clad in children’s underwear or an equally outlandish outfit (including duct tape and gold lamé bodysuits), roaring side-splitting lyrics filled with pop cultural non-sequiturs or bizarrely braggadocious stories to drum machine beats and hurling his largish 6-foot-5 frame around venues. After inducing excitement in audiences throughout Arizona — and getting ink in such publications as Wired — Buckman took a few years off from the project in 2005 to work on other bands, leaving his rabid following to console themselves with a library of his self-produced MP3 demos (which one can download from fan site www.hotdogstorm.com/IHYWYP) and the occasional performance in his hometown or Tucson. When he announced a long-awaited return to Phoenix last month on local music/culture Web board The Shizz, whose regulars include a majority of his fanbase, the response was fairly enthusiastic. One poster stated rather succinctly: “about time.”