Chore Boy is a brand name for a coarse scouring pad made of steel or copper wool. It is designed for cleaning very dirty surfaces, especially washing dishes. During the first half of the 20th century, the product was marketed under the name Chore Girl.
In the American drug-using community, especially in more urban areas, Chore Boy has garnered a rather large market as a make-shift component in do-it-yourself crack cocaine pipes. Utilized in this context, a small wad of the copper wool (the steel variety will not suffice for this purpose) is inserted into the end of a short cylindrical glass tube (sometimes called a "straight shooter") and serves to function as a screen and/or a matrix by which the melting freebase can be thoroughly dispersed across the large surface area of the copper wool. This is in fact somewhat similar to the function served by the copper wool which is packed into distilling columns used in fractional distillation set-ups; however, a variety of other materials might also be used to achieve the required increase in surface area within a column, including but not limited to glass beads/pieces, silica gel, steel wool, bits of ceramic, etc.
Punk rock may be a traditionally tricky intersection for art and commerce, but former Skatenig Phil Owen has chosen his side. “Everything is for sale,” says Owen. In fact, one could say this statement of purpose is at the heart of Choreboy, Owen’s retro-punk side-project he founded alongside former Big Boy Chris Gates and fellow Skatenig alumnus Mat Mitchell. Fittingly, then, “We’re in It for the Money” is Choreboy’s anthem, as well as the lead-off track from the group’s debut, Good Clean Fun… My Ass, a punchy little album from a project Owen says takes its name from a scrubbing pad junkies use as a crack pipe filter, and is ultimately little more than an outlet for “three angry bald guys singing about skinheads.” Equally to the point is the description on the little black sticker attached to the disc’s jewel case: “Texan punk with members of Skatenigs, Poison 13, and Big Boys! Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) vocals on track 4.” Actually, the rights to that sticker is virtually all Choreboy guaranteed Triple X, a small, SoCal-based indie, which signed the band sight unseen — without a demo — and accepted Owen’s demand that the band not undertake a full tour until the release of their second album. “It was shit-talkin’ straight-up, over the phone,” says Owen of the three-album deal that hinged as much on bios as on Choreboy’s musical promise. And yet, because the sticker is so clearly one big obnoxious name-drop, it could also be a promotional tool that’ll drive righteous professors of punk ethics to scream “sell-out.” Owen could seemingly care less.