not the baseball team
had a nice surprise while digging through the stacks of vinyl at half price books last night after the play: a clean copy of the fort worth cats' earthquake at the o.k. corral elpee (on vvv records!!!).
while they don't enjoy the same hip cachet as later texas punkoids like the big boys and butthole surfers, or even contemporaries like the nervebreakers and telefones, there are plenty of middle-aged punk survivors here in the fort who cherish memories of watching these, um, cats play at the hop and zero's. i am one of them. as such, i'm not really qualified to make any critical judgments about this rekkid, altho i will say that back in the day, i perceived the cats as being just this side of an elvis costello ripoff -- an impression that was prolly due to the jazzmasters john seibman and mike neal played, and the quiver in "johnny icicle" seibman's baritone, and is reinforced on this slab o' vinyl by the steve naive-ish farfisa he plays, which i don't remember them using in live situations. little did i know back then that the main guys, at least, were veteran musos in their mid-20s who'd been playing since the '60s -- seibman in a late-period lineup of the nomads of fort worth teen scene fame, mike neal as a one-man band ("...and the invisible cowgirls"), in which capacity, i'm told, he still performs today.
unlike the nervebreakers, who'd been together as a band since roughly '72 and didn't have to change their style one iota to open for the ramones / sex pistols / clash / police et al., the fort worth cats had teethed on surf music and r&b, and their music sounded like that, with the addition of a ska-like riddim that they prolly stole from tejano polka, perfect for pogoing to in those daze of devo, the b-52s, and joe "king" carrasco & the crowns. while it might sound a just a tad bit contrived and dated now (unlike the nervebreakers' contemporaneous stuff, which boasted a little more gtr grit and aggro, altho both seibman and neal wiped the floor with tex edwards as vocalists), the rec has a crackling live energy that elevates it above more studio-sterile period artifacts like the telefones' album or the live at raul's compilation. my sweetie and i are real glad to have it here at la casa (even tho it doesn't include my all-time fave cats toon, "get it off your chest"), and we can't wait to have kid daniel autograph it the next time he's in town.
while they don't enjoy the same hip cachet as later texas punkoids like the big boys and butthole surfers, or even contemporaries like the nervebreakers and telefones, there are plenty of middle-aged punk survivors here in the fort who cherish memories of watching these, um, cats play at the hop and zero's. i am one of them. as such, i'm not really qualified to make any critical judgments about this rekkid, altho i will say that back in the day, i perceived the cats as being just this side of an elvis costello ripoff -- an impression that was prolly due to the jazzmasters john seibman and mike neal played, and the quiver in "johnny icicle" seibman's baritone, and is reinforced on this slab o' vinyl by the steve naive-ish farfisa he plays, which i don't remember them using in live situations. little did i know back then that the main guys, at least, were veteran musos in their mid-20s who'd been playing since the '60s -- seibman in a late-period lineup of the nomads of fort worth teen scene fame, mike neal as a one-man band ("...and the invisible cowgirls"), in which capacity, i'm told, he still performs today.
unlike the nervebreakers, who'd been together as a band since roughly '72 and didn't have to change their style one iota to open for the ramones / sex pistols / clash / police et al., the fort worth cats had teethed on surf music and r&b, and their music sounded like that, with the addition of a ska-like riddim that they prolly stole from tejano polka, perfect for pogoing to in those daze of devo, the b-52s, and joe "king" carrasco & the crowns. while it might sound a just a tad bit contrived and dated now (unlike the nervebreakers' contemporaneous stuff, which boasted a little more gtr grit and aggro, altho both seibman and neal wiped the floor with tex edwards as vocalists), the rec has a crackling live energy that elevates it above more studio-sterile period artifacts like the telefones' album or the live at raul's compilation. my sweetie and i are real glad to have it here at la casa (even tho it doesn't include my all-time fave cats toon, "get it off your chest"), and we can't wait to have kid daniel autograph it the next time he's in town.
posted by stashdauber at 12:10 PM
1 Comments:
Flattered, to say the least and I will be pleased to sign that dinosaur. Several hundred discs (the one with Get It off Your Chest)perished in a fire. I think I have an extra one around here somewhere. If not, I am confident Icicle has more than just a few. The dude never throws anything away. I once gave him all our press clips whan paring down for whatever reason. Stacked-em in a box also containing a bunch of old Silver Surfer comics that shared a space with even older Mads. - Kid
Post a Comment
<< Home