city slang-a-thon

okay, because i'm in the mood for the willfully perverse, you get to hear a half dozen versions of the song some folks (like the i-94 barman) consider the greatest rockaroll song ever. the sole release by sonic's rendezvous band during their existence (a single with the same song on both sides!), i first heard this on dodge main's 1996 album and since then have encountered numerous versions, many of them by bands that featured srb alumnus scott morgan. but it was ex-mc5 gtrist fred "sonic" smith who wrote and sang it, and here he is in the sole bit of srb footage extant, ca. '78:



and here's dodge main in detroit (where else?) back in '98:



here's morgan with his euro band the hydromatics, with my towering dutch punk rock pal tony slug (nitwitz, bgk, loveslug) on gtr back in 2007:



and here he is with sweden's hellacopters at the euclid tavern in cleveland, 1998:



here are the hellacopters again, with guest gtrist john nolan from australia's powder monkeys:



here's a french band called chatterbox, playing it in their hometown of toulouse, 1996:



because fred never wrote down the lyrics, nobody really knows what they were, but here's a not-entahrly-successful attempt to decipher them, by a finn:



and just for some variety, here's tony slug playing _another_ srb song with a band called 4 way hit from who knows where (boy gets around) last year:



whew!