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LORD HIGH FIXERS - When the Revolution Comes

Long Tall Texan Tim Kerr is more punk than you, punk. Pioneering hardcore with the Big Boys in the 80's, introducing the nastiest, trashiest slide guitar this side of fellow Lone Star resident Johnny Winter to blues-punkers Poison 13 a few years later, trouncing eardrums with the Gories' Mick Collins in the King Sound Quartet... y'all should know his rap sheet by now. For the Lord High Fixers, Kerr hooked back up with former Big Boys roadie/Poison 13 yelper Mike Carroll, Robbie Becklund (bass), Stefanie Paige Friedman (drums) and Andy Wright (guitar). Their manifesto: to reinvigorate the MC5's clamoring for youth revolt through rock 'n' roll into the mid-1990's latitude/longitude. A Herculean task to be sure-- I mean, how many of them flannel-flyin', greasy-haired neo-hippies would answer the call? Not many, obviously-- but musically, they pull it off.

So, they take some updated White Panther-style sloganeering (like the one I used for the title of this post), a plethora of styles, be it free jazz or lysergic soul, yet they never let you forget that they are first and foremost Punk Fucking Rock. The Kerr/Wright guitar tag team may not take you to Saturn as effortlessly as Kramer/Smith did, but then, they seem more interested in kicking yer apathetic head awake than engaging in interstellar pursuits. Mike Carroll may very well be the most contemptuous bawler to ever pick up a mike-- his snooty bluster injects a sense of urgency into the band's delightfully juvenile rallying cries. Add in a rhythm section who sound like they share the same heartbeat, and ya got yer damn self a compelling case that, in the right hands, R&R may not be dead after all.

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