Six Fingers of Love

VARIOUS - Yeah Yeah Yeah!

I know, I know-- yet another dose of 60's garage snot on SLN. Ho hum, right? Not a chance, dudes & dudettes! May I direct your attention to Track #24, the Roughnecks' "You're Driving Me Insane," which is not only a killer slice of ramshackle teenage angst-- BUT -- it also features a barely-pubed Lou Reed with his his unmistakable monotone vocal delivery AND a pre-Blues Magoos Mike Esposito firing off the barely-tuned "hot licks"! Worth the price of admission alone for us VU phreaks, but dammit if there ain't a slew o' scree to get excited about-- high on the list being the Rocks' "Because We're Young," one of the finest examples of ineptitude-as-art-form to grace these ears since the Modds' "Leave My House"-- sounds like they wuz tryin' to tap into some o' that patented Caveman Stomp the Troggs bestowed upon us, but having never learned that Elusive Third Chord, leave us with a sublime hunk o' pre-Electric Eels shit rock. The Colony strive for some then-fashionable social commentary coupled with the further ambition of incorporating some Wilson Picket-style, greasy R&B on "Pseudo Psycho Intuition (Politician)," but, having the obvious handicaps of being white and naive, serve up some ham-fisted sludge complete with ever-varying tempos on their cardboard box drums. To Hell with it, I can't think of a single reason a Garage Nut wouldn't drool over this.

Thee Degenerates Responsible:

1. The Maniacs - Now I Know
2. The Rockin' Roadrunners - Down
3. The Little Bits - Girl Give Me Love
4. The Contemporaries - Fool For Temptation
5. The Barons - Drawbridge
6. The Zone V - I Cannot Lie
7. The Colony - Pseudo Psycho Intuition (Politician)
8. The Shoremen - She's Bad
9. The Shades - With My Love
10. The Mod VI - What Can I Do
11. The Barracudas - It's High Time
12. The Nightrockers - Junction No. 1
13. The Id - Stop And Look
14. The Hallucinations - You Say You Love Me
15. Sophamores - Mama Wears The Pants
16. Apollo's Apaches - Boss (Be Good To Me)
17. The K-Pers - The Red Invasion
18. The Young Savages - The Invaders Are Coming
19. The Skeptics - Wondering
20. The Worryin' Kind - Wild About You
21. The Roving Mob - You're The One
22. The Rocks - Because We're Young
23. Midnight Shift - Never Gonna Stop Lovin' You
24. The Roughnecks - You're Driving Me Insane
25. The Friars Of Youth - All You Wanted Was A Stand By
26. The Friars Of Youth - Sparrleyy Manurpuss
27. The Early Americans - Night After Night
28. The Boy Blues - Coming Down To You

Slobberin' available in the hallowed comments.


HOUND DOG TAYLOR - Beware of the Dog!

"When I die, they'll say, 'He couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!'" - Hound Dog Taylor on how he'd be remembered.

This. Is. Punk. Fucking. Rock. Ten times more punk than Social Distortion, the Epitaph roster, Fat Wreck Chords and the majority of the dross MRR wastes newsprint on combined, as a matter of fact. This is all about playing as far out on the edge as the musicians' abilities allowed-- a buzzing mess occasionally, but always infused with tons of attitude and personality. No worries about being in tune or hitting bum notes, music made for the sheer joy of well... making music-- exactly what the Chicago blues scene at the time was the antithesis of... not unlike the bloated R&R corpse the Ramones and Pistols would set out to destroy a short while later.

Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1915-- with six digits on each hand. The extra finger on his right paw met its grisly fate via a razor blade during a bout of drunkenness. He became a disciple of Elmore James, picking up the guitar at age 20, and packing his bags for Chicago. Playing the sleaziest joints imaginable as well as busking at Chicago's infamous Maxwell Street outdoor market, recordings would be few and far between until he was approached by a young blues fan named Bruce Iglauer in the late 60's. Iglauer, then an employee of Delmark Records, had a small inheritance of $2500 and wanted to start a label with the Dog as his flagship artist. The resulting LP, "Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers," (which can be had here, btw) would launch the long reign of Alligator Records, as well as lift Taylor's profile from local curiosity to National Treasure.

This 1974 live set is the Hound in his element-- along with his Houserockers, Brewer Phillips (guitar) and Ted Harvey (drums-- that's right, no bass. Sound familiar?) tear shit up with raucous boogies, gutbucket blues and seething crash-n-bash, über-primitive R&R instrumentals. Taylor's untutored slide guitar sounds like telephone wire snapping against an anvil as Phillips lays down makeshift bass riffs and Harvey holds it all together with the most basic of 4/4 thud on trademark archaic slopfeasts like "Give Me Back My Wig" and the positively incendiary "Let's Get Funky" (which they sure as hell do). They even manage to take the seemingly benign "Comin' Around the Mountain" into let's-clobber-the-bastards territory. Like I said: Punk. Fucking. Rock. Sadly, the Dog succumbed to cancer before the release of this LP at the age of 59. Your impassioned howl and any-note-is-ok slitherin' slide work are missed, my man.

Where could the goodies be?