SLEEPER OF THE MONTH
I've had this little gem around for several months now, and I keep coming back to it, because this record is good, fans, in a way that almost nothing is these days.
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WILLIE "LOCO" ALEXANDER "Kerouac" / "Mass Ave." Available for $1.25 from Garage Records, Box 308 Newtonville, Mass. 02160
I've had this little gem around for several months now, and I keep coming back to it, because this record is good, fans, in a way that almost nothing is these days.
Everybody raves about these New York bands, and I believe the reports of what they got live, but if you want it in the groove, it's here from this Boston boy who used to be in a group called the Lost about which I know absolutely nothing and care less. History is yellow press releases, but "Kerouac" has a full-bodied punk melancholia that jumps right out of the Nuggets era yet doesn't sound dated at all. Primitive (bashbash drums, thudthick bass, invisible guitar, rhythm piano, background drone by violin & voice) yet well-produced, this Garage record doesn't sound homemade at all, but what makes it a real winner is Alexander's raw-perfect Early Jagger slur, which is so precise yet so throwaway-loose that it could almost be some bizarro outtake from Metamorphosis. I mean the boy has learned his lessons so well he's as good as the Shadows of Knight cooking out on the Yardbirds, and
the simple lyrics deliver their sentimental honorarium succinctly: "You snuck up pretty fast/Snuck up out of the past/Ohh, Kerouac, you're on the top of my shelf/Up there with nobody else...Like your brother Gerard/Whoa, now you're both saints," after which he neatly takes care of the American Litera ture Dept, of every college in the country: "Let them call you what they want/Oh, you ain't what you ain't..."
Flip's cool too, if twice-derivative
— straight Ian Hunter/Mott. But Hunter/Mott when they were good
— Alexander seems an exceptionally smart thief — plus you get a real quenching 1965 Keith Richard guitar solo. These two cuts cook solid as the best of the Flamin' Groovies' cult-celebrated grunge and Alexander's vocals are distinctive enough that his personality shines right through his imperson ations. 1 mean, he cuts Steve Tyler whoever sings in Kiss, and half a dozen other RIAA-sealed slobs any day.
Punk rock lives on. Quietly which maybe is cool, because maybe it means there's some kind of Underground going on again, which means that we can all go back to being beatniks and relive having the time of our lives without even calling it second adolescence.
Lester Bangs
