The FABULOUS Thunderbirds

The FABULOUS Thunderbirds

FEATURES

THEY'RE TEARING IT UP AGAIN!

by

Iman Lababedi

This is what we call the irresponsible rock crit at his worst, enjoying the company of the band he’s talking to so much he doesn’t bother with the deep, meaningless questions. The Fabulous Thunderbirds are as much fun on stage and on vinyl as they are in conversation. But though they are a new time R&B, blues, rock ’n’ roll band, why the hell am 1 discussing Elvis Presley for half an hour? “God,” says the T-Birds vocalist/harmonica player Kim Wilson. “I loved Elvis Presley,” says the T-birds guitarist Jimmie Vaughan. “God,” repeats Kim. “I still do,” continues Jimmie. “God.” “I was one of those boys who spent his youth in front of a mirror with Elvis and an acoustic guitar.” “God,” Kim ends the conversation with. Now can these guys be all bad?

. The Fabulous Thunderbirds have been playing rock ’n’ roll for the past eight years. Ever since Jimmie saw Kim playing in a strip joint in Austin and promptly quit his own b&nd. There are two other group members—Keith Ferguson on bass, Fran Christina on drums—but neither of them are sitting in a fairly ritzy restaurant with Chrysalis publicist Rhonda Shore and us. The previous night, I’d caught the T-Birds show at the Bottom Line for the second time; today, I’ve stopped nursing a hangover and am past half-way to being drunk again. There are many ways to see this band, but sober isn’t the best of them; onstage they make you crazy, tossing off blues greats, originals, and numbers so obscure I couldn’t tell the difference. I went in feeling awful and left feeling on top of the world.

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Jimmie: “That’s right, that’s exactly what we want to do to you.” ,

Kim: “We’re a party band, we’re a dance band. When people come and see us we don’t care what they do. They can crawl on the floor.” Kim is the center of attraction, he throws himself around the stage, his voice crawling out of the mike with a throbbing sexiness, his harmonica pulled out of a pocket and shoved into the mike, blowing away as if the world is about to fall about his ears. A great player of a harshi j forgotten instrument, sounds real authentic to me. “I don’t think authentic is a good word to use,” replies Kim, “it’s just us, it’s just the way we play, it’s the way we are. We don’t think about being authentic. Authentic to what?”

“We don’t sit around and go ‘here’s this Gene Vincent record, we’ve got to play just like this,’ ” Jimmie continues putting a hand through his greasy thick hair. “We’re not trying to be a crowd pleaser or anything.”

Kim: “I think when * Americans say authentic they’re refering to the past. When we do stuff, when we do any kind of cover, we listen to the song once, get the words, and forget about it, and just play it our way.”

What I meant by authentic is that there aren’t mahy old time rock bands, bands raised on Delta blues rather than soul, still working: And though the Fabulous Thunderbirds have been together a relatively short amount of {ime, Kim figures he’s played with around 20 bands before this. “Between us we’ve played with all the blues greats. You name ’em, we’ve played with them. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed...”

Jimmie: “But we play our own music. It’s a mixture of everything we ever heard as kids on the radio—in the South, in Detroit, in California. There is a lot of blues in there, but there’s a lot of R&B and Little Richard kinda rock ’n’ roll. If it’s blues, if it’s classical, if it’s good it’s rock ’n’ roll.”

Which is hardly popular music today , unfortunately. In 1983, even a band as good as the Fabulous Thunderbirds seems to work outside the mainstream (they have a contract with Chrysalis which has just expired, won’t be renewed, and doesn’t, seem to bother them: “We’ll make records with or without them,” Kim laughs), probably because they refuse to dilute even that much. Their latest LP, T-Bird Rhythm (produced by Nick Lowe, his best work in several years), starts off with an original, “Can’t Tear It Up Enuff” which sounds like a natural radio single to these ears, but compared to, say, the Stray Cats, the drums are far too hard and Kim’s vocals growl all over the damn place. It doesn’t fit.

Kim: “Well no, that’s not intentional.”

Jimmie: “We can’t help it.”

Kim: “We do just whatever we like, we’re not going to bend over backwards for this byllshit top 40. We want to swing everybody else onto our side, we want ours to be the most popular music.” Because it’s better? “Not necessarily.” Kim guffaws at his reply, but it is better. It’s much better then po-faced synth bands, this is real dirty fun, brilliantly played. It’s better than much that passes for rock, because it’s pure, because it stops the process dead. The way the Band probably did when they were the Hawks. The way Dr. Feelgood (where are you?) still do.

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How seriously do you guys take it? “Pretty seriously. It’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s either this or a trashman.”

Kim: “We’re talkin’ American music, Iman. It’s the raw stuff, that’s what it is. We’d like to think so, anyway. You can’t get any realer, except the original guys who brought it out.”

Why did you take up the guitar, Jimmie?

“I wanted to leave home and have girlfriends and cars. It hasn’t worked yet, but it beats the hell out of Dallas.” Jimmie is married and has a child.

Kim: “It’s the school we were brought up in. It’s the school we played for, except now.” In the publicity package that came with T-Bird Rhythm, it mentions that Muddy Waters called Kim the best harp player working today. “He reminds me of a Little Walter, because he plays more than one kind of harp.” Little Walter! That’s credentials.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds are so indigenously American, so much a part of what is great about this country, so subversive, so anti-Protestant work ethic, so good at what they do, the warning for the wouldbe listener has to be: beware, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t like you dancing all over his new Depression, and the record companies wouldn’t like you laughing at recession rock.

“Rhonda,” says Kim, “you should have given Iman the last i»terview of the day. Everybody else will be a disappointment.” As it is, he goes to sleep it off ’til the next hack turns up. Me, I’m pretty out of it as well. But with company like the Fabulous Thunderbirds, I could’ve torn it up for another week, easy. ^