FOR LADIES ONLY

My radio upbringing poisoned my very veins and soul. Growing up in Northeast Pennsylvania, every single person listened to Rock 107 FM, the AOR monolith where the morning host comedy duo broadcast live from a Scranton topless doughnut shop, free ticket giveaways to Eddie Money flowed like cherry wine, and an extremely limited playlist of Aerosmith, Zep, REO, Billy Joel, and Eagles radiated in a nonstop loop that let nary a modern artist penetrate its titanium walls until, I guess, Pearl Jam came along. Rock 107’s enveloping volcanic-ash presence surrounded my childhood and teenage years, as suffocating as the coal mines all of my friends’ grandparents worked in. They probably were also hearing Rock 107 broadcast there. The station played nonstop when I worked at the Hasty Tasty ice cream parlor, and I still remember the low angle my head hung while making banana splits as “American Pie” came on constantly, because you knew you had eight minutes and 33 seconds to endure this shit, the chorus ringing, “This will be the day that I die.” Who needs a song that long? Driving home from New York in later years to see my family while terrestrial radio would crackle in around the Poconos, I would often try to guess what song would come into range first; it was 7 out of 10 times “Love in an Elevator.”

My arrival in college in the mid-’80s and discovery of its station’s library alleviated the fog to great extent. Hearing the Replacements’ The Shit Hits the Fans live cassette where they drunkenly disemboweled BTO and Thin Lizzy flashed the first lights in my head that wow, someone else has less than reverent feelings toward this stuff and wishes to destroy it, but jeez, maybe they also like it. And then there was the one Killdozer record in the library, the all-covers collection For Ladies Only. Where the Replacements’ uncaring, sloppy live attack was one thing, Killdozer (also solid Midwestern stock, though from Madison, Wisconsin) made precision sludge here, blazing through an entire LP of dumbass AOR anthems with aplomb and menacing grip. Bassist-singer Michael Gerald’s inimitable growl was up front leading the exorcism, while Bill Hobson’s guitar bellowed an evil, noisy swarm of bees like some American-inbred equivalent to the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard. Dan Hobson’s ceremonial thud moved things slothlike down some country road at night that most certainly led to a place where your ass would be kicked for listening to this band. Luckily Killdozer had some kindred spirits to gig with like the Butthole Surfers and Big Black, so barroom caged-in stages were mercifully off the circuit for the most part. The agile studio board work of fellow Wisconsinite Butch Vig (before his days engineering Nirvana) also helped shape the band’s sound into something wholly unique and their own, giving them distinct voice to transform these staples with heft; far from being novelty, either. Killdozer were smarmy but engaged, and meant business.

Minus the half-speed churn take of the James Gang’s “Funk #49,” these are pretty faithful covers tempo-wise. Deep Purple’s “Hush” ups the witchy factor, Elvis’ “Burnin’ Love” choogles and groans with the visual of a man struck down, perhaps with venereal disease. The unsufferable “One Tin Soldier/ The Legend of Billy Jack” comes down from its mountain throne to spew pious proclamations and damnations before Gerald strains through the finale to take the song up two keys until it all subsides into military snare rat-a-tats, whistling, and smoldering feedback. This might be the perfect song for Killdozer to reconstruct. But no, then it arrives: “American Pie.” Here, no seedy underbelly needs to be excavated; little needs to be done as the song in its pure form fulfills its evil intent. Killdozer also show their ability to sidestep sludge with a straight-up honky-tonk-ready version of Conway Twitty’s “You’ve Never Been This Far Before,” it’s leering depiction of the road to home plate offset (or perhaps amplified) with gravelly, diffusive “bum bum bummmmmms” over and over.

Mastery of these covers is only one slice of the Killdozer pie. As can be expected by a group that culls its name from the 1974 TV movie (based on an earlier novella) where a bulldozer gains evil powers from a crashed meteorite and causes mayhem, this band was a true original in the American rock canon, its own songs as great as those it chose to morph. While Killdozer took much power from the reflection of America’s Zeitgeist under the influence of these rock staples, one can only wish the band itself could have been recognized as standing as tall as these dinosaurs. When Marvin Heemeyer built his own Killdozer and grudgingly leveled a Colorado town in 2004, maybe he had been inspired by the band, and not the movie—who can say? The group split in 1990, reformed in 1996 with a new lineup, again disbanded after the “Fuck You, We Quit!” tour of 1996, then reformed again (the “Fuck You, We Reunite!” tour) with the original trio. I had the joyous experience of hosting them on Obama’s election day in 2008 for a radio performance, and I even got my choice of covers to request. Without a second to think I selected “Sweet Home Alabama,” and my joyful/ bittersweet tears welled up as it spewed forth in that studio. Never had I felt more proud to be American. Long live Killdozer.