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Gypsy
King and all-around rock'n'roll super hero, Little Steven, has been
battling evil-doers and rescuing rock'n'roll's under-rated pioneers and
torch-keepers for years, now. Not only did the cat help end apartheid in South
Africa by shaming the dirty pigs who perpetrated it, in the popular
consciousness, and helping to free Mandela in the process, but he also helped to
briefly resurrect the careers of two of my All-time personal heroes, Michael
Monroe from Hanoi Rocks, and Stiv Bators from the Deadboys/Wanderers/Lords
Of The New Church. He very nearly saved C.B.G.B.'s from short-sighted
developers, whore-politicians, and the hard-on upstairs, who had the old grudge
against Hilly Krystal. His radio-show, "Little Steven's Garage",
delivers music with heart, that actually rocks, to a soul-starved public. He
played Syl on the Sopranos. He helped the Boss record an anti-war, comeback
album, chock-full of poetry, faith, and light. Currently, with Wicked Cool
Records, he's shining a klieg-light on important underground voices, like these
Lost Godfathers Of Garage-Glam, Rochester, New York's legendary, Chesterfield
Kings, but we'll discuss Little Steven more in the upcoming "Disciples Of
Soul" Flash Metal Suicide entry: Until then, Thanks For Everything, S.V.Z.! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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 Rock'n'roll experts, ANDY BABIUK and GREG PREVOST,helped to really
kick-start that whole garage-scene in the eighties. The Chesterfield Kings,
along with the Fuzztones, Stiv Bators, the Fleshtones, the
Cynics, and various Bomp! Records groups, really ushered-in the scene
that eventually spun-off and spawned all those retro-by-numbers,
mop-topped groups that have those big Austin Powers conventions at expensive
Vegas hotels every year, where the chicks all dress like Marcia Brady, and all
the dudes scowl in their Jim McGuinn rectangled granny glasses, and Beatle
Boots, and loudly discuss Voxx amps, while drinking fruit drinks outta tiki-doll
cups with pink umbrellas. They totally paved the way for all those revivalist
bands who bought the Lenny Kaye "Nuggets" compilations-from the Makers, to Sons
Of Hercules, to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, though I kinda doubt that was
their intention. They started out doing vintage covers like you do, when you're
sour-pussed teenagers, and releasing cool 45
r.p.m.'s, and gradually, started integrating their own originals, once they had
a cuppla records under their belts. Prevost also wrote about rock with a real
heartfelt, take no prisoners authority, and if you were lonely for good music,
or real culture, you needed look no further than whomever Prevost or Shaw were
goin' on about. I remember watchin' 'em on "Night Flight" when I
was a kid, doing some kinda raunchy Stones-vamp. I think it was called, "99th
Floor" and hearin' that they spoke exclusively in sixties slang, and
lived an entirely retro-life-style. This was all very stimulating to me, at that
age. Like most rock kids from nowhere towns, I started off with the Monkees,
Beatles, Stones, and Doors, before later discovering the Stooges, Cramps, Bowie,
and punk rock. I'm pretty sure the first Chesterfield Kings album my hippie
record-shoppe connection tracked down for me was called, "Don't Open 'Til
Doomsday", followed shortly thereafter, by "The Berlin Wall Of
Sound", and some singles of them doing old Alice Cooper Group and
Music-Machine covers, and I even had a Japanese 45 of them backin' up Johnny
Thunders on "Critics Choice", in the early '90's. Lucky for me, I had this record-store mentor, named Billy Ray Bogart, he
worked all his life for Mind Dust Music, and he had to be one of the all-time
great record-store guys, and I've been to plenty of 'em...He spent decades
patiently teaching hick kids about Roky Erikson, and Captain Beefheart, while
only making obscenely low wages. He even continued taking the bus all the way
out to the country everyday, to remain an under-appreciated
rock-guru/historian/clerk at the same joint, long after the store had changed
hands, and phased-out records, to concentrate on vintage instruments-where
there's always more money. Once I conveyed my enthusiasm to him for the 'Kings,
he continued my musical education by turning me on to older groups like Love,
Blue Cheer, Question Mark, Electric Prunes, Zombies, Chocolate Watch Band,
Pretty Things, Standells, Downliners Sect, Yardbirds, Balloon Farm, Shadows Of
Knight, 13th Floor Elevators, Seeds, Paul Revere, etc. It changed my life - cos
where I hailed from, all my peers were stuck-on shit like Foreigner, Hall and
Oates, Billy Squire, Scorpions, and Dio. Loverboy and Iron Maiden just weren't
my thing. The Police were even considered threatening punk rock fags where we
lived. It was all crap Top 40, or silly metal. He even hipped me to summa the
early California "Paisley Underground" groups like Redd Kross and Salvation
Army. The blues, glam rock, most of what I dig to this day, really. He liked
reggae and the Stiff records punks, too. Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Costello. The
Move, T. Rex, The Damned. All I had back then, was my monthly trip to his record
store, the cable video shows, and MTV's Cutting Edge Happy Hour, when I spent
the night at my friends' houses, and Creem. Billy Ray also hipped me to
underground magazines like, "Black To Comm". Like I said, he was a cool guy. I'm
in his debt. I was an eighties brat, so I grew up reading Rick Johnson/J.Kordosh-era
Creem, and I loved plenty of that stuff-Van Halen, Clash, Replacements, new
wave, but nothing I'd heard previously could really have fully prepared me for
"Funhouse", or Sky Saxon, the NY Dolls, or Arthur Lee.
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| The first time I ever dropped acid was at a bar called the Dive, where my friend Morgan Reese d.j.'d. The garage revival was in full-swing, by then. I think the bill was Fleshtones and an all-girl group, called the Antoinettes. I really liked the Fuzztones and Wendy Wild, and used to kinda follow all those people around, when I'd spot them in the Village. I first met Stiv Bator when he was dating Martha Quinn on St. Mark's Place, and still have a book on the Beatles shop-lifted from St.Mark's bookstore signed by him, that got us talking about the history of Ohio punk and sixties music. He thought I was ballsy for being a real under-aged rock'n'roll runaway, sleeping on roof-tops, and in the park, and we had several memorable conversations about obscure psychedelic-soul, and cave-stompin' pop bands he thought I should be hipped to, if I was gonna keep hangin' around the Pyramid Club, and King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in my furry Sonny Bono vest, mooching drinks off the middle-aged cult figures and tranny bar-tenders. I never got to see the Chesterfield Kings' B-movie classic, "Where Is The Chesterfield King", but alla my pretentious record-collector, and obnoxious film-buff associates say I'd dig it. I never saw Spirit Of '76, or the Lovedolls films, either. |
C Chesterfield Kings - 99 Floors |
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That's kinda
why I tend to not get along with many purist, sixties record-snots, or vintage
collector-scum, cos it often seems like the whole record convention sub-culture
revolves around some rich nerds shit-hording neat rock gear, they're never gonna
let you near. I knew a kid like that in Boston, back in the day--that spoilt ass
son of a bitch was just like the rich kid on the Lil' Rascals: he always had
everything imported from England.
All the top-dollar
underground sounds you were dying to hear and help celebrate, like rare
Jacobites and Hanoi Rocks stuff, but his entire raison d'etre was to withhold
access, to make you jealous, to kill you with envy for what he could afford to
keep bagged in plastic, in some safe upstairs . I fuckin hate those fuckin'
pricks. Somehow, I ended up knowin' way too many of 'em. The vintage guitar
collectors are even worse. Why would anybody wanna have records or guitars that
just collect dust, unplayed, except outta some kinda misguided spite, y'know?
Look at my expensive stuff. I am the Keeper Of Stuff you sore poorlings will
never get to experience, or enjoy. To get back at a couple of 'em, I started
writing these phony reviews of rare records that never existed, just so I could
watch them scurry around, tearing their own hair out, trying to obtain them.
Drove some of 'em bats, still searching desperately for these rare bootlegs with
gatefold covers and limited edition fanclub only posters I made up---to let 'em
have a dose of their own medicine. If you know summa these rat-fink bastards,
try it. I'm not a big believer in revenge-seeking, it usually has a
karmic-boomerang effect for those who try, but this yarn-spinning seemed a
mostly harmless way of letting greed-heads and shit-horders know what it feels
like to go without.
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Because of the impact they made on me as a crazy teenager,
it was quite a thrill to have my own column in the same magazine as Greg Prevost,
much later-on, in life. He'd remained true to his school, all those years. A
shining example of a guy who does it his way, come rain, or shine. These
rooster-doo'd retro-rockers just continued getting better in the nineties, when
everyone else was busy sucking ass, or dying off. Their latter-day stuff, like "Let's
Go Get Stoned", and "The Mindblowing Sounds Of The Chesterfield
Kings" were often way more exciting than anything even their heroes were
doing in those years, although I remained a sucker for the Fuzztones, as well. I
read some place that there's stuff floatin' 'round of the Kings with Dee Dee and
Stiv, I dunno. Maybe we'll try and interview Greg or Andy, and find out more
about that. Here I am, almost thirty years old, ahem, and I'm STILL tryin'
to get-together a punk/rock group capable of transcendental beauty like the
Chesterfield Kings' "Streaks & Flashes"--a pop song so gorgeous it
nearly belongs on the Stones own "Satanic Majesties". It's as good
as Dave Kusworth's cover of "Child Of The Moon". Or "Citadel" by Redd Kross.
Nobody does that regal Ruby Tuesday /I'm Free/Get Offa My Cloud/Paint It,
Black/Live With Me raunch and howl like the Chesterfield Kings. Not even the
Jezzebelles from Chicago, or Chatterbox could hold a candle to the pretty Kings.
Alot of the stuff on "Let's Go Get Stoned" and "Mindbending Sounds" was just
Amazingly Beautiful. "Stayed Too Long" off this same new record is
raunchy "Beggar's Banquet" cow-punk as nasty and sleazy as the Joneses, or Jason
and the Scorchers. "Gone" is as good as anything on Jagger's
"Wandering Spirit", except, perhaps, "Put Me In The Trash", his
arguably-unconscious tribute to the NY Dolls. In other words, THE
CHESTERFIELD KINGS latest, Little Steven-produced platter, "Psychedelic
Sunrise", is a huge victory for anyone who yearns for the real shit, for
anyone who can still even vaguely remember what real rock'n'roll sounds like! To
me, it's in-league with "Bigger Bang", or even the Dolls comeback
album, and I really, really like that record. I even dig Steve Conte. Those of
you who don't, probably either slept with Johnny at some point, or just wanted
his job. When I categorize Prevost with Johansen, it's intended as a true
compliment, no matter how he sees it. "Psychedelic Sunrise" just oozes danger,f
rustration, heart, and bluesey , boozy, bloody soul. Outstanding, kickass
punk'n'roll. Snotty, leering, sneering, cocky psychedelia, straight outta 1967.
Greg Prevost, has one of the really great silvery rock'n'roll throats-it's just
so, so very ideally-suited to this sinister sunshiney acid-punk. Liner notes by
Andrew Loog Oldham. This is my favorite record since, Shit, I dunno,
Spencer P. Jones' first solo album. Badass trashy rock'n'roll. The likes of
which you just don't hear that often, no more. As good as anything, but better
than much of it. If you play drums like Dennis Thompson, bass like Pete Farndon,
or Tony James, or guitar like Brian James/Jones and dig the Chesterfield Kings,
and feel like recording some trashy rock'n'roll, and maybe yer lookin' for a
stylish old singer with his own poetic stories to tell in song, leave word on
the Msg. Board. Willya? Everybody else, just rattle your jewelry.
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