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Royal Court of China |
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"I had a vision...that I was Alice
Cooper"
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DRAGON PARK
In my own endless and seemingly futile quest to find the right combination of flash trash wayfarers to help me form the quintessential glammish pop art group, in my youth, I was forever making all theses redundant Musicians Wanted flyers and posting them in all the gtr. shops and record stores, and many of the characters who've responded over the years will be fodder for my next compilation of essays, provided I should survive the holidays. Most of the return phone calls would primarily consist of some guy on the other end of the phone talkin' in some affected, gruff or surfer or British patois, doing the whole glam cultist one upping game of more obscure than thou. |
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"Who are your main influences?" I never know
what to say. Stiv Bators and Simon Le Bon. Angry Anderson
and David Lee Roth? And If I say I like Noddy Holder,
they prefer Steve
Harley. Dig? Anybody
who's ever traveled in similar circles knows what a drag it is to
encounter these types while really trying to pull an original act
together, and eventually, it becomes so disillusioning, that ya just stop
looking, rather than having to repeat the same shit for the zillionth time
to some fat guy with a room fulla records who spends all his days on-line
bidding on copies of arcane Marc Bolan or Kiss ephemera.
Here's how it goes, if you like Mark Lanegan, than I'd have to
prefer Malfunkshun. If I like Stars From Mars, you prefer
Heart Throb Mob or the Seaweed Eaters. If I brought up Royal
Court Of China, they'd be duty bound to rhapsodize about some
forgotten Indianapolis glam band, TOO COOL*,
who looked like the Black Crowes and later changed their name to
Chatterbox, best remembered for a stirring cover of Arthur Lee's "Signed
D.C.". So much of the glamour punk underground has always been a
little ratrace of poses, threads, and elitist collector acquisition and
limited edition Japanese fan club snobbery that I'd always hang up the
phone baffled and exhausted cos "It doesn't pay to try....all the smart
boys know why...."
The genre hags are always way, way more interested in bragging about their collections than in actually ever getting it together to make real music. A catty, contrary, pretentious lot, the glam-blouses. If you mention say, Soho Roses 'round this bunch, lamenting your lost demos, they gotta tell you 'bout the Dutch Import Soho Roses boxset with the 3-D comic book, blacklight poster, and glo-in-the-dark fuzzy skateboard sticker and special exclusive DVD concert all star jam co-starring Spike, Guy Bailey, Jo Almeida, Ray Zell, Ian McLagan, Pepsi Tate and Rocky Shades--right? Insisting they also got ahold of that rare and hard to find Lisa Dominique skin flick ta boot. Ya gotta l-u-v the glam-blouses. Like Poison Idea used ta say, "Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes". I almost prefer the needle creeps to all these dopey fanboys with their bootlegs and Dogs D'Amour dog tags and Phil Collen guitar picks. Ugh. After awhile you get so disheartened and nauseated by the Thunders cultists that you just kinda wanna retreat from all of it and find yourself listening to Indian ragas and going ambient in order to escape 'em, end up making bad Radiohead records like Wilco. If you were anything like me and my equally embittered amigos, you can't stand the closet Republicans, cultural tourists, and preppie weasels who've bought their way into rocknroll this last 15 some years. All the Ashton Kutcher lookalikes with nothin' to say besides look at the flames on my new vest. "But last week, you were ska..." Poseurs get lost. _________________________________________________________________________________IT WAS ONLY A GLIMMER............... The Royal Court Of China grew outta some Highschool punk band called Enemy and you can hear their raving punk roots on scuzzy songs like "Tijuana Go" that mighta been the best track on one of them cock rock cattle call sleazepunk compilations R.A.F.R. and Junk Records released in recent years, but occasionally you can hear the subtle slide into some generic Bad Co. style riffing on a couple a songs, but Joey Goldenthroat here always makes up for it with his unabashed enthusiasm and unbridled sleazegrinding cocknroll energy. Other songs feature power pop guitar and weirdo sub-McCoy experimentations that helped set these doods apart from the pack like on, "So Yer Love Is True", which displays some of their radio worthy diversity-just sullen and strange enough to be engaging. Less forced than Bang Tango, but not up to par with Uncle Sam or the Front, if ya know wot I mean. About as good as an Izzy Stradlin' solo album. A cocknroll prototype, really. Royal Court Of China were the thinking street-gypsies alternative to proto-alternative and the mainstream mooks of the metal years. Songs like, "This Time Around", and "Geared & Primed" indicate that these motorcycle cowboys had been listening to alot of Smack's "Rattlesnake Kisses" and Dogs D'Amour "Graveyard Of Empty Bottles", cos they're vividly capturing a darker glam essence sadly lacking in most of the formulaic poodle rock from back then - Stryper?!!! C'mon. If you got excited about the Kill City Dragons "Devil Calling" flexi-disc that came with Kerrang! but somehow missed TRCOC, check 'em out. If yer one of the desperate teenage sleazegrinders of today eschewing X-boxes in search of wild fun and weeding through the scads of phonies and cheapskate pretenders to the throne, you, too, might dig these trashy flash metal grooves, but I'd rather send you guys in search of Claude from Smack's solo albums or Circus Of Power or something. A couple of these guys went on to do a group called LOS SHAKERS. We'd absolutely love to hear their cool as shit singer, Joe Banton shake some more action. Update us, Joe. Catch 'em if you can... -FIN- |
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-Pepsi Sheen; still Trapped In Waikiki *Too Cool were awesome. Just saying. -Sleaze
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By the
end of the ate up eighties the majors were so eager to sign anybody with a
pair o' cowboy boots and a dragon tattoo that even bar bands from
Nashville, TN were being drafted to try and sell more records ridin' the
dusty velvet coat tails of Guns N Roses. There were, in addition, to the
suckshit pussy bands of the time (Europe, Winger, Warrant,
Whitesnake, Slaughter, etc.) also a growing glut of second and
third string "street rockers" (Little Caesar, Dangerous Toys,
Two Bit Thief, Sleaze Beez, Tattoo Rodeo, etc.) that
we hoped could measure up to the righteously sleazy standards of all our
Flash Metal Faves, but who just
weren't made of the same leathery stuff. Everyone knows how