Lightning Beat-Man & The Never Heard of
'Ems
- Apartment Wrestling Rock 'n' Roll
(Voodoo Rhythm) www.voodoorhythm.com
"The most berserk Trash and wrestling Rock'n'Roll Garage platter ever made on this planet..." announces the label splurge in solemn tones like the President telling us that, yes citizens, aliens really do exist. Whaaattt? So there's others? "...made on this planet". So, somewhere in a galaxy far far away there's a band of nutters playing similara stuff? Cooool. Squelching out of a gunky puddle of Butthole Surfers and the Happy Flowers, hot-stepping into a tornado of general psychobilly mayhem this is a frenzied mish-mash of carreening garage-a-billy R'n'R ( the title track, Wild Baby Wow, I Wanna Be your Pussycat, & the impressive, exquisitley warped country-blues Gram and Emmylou in a parallel nightmare dimension of Honey Baby Blues), some semi-pointless, tho' at times kinda amusing, skits and utterly unlistenable shite like Rock in my Underpants & the aptly titled Sonic Nightmares (maybe he got all conceptual on that one) both of which sound like they were recorded in a flushing toilet depositing a coupla days worth of Guiness. Much of the rest (I Said Yea, I Hate To Dance, I Love You and Kill Ya Tonight) see The Beat-Man adopting Van Morrison's battered hat, scowl, raping, pillaging and beastialising Gloria in various ways. But you gotta ask yourself one question. Should you buy it? If it was in a bargain bin or cheap 2nd hand it's be a nice surprise tho not something I'm gonna live my life by. I wouldn't've liked to have paid full rip-off UK prices for it either (I don't think it's even distributed here). But in a world of conformity such a slice of priceless madness shouldn't be left to rot. There's a method to it too as there are some smatterings of lo-fi trashy rawk brilliance but I'm left asking if it's the erraticness of genius or buffoonery we're in the presence of.
Oh, and by the way the drummer, or ham-bon
and foreskinist is called Gringo Starr... Which is nice. As the label says they've got "Records to ruin any party". Right, I'm off to find some party with some pratt playing daft Punk instead of Sly Stone (oh, hang on that was MY guitarist) & stick this on.
- Stu Gibson