| Issue
#48 Apr.
'03
Nashville:
Its streets are paved with broken hearts,
its bars are filled with lost souls, and its recording studios are
jammed with every
country star and wannabe whoever looked to lessen their load by pouring
out their story
through a microphone with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a
guitar in the other.
Enter The Swaggerts.
Brought to the Music City by Price Harrison of Feralette
Records, this balls-out,
hellfire, Rockabilly Trio with a punk attitude ripped up the long dusty
trail from the Elm
City and turned it into a non-stop pedal-to-the-metal binge
of excessive R&B
driven, rockin’ country twang.
Using the power of George Thorogood and The
Delaware Destroyers, less swing than The
Stray Cats, the influence of Duane Eddy, Gene Vincent and countless
others, and the
attitude of The Clash (lent to domestic issues as opposed to
political), The Swaggerts
toss us into the car and hurl us down the lane – Hit the juke
joint and order a
double whiskey straight up, it’s going to be a long drive as
the tales of love (lost,
lusted, conquered, confused, true, unrequited, etc.) pour forth with as
much break neck
speed as Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. From the opening
track of The Whole
Story, The Swaggerts take chase of that
Hot Rod Lincoln and they don’t
stop until it’s over.
Our driver is Bill
“Catdog” Collins (vocals, guitars) and he
starts
the engine with the manic Rockabilly of “Rockbottom”
– He’s been dumped – hard. And, after
drowning his sorrows in liquor we are
“Rocked to the right”, and
“Rocked to the left” along
with the motoring rhythm section of
“Nervus”
Chet Pervis (bass, background vocals) and “Howlin”
Ron Wolfe (drums,
background vocals). These lead us to an extended middle bridge
– and it must be late
because we can feel the darkness as we are driven across, we can hear
the car horns
warning us of the danger ahead, we see the guardrails passing by like
split rail fences -
then, when Bill delivers his message to his lost honey in a spoken word
reading: “Do
you remember the night you walked out on me…/ The night I
literally lost my mind?/ I
crawled, I begged, I pleaded with you not to go/And something deep
inside me broke and
died.” we believe him, and we strap in for the rest
of the ride.
“Bonnie”
spits out one of the most perfect fractured love
stories ever: That of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. It’s
basically Clyde’s
confession of pure true love for his Bonnie. A romantic fairytale set
in the frantic pace
of the soundtrack to a life of imminent danger and tragedy –
The one, the only; Live
Fast And Die soliloquy that reveals the depth of love realized in death
together. A
pledge, an undying loyalty, delivered as a message to those who cannot
see The Whole Story
of the passion and commitment of true love.
The Swaggerts tie up the
concept of this Album with the title track. After
wallowing in the heartache of “Rockbottom”
and celebrating ideal
(albeit socially faulted) romance with “Bonnie,”
“The
Whole Story” tells the
sorry tale of divorce from a man’s perspective; a point that
reveals the heartbreak
of not being confronted by your faults, nor the laying bare of the
whole truth. Delivered
to a pumped romp of solid R&B with the lead guitar carving its
way through the heart,
we understand his plight, but wonder what the other side of the story
might be.
Or, perhaps the other side of the story is
that of many. And, through the course of
this disc many of those yarns get tossed at us. From the ballads of “Take
A Chance With Me,”
with its cruisin’ melody and highlight background vocals
– the dead-on George
Jones modeled “Telling My Bad Dreams To You”
and the Down-Low hip
thrust of the young “so hot he was on fire” rock,
sex god Presley as channeled
through Buddy Holly tale of wanton lust and desire for “Jezebel.”
Keeping the pedal down and flying through
the back roads of these love stories are
“All Day
Sucker” giving us
the “I wanna get in your pants so bad, I’ll go
along with anything” take -
“American Beer”
celebrating the love of domestic brew with a tip
of the hat to Chuck Berry and a riotous romp of southern rock where we
can find more boots
below the bar than sneakers - The Classic double entendre “Big
Ol’ But”
gives the account of a woman who is always saying
“but…” But, when you hear
Bill’s reading you’ll be rolling on the floorboards
as you understand that this
poor fellow is concentrating so hard on her generous backside that he
can’t handle
the verbal “buts” that are hampering getting his
hands on the physical one.
– And,
“Last Call For
My Love” races us back into the watering
hole for one more shot of libidinous
pleasure before we head off down the road again.
The instrumental “Big
Beach Jihad” closes our slanted
Punkabilly trip to Nashville by bringing us out of the gin mills of
human relationships
(if love can’t be equated with alcohol – then, what
else can it be? [sic] in the
right amounts the euphoria is invigorating. But, when mass consumed
at/in points of
[mental] unbalance, can intoxicate us in many different forms that
can/will send us off
into many unknown and uncertain places including dark alleys and dead
ends) and hurling us
back down the highway of love induced emotional frailty without the
comfort of slowing to
a stop, but jerking to a halt only to find us exhaling and wondering if
that was indeed The
Whole Story?
Want to find out for yourself?
The
Whole Story by The Swaggerts
is available now for: $9.98 +s/h*
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Handling charges:
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Add $1.50 per each CD after.
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Add $2.00 per each CD after.
Everywhere else -$7.00
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