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THE LOOKIES-"KEEP IT ROLLIN'" b/w TRUCKSTOP LOVE CHILD-"THINKIN' AIN'T DRINKIN'" 7-inch 33 rpm single (Zodiac Records...try Bona Fide for availability)

I thought I'd better review this 'un before Rick Noll (who sent the dang thang to me like last...December???) personally removes my giblets via an orifice to be named at a later date. The reason Noll's all hopped up about this seven-incher on pink vinyl's the fact that the drummer for the Lookies, none other than L. Ron Rummager a.k.a. Jay Spiegel used to be a member of the Velvet Monkeys, a group that got quite a bit of notice back in the mid-eighties American pseudo-garage scene thanks to the help of Mr. Noll. Special interests aside, this split-disc (other side featuring none other than a group called Truckstop Love Child...no relation to that other group) reminds me of a whole passel of those late-eighties/early-nineties self-produced underground recordings made my kids in their garages who had the money to press up all sortsa singles and perhaps even albums, but unfortunately only about .01% of 'em had any talent, imagination or just plain gumption with regards to what they were doing, or at least trying to convey to a miniscule but awaiting audience. And sure it was great back in the mid-sixties when even the most suburban-bound punk band would get some limited-edition single out that got posthumous praise fifteen years later when one of those clandestine garage band compilations finally brought their hard work to a larger audience, but if the same kinda groups are gonna scrounge up the same five Stooges/Sabbath/Nugent... riffs and grind them into the ground to the point of cliches what really is the moral of the story anyhow???

Not that the Lookies or Truckstop Love Child are the same kind of typical no-promise/no-deliver "amerindie" bands we've been plagued with for the past umpteen years. Far from that...in fact I'd say that both of these post-teenage (perhaps way-post-teenage!) groups do continue on the more exciting path of what Amerigan underground punkitude-cum-post-hardcore rock did give us twennysome years back before it all slid into the mire. Sorta heavy metal chordings of the seventies filtered into a new and more violent eighties outlook (I'm thinking early Angry Samoans putsch) only slowed down a bit pretty much like Jeff Dahl used to do in Powertrip. And of course there's the loud, raw-throated screaming vocals that I hope still will not settle well with current satellite-radio-listening garage thudders part and parcel to the mp3 generation. Really spiffy, especially for a couple groups that've sprung up from outta nowhere and who'll probably just end up right back there thanks to the usually uncaring public brainwashed by thirtysome years of hippie mewl.