FROGS 12/18, EMPTY BOTTLE “There’s a fine line between clever and stupid,” spake one of the wise gentlemen of Spinal Tap, and no one illustrates this better than Jimmy and Dennis Flemion, who have been staggering drunkenly back and forth over that line for 18 years. Their Frogs are still a cult band despite Smashing Pumpkins’ best efforts–big bald Bill’s fans weren’t much more receptive to the tepidly offensive 1997 collection Starjob than they were to 1989’s outrageous It’s Only Right and Natural, which presented the heterosexual brothers posing as incestuous gay lovers and featured song titles like “Hot Cock Annie,” “Richard Dick Richards,” and “Homos.” No label to date has been willing to touch 1991’s “Racially Yours,” their equally sensitive and insightful take on relations with the African-American community, and by the time Matador issued My Daughter the Broad, in 1996, that aforementioned fine line had become a chain-link fence. But the early spring rerelease of their enervatingly sublime lush-pop 1988 debut (on Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai imprint) should give a taste of what might have been.
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KOOL & THE GANG 12/18, HOUSE OF BLUES When this funk machine revved up in the late 60s, pop songwriting–defined here as packing maximum groove into a minimalized package–was not a strong suit. In fact, the group started as a jazz act, the Jazziacs, and their first records as Kool & the Gang are largely instrumental, full of the sort of whoo-hoos and doing-the-dozens chatter meant to make you believe there really were hundreds of people partying right there in the studio. As the disco era progressed, they tightened up, issuing a long string of hits and peaking in 1980 with their first and only number-one crossover single, “Celebration”–still played after sports victories and at karaoke nights everywhere. Even the collapse of the disco market couldn’t stop them; it took the departure of vocalist J.T. Taylor in 1989 to pull them off the pop charts completely. Taylor returned in 1995 and has toured with the Gang regularly since. Boycott the platform-shoe poseurs tonight and get a taste of the real thing.
SONIA DADA 12/19, HOUSE OF BLUES This Chicago septet was supposedly formed when songwriter-guitarist Dan Pritzker, en route to a Cubs game, found vocalists Shawn Christopher, Paris Delane, and Michael Scott singing gospel at the Chicago Avenue subway stop–a story that sounds like it was invented by the same people who choose locations for ER. If he was going to Wrigley Field, why was he getting off at Chicago? The band’s third LP, My Secret Life (Capricorn), is a warm, fuzzy slab of multiculti soul rock that at its best wanly imitates Sly & the Family Stone and at its worst wanly imitates Foghat.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Pigface.
