drunken lucero review and centro-matic the 10th anniversary show |

sometime in 1980 a young writer sat alone in his cramped studio apartment. smoke after smoke he pounded out word after word, page after page on his thrift store IBM Selectric. they flowed like KY on the third shoot of an all anal porno. the story was complicated but relateable, the characters were multi-faceted but simple. after a tiring 6 months, the writer stood up, boxed up the pages and there it sat for quite a while, in fact. a few months went by and the author turned his focus on another manuscript, that, oddly enough, was along the same lines as the story that now sits in a box. this time when he was finished he called up a buddy to begin working on the soundtrack. the very thing the author couldn’t hear the first time around. a year later his second work was put to film, with the soundtrack he had always hoped for. that movie was eddie and the cruisers.

that movie that was never made, now has an un-official soundtrack some 23 years later. Lucero’s Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers is that soundtrack. it has this strange quality that inspires a movie type visualization in me brain. i can hear the lead in promo go something like this…

“a man with nothing to lose, and a history he cant escape meets the women he wished he could forget and everything that happens in between…”

its very rare that a record invokes this kind of feeling and thought process that rebels, rogues and sworn brothers has. even the simplest lines like “the difference between what was and what is..” as ben declares on “cass” stirs up a whole bunch of feelings that i havent felt in years or maybe feelings i have never felt personally, i cant decide. the opener “what else would you have me be” is one of the best springsteen-eque songs any follower has ever put to tape. i can just hear ben counting down 1, 2, 3, 4 ala bruce in between the drum kicks and the tamborine fills.

so, i guess this is more of a soundtrack to a less than perfect life, than eddie and the cruisers: the untold story. less than perfect probably sums most of us more than we care to admit, but if we were perfect we wouldn’t be able to relate to this damn near perfect record.

another one of my favorite bands is centro-matic. here is the first part of a 41 song set celebrating their 10 year anniversary.

1. test

2. pilots

3. parade

4. post it note

5. terrified

6. hoist up

7. ordinary

8. 60 odd drummers

9. huge in every city

10. most everyone

11. aerial spins