Tuesday, September 1, 2009

You Gotta Tell Me Why They Keep Coming Back for More by Lyn2

What is it about the Slickee Boys that keeps them coming back for more? This question applies equally to the fans or the band. This legendary DC act, which played its "last show" in 1991, puts the fun back in fundamental. Their music hits the fundamentals of rock and roll because it's drawn from so many aspects of the art that you can't characterize it easily. They play with a certain abandon that a credible unnamed source likens to something like a car going off a cliff. In the best sense of that image. If they were a color they would be orange. While their "hey day" spanned many phases of local music history, they managed to both fit into those times and yet bring something that was missing. The Slickees never took themselves too seriously, but they never just dialed it in either. Maybe it's that combination that draws people back year after year. And the fans are by no means homogeneous. You might find a die-hard old school punk, but you'll easily spot someone whose tastes lean to classic rock.

Why does the band keep coming back for more? You will have to ask them. I am glad they do.

Today's History Lesson: (to be corrected and embellished by you the readers)
I think these pictures are from 1979. ( Click on the pix to enlarge.) The CBGB's show was with Tina Peel, a band out of Harrisburg, PA. Everyone stayed in their long skinny apartment on the Lower East Side way before it was gentrified and they had a Lancelot Link lunchbox in the kitchen. This wasn't the only CBGB's gig, but it might have been the first. The pictures of Kim and Mark seem to be Bethesda's Psychedelly, the scene of many a Slickees gig in most of the band's incarnations.

More history as we lead up to this Friday's Slickees show live at the Black Cat. With Girl Loves Distortion.

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