"It's all over now.. woop woop"
As I rambled around The Crowned Heads of Texas' brand new album "Ramble Fer Yer Lives with a spiked interest and drink it became apparent that the rock is real and that the attitude is both feral and highly crafted with a fair amount of "I don't give a fuck" drunken stares and patriotism as cynic and rabble rouser. The track "Pretty Orange" rocks as down home as Neil Young when he goes electric. The back and forth girl / boy vox work well inciting raised beer bottles off of curious but interesting lyrics, "I said the red flag waving will be run by remote control" pushing politico pulsations (maybe), "It's all over now.. woop woop". On the track "Wolflene", Kat Holiday croons like one of those comely surprises you see at a no nothing fucked up bar outside of Sacramento were people literally drink themselves to death. It has a lovely country waltz and silly smart anthropomorphic lyrics. The hooky vagabond country rocker "Yawp" is voiced by Cage Winslow and feels like an amalgam of the Blasters, Johnny Cash (I've Been Everywhere), The Presidents of the United States, and Cracker. The sense here (to me) is ridiculously fun but there is a subversive undertone as well.
I still have to chew on some of the other songs. People who know me, know that I usually don't like songs as sources of comedy, that I don't really like novelty songs but I appreciate artists like the B-52's, Human Sexual Response, The Talking Heads, Primus, The Little Miss who use wit and cynicism and even broad silliness to paint social and / or political statements veiled or otherwise.
I have not yet listened to the first track off of "Ramble Fer Yer Lives" called "Obie Juan Kenobi Bowling" as I know when to leave well enough alone (especially after having my mind blown by the last season 2 episode of The Mandalorian).
Woop... woop!
-Robb Donker Curtius
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Who the hell are Kat and Cage?
83 years ago, on a cold winter’s night in the foyer of a wigwam on the banks of the Maumee River outside Toledo, Ohio, Kat Holiday first meowed. Mew. Mew. Mew. As the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Smalltown, Kat grew up singin’ soft and dancin’ slow. But even as a young kitten, Kat knew all the way down to the bottom of her manicured paws, that somewhere out there, people were singing loud and dancing fast.
One Tuesday, out on a hot tin roof, Kat really WAILED. It was the first time she'd ever cut loose. lt sounded like this, eeeeecheeeeecheechee! Woohoo!! Kat's lowdown caterwauling pounded the hammers on the anvils, and bucked the stirrups of Cage Winslow's eager ears. Woohoo!! Cage answered Kat in the dark with all the darkness in his Kia Soul. It sounded like this, AYE YIE YIE YIE YIE! Later, that very same metric week, on the newly minted day, Swow!, (pronounced like wow and one of the new days in the Uberdent sanctioned three-day Hyperweekend), the two of them stumbled, fell... and on the way back up, they began churning out songs together like cosmic butter.
In love, but still very much under the weather with them small-town, goin’-nowhere blues, they both caught a real bad case of that ol' ramblin’ fever. You know as good as I do, the only cure for ramblin’ fever is road.
Once the love birds and their '56 Chrysler Plainsman Concept Car had chugged and puffed to the crest of the hill that overlooked town, they never looked back. Like a splash of bad cologne, once Kat and Cage left their small bottle, they never smelled up that place again.
They hit the roads. Hard. Ramblin’ this way and ramblin’ that. Once they even tried rambling west to travel east, just like Columbo had done in season three, episode one, “The Funhouse Is Burning.”Out on the road and under the deep state sky, Kat and Cage eventually looked to the heavens for guidance. It was in the sparkling night sky that they found a lone star to chase all the way back home to a place they’d never been before. As John Denver said, “some say they’d found the key to every door.” Not sure about all that, but they did alright. Right now they live on the liquid edge of The Lone Star State of Texas, on more muddy banks - those of the Houston Ship Channel and it's oil Refinapoluza. All those refineries contribute mightily to the petrochemically enhanced air that makes their new home town a real stinker - but for Kat and Cage, Deer Park has always been love at first choke. You see, it's the same town that Willie Nelson lived in when he wrote “Crazy,” some 60 years ago.
What is Our Sound Recipe, you ask? (it's really my mom's recipe. Shhh
One fifth of The Devil’s Own Rock ‘n Roll, with an extra shot of Roll
One heaping pinch of Pop goes the weasel, heavy on the monkey
One cup and a quarter of righteous, tennis shoe sole searching Blues
One stick of melted Country & Western dyn-o-mite, heavy on the Western
One fifth of The Devil’s Own Rock ‘n Roll, with an extra shot of Roll
One peck of Sophomorphic Austin-Psychedelic Rock
A syringe of Grunge
A gallon of The Liquid Melodies of the Rain
Mix in the air for the entire Fall
Bake till you’re done, et voila! The Crowned Heads of Texas.
Members of The Crowned Heads of Texas are the best friends monkey can buy.
We are:
- Kat Holiday, screeching for her supper
- Cage Winslow, hatcher of Himalayan Rooster Eggs©
- Bucky Goldstein, groover of grooves, a maker of moth myths
- Pool Hall Richard, mercilessly good-hearted, brings an Exxon-Valdez sheen
- Sonny Steel, "To B3 or not to B3?" that is the question
- Clard Vanderflup, Holland’s own portable Red Light District
- Bartleby Brown, our Holy Scrivener
- Pierre Pann, French and for right now at least, he’s not toast
Possum Skillz, a Mistake Collector for the State of Alassippi
**Disclaimer: Each note and silence from Ramble Fer Yer Lives is handcrafterd to tickle your auditory ossicle.
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