Send CDs, vinyl, cassettes, demos and 8-tracks to Brett Callwood, Metro Times, 1200 Woodward Heights, Ferndale MI 48220. Email MP3s and streaming links to [email protected].
We literally received nothing new in the mail this week, nothing at all besides some holiday music that we’re saving for a bigger feature, and a CD from a national opera group called Forte. Slim pickings.
However, Rick Mills of the 3-D Invisibles/Volcanos/Seatbelts, etc sent us B-Movie Brain (Neurotic Bop), a compilation from ’93 featuring those 3-D Invisibles and a bunch of spin-off bands. Yes, the album is 20 years old but, in the absence of new stuff, this record is well worth a revisit. The fun is in listening to the 3-D’s, and monsterbilly tracks like “Skeletons in Your Closet,” and hearing the different directions Mills and his buddies waned to veer off in with outfits like the Zombie Surfers, a horror-themed surf rock band with brass. “Surfin’ Zombie” is particularly awesome, as it contains the line, “It ain’t much fun being dead, there’s not that much to do.”
Each band gets it’s own trailer matching the theme, so the Kaos Killers get the old school mobster treatment before diving into “Get Smart” and “The Man From CONTROL” and the black and white gangster feel is perfected.
Screamin Savage and the Cavemen has a wild early ’60s feel and a primal cavemen theme. Think Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (appropriately enough) singing “Surfin’ Bird.” Finally, the Hellbenders have a Spaghetti Western thing going on, a gloriously dusty cowboy twang. There’s a nostalgia-based connection between all of these bands. One band could have put out all of this material, but the musicians have so much fun playing with the themes and dressing up that they would felt it was a wasted opportunity. Regardless, go back and listen to this CD.
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