Urge Overlooked
Published on January 30th, 2008 in: Issues, Music, Retrovirus, We Miss The Nineties |First, they recorded Saturation, a perfect, major-label, glam rockin’ powerpop record in every way. The absurdist sense of pop-culture humor remained, but took a back seat to the crunchy gtrs, sashaying tuneage, and loud, loud mix. It wins my vote for Thee Goddamn Absolute Pinnacle of Alt. Nation Rockin’ CD of the 90s. Hands down.
I was lucky enough to see UO at The Roxy on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Before the show, we spotted this short & slight pasty-faced guy outside, clad in full-body white spandex, looking for all the world like freaking RICK DERRINGER circa All American Boy. Ha! It was Eddie “King” Roeser! Eddie ran up to the front entrance, out of breath; he was obviously a bit late for his important date. He spent the next ten minutes pleading nicely with the door guy: “Sir, can you let me in please? I’m with the band. Really. No, really.” It was great—somebody had to come vouch for him. Perfect.
What did it all earn them? One great but minor hit (“Sister Havana”), the derisive tag of bubblegum grunge (WTF?), and some particularly nasty drug habits. In return, they forfeited all their underground cred (die indie wusses!) and inadvertently stoked the fires of the hype-backlash machine. Not long after, there was that Quentin Tarantino flick that we all saw and are now ashamed about once liking. The use of their cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” made them money, but also served to twist the UO myth & accompanying expectations up that much higher. The net result was that regular folk—that’s you, buddy—started surfing right over their music & songs, since all anybody bothered noticing were those glistening, swingin’ medallions the boys’d wear.
A shame, really.
I saw ’em again in Austin, Texas a bit later—this time, sans all the record label execs and corporate pressure that had warped the vibe at their LA gig. In Austin they could relax, stretch it out, smiiiiiiiiiiiile. . . they played for over two hours to a dancing sea of mostly teenagers who knew all the words to every song. I laughed out loud with them—outta sheer, disbelievin’ wonder!—for the entire show. I left thinking: they’re really gonna do it. Transcend their double-knit slacks and become eternal gods of rock thunder. “Rock & Roll Hoochie Koo” all over again!
Urge Overkill: Now
But their last album, the double-LP Exit the Dragon, contains nary a chuckle. The sound is more muted, the lyrics introspective, the glitter tossed in the waste bin. It’s actually grimly serious, and hardly anyone bought it since it was and always will be, well, a bummer. But a RIGHTEOUS bummer, that. The band and songs hit me like THE SAINTS (late 70s version) grinding through the darker NEIL YOUNG song catalogue. It’s one I’d listen to damn near daily for years after, as those URGE OVERKILL medallions shattered into a thousand tiny shards, and the music-buying hordes stomped ’em into dust with a disquieting glee.
A damn, filthy shame. Because while URGE OVERKILL were funny—they were entertainers, for Christ’s sake!—on some level, they were always very serious about their thing. That musicality made their records worth returning to, again and again. On their final album, it’s all that was left, standing tall and proud as anything great ever recorded in the name of rock and roll. You don’t know what you missed, you really don’t. . .
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8 Responses to “Urge Overlooked”
February 13th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
[…] next couple weeks. So to keep ya’ll entertained in the meantime, I’ll direct you toward a fanboy piece about URGE OVERKILL by Yours Truly, recently published over at Popshifter mag. Never will I tire of UO’s […]
August 10th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Finally read this fanboy piece, very nice. Thank you for your testimony. You got a witness.
My own exposure to UO began in 1990/1?, in Vancouver at the Cruel Elephant on Granville. My former musical partner and myself were busking 1970s/80s songs on the streets in those days (8675309, Get Down Tonite, etc), doning matching yellow suit jackets, and brought our show to the Cruel Elephant doors, where my partner met and chatted with Blackie, who was watching our set. Then we caught the show inside (or maybe it was the other way around? can’t remember). The all-girl Kreviss, the female answer to Vancouver’s Superconducter, opened up, their debut show. Then UO took the stage, back when they played as a three-piece with Nash on bass. The “Brother Louie” cover was definitely a highlight, and indeed, UO occupied a strange point of intersection (musically) between Stories and Hot Chocolate, without the business panache/good sense to distance themselves from the aesthetic and industry of the indie punk world. In a way, UO exposed the contradiction at the heart of indie rock, the ‘I don’t wanna be famous’ line propogated by bands-of-the-day doing their utmost to get their faces out there with just that message. UO just called their bluff, cutting to the vacuous heart of that enterprise with their own nod to vacuity: “We wanna be famous, we ARE famous, dammit”, and they paid the price for their audacity/honesty.
No saints, to be sure. They lost virtually all their Vancouver cred overnight when stories that their sold out appearance at the Town Pump on the Saturation tour followed an ugly incident backstage between Blackie and the Pump’s house cook earlier in the day, when the cook refused, apparently, to prepare Blackie a sandwich. Blackie reportedly hissed, “Fuck you, chink.” If true, the incident not only offended humanity, but all us working cooks out there trying to get our own Town Pump shows.
The taint of bad vibes continued, right up to and through the Exit the Dragon denouement. But don’t forget the STULL ep,. perched between Supersonic and Saturation, a magnificent blend of almost-perfect (and therefore all the moreso) pop and swagger, on a budget. Conceived out of their tour with Nirvana, another important player of the time.
In sum, UO was not so much oppressed by the indie-alt milieu as spawned, nurtured, and most especially despised by its host/parasite body. Hard to make a precise distinction. Remember, Eddie’s uncle was in Blue Oyster Cult…
Truth is, UO was so interesting precisely because they were weaving alterna-pop from this very jagged context. You can hear the jaggedness intersecting into their songs at all points (and thakfully they never ironed them out, as they might have with the Sony development deal following Exit, with only Nash left in the band). Like Kurt Cobain vs. Axl Rose at the MTV Music Awards, UO had a limited artistic shelf life, locked into the juggernaut of reactionary punk/infectious pop, like the snake oroborus digesting its own tail. They would have to run out of steam, or in this case, off the tracks.
As a reunited unit, I saw them (again, in Vancouver) about three/four(?) years ago, with a nice sampling of Exit tracks in the mix, but no Stories/Hot Choc. cover in the mix. Too painful to relive, no doubt, the promise locked in the grooves of that high water moment all those moons ago.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Alabaster Tile: right on, sir. What began on Touch & Go as particularly sly commentary on the indie/underground scene resonated differently once that scene broke alt.nationwide. Sure UO claimed “we’ve never recorded in the big leagues before” but that was on a Geffen Records release! The Kurt/Axl incident you make mention of is particularly relevant; like UO, it could only have occurred in that weird early 90’s poprock/alternative intersection, which a year or two later wouldn’t sustain such contradictions. Thanks for your comments – yours have damn near beaten my original post!
August 17th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
This piece has started me on a ‘rediscover UO’ kick, and in the course of this, I realize a burned brain cells moment: not Brother Louie (or Stories), but Emmaline, the Hot Chocolate cover in question. So this weakens somewhat the argument of a Stories-UO connection!
Glad to have this conversation, Mrow. I would love to see a book written on the early 1990s, a time for me that involved not only UO, but another significant Chicago tragedy-in-the-[un]making, Enuff Z’Nuff.
Bit that’s a whole other post…
August 18th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Glad that I ain’t the only one still rediscovering little nuggets of UO beauty on a regular basis. There’s alot a smart guys out there who could probably write a good book about that period: Johan Kugelberg, Ray Farrell, hell even Steve Albini. One oughta appear eventually.
Ever hear Eddie’s post-UO band, ELECTRIC AIRLINES? They recorded a great full-length album that’s remained unreleased to this day – I was able to scam mp3s of it someplace a few years back. It’s as heartfelt and rockin’ as Eddie’s tracks on UO’s Geffen releases (though if your looking for camp, Nash and his aura are no where to be found . . . ).
August 18th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I never heard this stuff of Eddie’s, but I would love to. I am more familiar with Nash’s solo outings, having caught the end of him opening for Cheap Trick about seven years ago (and unfortunately missed his cover of the Raspberries’ “Tonight”, but did see a very somber Robin Zander join him for a set/tour closing duet rendition of “Girl…”). I also remember that around 1996 Nash was in a supergroup of sorts with the singer from Material Issue and others (seven or eight), and the tour was cancelled after the suicide of said MI leader (whose name isn’t coming to me right now).
August 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I think I would’ve had a hard time figuring out just who was Zander, and who was Nash . . . all that stringy blonde hair, they might as well be siblings.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:52 am
Haha, good point. However, I can tell you that Nash is A LOT taller than Zander. And he looks like Christopher Walken. Just sayin’.
LLM
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