TITLE: "Sweet Little Hi-Fi"ARTIST: Pussy Galore
ALBUM: Sugarshit Sharp
RELEASE DATE: 1988
A couple of nights back, I was in Union Square Park with my wife and kids, running around this funky Christmas light installation. It sounds hokey, but it was actually pretty fun and impressive, and my little girl absolutely loved it. In any case, while she was giggling her head off and hopping about it in, she narrowly avoided crashing into a little boy who was doing the same thing. That little boy's father, a slim man with striking black hair and a piercing stare, stepped forward and asked his son to apologize to Charlotte (which, I thought, was jolly nice of him, being that no harm was done). I looked up to acknowledge the dude and tell him not to worry about it, and who should it be but Jon Spencer.
Although looking respectably domesticated and a little older, there was no mistaking him. I told him I was a big fan and he smiled. After a moment, he and his son turned to leave, but not before he turned to offer me a "Merry Christmas." That's right, the man who wrote such chestnuts as "Kill Yourself," "Don't Give a Fuck About You" and "Adolescent Wet Dream" wished me a Merry Christmas. My night was made.
On the walk home, I explained to my wife just who Jon Spencer is, noting that while yes -- he fronts the currently somewhat-adrift Blues Explosion (who might've been in a Gap ad at one point, I can't remember and stopped caring some time after 1998's Acme), he was once the louche, foul-mouthed, leather-clad lothario (and Brown University dropout) that fronted the fearsome shlock-punk garbage-can noise ensemble, Pussy Galore. Though originally hailing from Washington D.C., Pussy Galore relocated to NYC in the late-80's and haunted the same squalid rock underground that birthed Sonic Youth, Swans, Rat At Rat R and ultimately my second all-time faves, Cop Shoot Cop (legend has it that Spencer and Tod [A] from C$C once played together in a band called Shithaus and that Cop met their second bassist, ex-Virus/Undead/Blacksnakes bassist, Nasty Jack Natz, sleeping on the floor of Pussy Galore's waterbug-infested rehearsal space in Alphabet City -- a factoid which remains dubious if only because to hear them play, you'd never believe Pussy Galore spent any actual time rehearsing). Pussy Galore were messy, punky, rude, loud and genuinely unlikable much of the time. Pairing the arty dissonance of Sonic Youth with the cartoony irreverence of their idealized Rolling Stones (PG were infamous for their track-by-track cover of the Stones' beloved outlaw opus, Exile on Main Street which is nigh on unlistenable in many parts), Pussy Galore sounded legimately dangerous. There's a famous quote by Lemmy Kilmister about his seminal band, Motorhead, to the effect that if they moved into the house next door to yours, your lawn would die. Working that same analogy, if Pussy Galore moved into the house next door to yours, they'd vomit on your driveway, crap in your garden and rape your dog.
It was all a bit of a pose, of course. Pussy Galore assumed a certain character and played that character to the hilt. To find out that they weren't as slavishly depraved and badassed as they sounded was a bit of a letdown, but everyone has to grow up some time. I first found out about them around 1989, when I was working for a tiny music magazine. A copy of the gloriously titled Dial 'M' For Motherfucker showed up one day and swiftly became an office favorite. Based on that rudely clamorous record, I sought out the band's earlier discs, only to find them ten times as insane-sounding. I used to routinely sneak the hilariously hostile and profane "Spin Out" (from Corpse Love: The First Year) onto mixtapes for friends, incongruously squeezed between comparatively tame, well-crafted compositions by resepctable artists. Their finest moment on record, however, for me remains "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" from their 1988 e.p., Sugarshit Sharp.
Clocking in around three minutes, "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" is a rollicking, barely-on--the-rails runaway train, loosely anchored by that "eternal one riff." With ex-Sonic Youth vet, Bob Bert smackin' the shit out of pots, pans and sheet-metal (a D.I.Y. blend of percussion also utilized by Neubauten, Swans, Cop Shoot Cop, Missing Foundation and later Skeleton Key) and Spencer, Julia Cafritz and Neil Haggerty brutishly mishandling their guitars (Pussy Galore never featured a bass player), "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" is wonderous in its moronic simplicity. The track reaches its rabid, slackjawed zenith at exactly 1:17 into the proceedings when the riff is slightly modified and buffered by a third barking guitar. It cranks, stutters, jerks, staggers sprints, pukes and then all of a sudden, it's over. I can never hear it once, I have to play it three or four times at least.
Jon Spencer went onto record several great records with both the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and his lovely wife's band, Boss Hog. Neil Haggerty went onto form Royal Trux. Bob Bert, I believe, formed a band called Bewitched, but I'm not sure what he's been up to since, nor do I know the current whereabouts or doings of vindictively potty-mouthed Julia Cafritz. The New York City of Pussy Galore's era is long gone. The clubs they played have closed. Most of the bands they played with have broken up. The `zines that wrote about them are out of print. The bars they drank in have shuttered and the record stores that sold their vinyl are all but a memory. But with one spin of "Sweet Little Hi-Fi," the stench of sweaty, sweary rock savagery returns. That stench is the smell of Pussy Galore. Wallow in it.
TRIVIAL FOOTNOTE: I owned the fabled "from the hate fuck capital of the world" t-shirt for a while -- procured from now sadly defunkt Rocks In Your Head in Soho, but I was always too much of a ….well….pussy to wear it, and ended up giving it to my nextdoor neighbor.
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