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By Scott Harrell
For nearly a decade, the Supersuckers have kicked up a ruckus somewhere around punk’s nether regions, winning a legion of fans sick of DIY elitism by virtue of their blatant irreverence toward underground music dogma.
Not to mention the fact that they write great short, fast rock songs.
From the get-go, in this case their 1992 Sub Pop Records debut full-length The Smoke of Hell, the ‘suckers went out of their way to create that most loathed of arena-star accoutrements, an Image. And not just any old Image, but the biggest, most hyperbolic caricature they (or anyone else) could imagine, a Debauched Satanic Hellbilly Rawk Gawd aesthetic that plundered the hair bands’ most outrageous accessories, stripped the corpses, reanimated them, and sent them out for booze and some underage chicks. Other punk bands’ bios told the story of how they met as pre-teens at a Vandals show; early Supersuckers press would have you believe they wandered in, hungry for pillage, from a dust storm out on the Arizona desert. Other punk bands talked about the staleness and irrelevance of other genres; the Supersuckers talked about AC/DC, Motorhead and Merle Haggard. Other punk bands spurned self-indulgence, in the hope that it would get them laid; the Supersuckers took drugs, drank to excess, and got laid. They wore cowboy hats, shades and Foghat jerseys. They polished up their stage poses. They evinced a marked intolerance for the weak, the conformist, and the morally grounded.
And, of course, they wrote some more great short, fast rock songs.
Two more high-octane Sub Pop albums, La Mano Cornuda (‘94) and The Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers (’95), followed. So did critical fringe acclaim, as the quartet’s following, mostly older pundits more than willing to acknowledge the fact that they got as much out of vintage Aerosmith and Johnny Cash as they did out of Agent Orange, grew. Critics hailed the band’s gleefully malevolent anti-anti-star vibe as the latest thing in irony, mostly to impress the scads of comely, tattooed punk chicks who’d taken to wearing cowboy hats to all the shows. Much hype of the soundtrack-appearance-request and small-photo-in-Details-magazine type ensued.
Bassist/singer Eddie Spaghetti, drummer Dancing Eagle, and guitarists Dan Bolton and Ron Heathman couldn’t have given a shit, really. The Supersuckers continued to tour, building up semi-mythic stories at the rate of approximately one unbelievable anecdote for every mile of road covered. They also continued to rattle the punk norm, most notably by collaborating with Willie Nelson on a track for the country legend’s Twisted Willie benefit album, and following up with an appearance at Farm Aid.
In late ’96, amid numerous declarations that they were now the best rock n’ roll band in America, the band did what most of their hardcore fans knew they were going to sooner or later – they recorded an earnest and reverently-executed full-on country album, the brilliant Must’ve Been High. The ‘suckers have always professed a love of primal, original American C&W, and the record arrived at a time when the punk/country mutual-admiration thing, currently bolstered by the success of Mike Ness and Hank III, was just emerging.
“I think maybe it’s just the fact that a lot of bands that make punk rock music have grown up a bit, and are less afraid to show that side of themselves,” says Eddie of the burgeoning love affair. “When punk and country are good, they’re really similar – simple, three-chord oriented things from the heart, and I think that they have a common denominator in their rebellion as well.”
“[Insurgent country] was a necessary thing,” he adds. “Country kind of became like heavy metal, when heavy metal became huge in the late Eighties, bloated, overblown and pompous, and this sort of dirty punk scene came out of that. And with the country music that’s become overblown and pompous now, there’s a real, genuine country scene lurking below the surface.”
While Must’ve Been High was well-received, much of the new press was presenting the ‘suckers in a country-specific context. And new fan/swamp-rock icon Steve Earle contacted the band about doing a project together, an opportunity they weren’t about to pass up.
“These are artists that I always respected and admired, and one of the cool perks of being in a band is that you run into these unique situations that you wouldn’t think possible,” says Eddie of the ‘suckers sessions with Earle and Nelson.
“It’s pretty much what a band like us gets. We don’t get to hang platinum records on the wall, or line our garages with cars - in fact we don’t even have garages to line. But we get to have these really cool moments in time, and that’s pretty much what we get as a little band.”
The resulting EP featured songs penned by both parties, and, even with the inclusion of versions of their best-known live staple ‘Creepy Jackalope Eye’, may have furthered the notion that the ‘suckers were moving away from the fast, fun and evil. But the foursome weren’t worried about misrepresenting themselves to potential new fans – the fourth album of their trademark balls-out tuneage was as good as in the can, and they anticipated an expeditious release from their new label, Interscope, to capitalize on steadily increasing sales of Sacrilicious and Must’ve Been High.
“I thought there would be six months [between them] at the most,” Eddie affirms. “We didn’t want to confuse people THAT much about what kind of band we are,” he laughs.
But the band was ceremoniously dropped from Interscope’s roster, delaying their triumphant return to supercharged rock n’ roll form nearly three years as they alternately fine-tuned, rewrote, and shopped the new record around. In the interim, Sub Pop released an anthology of favorite tracks and obscure gems titled How The Supersuckers Became The Greatest Rock N’ Roll Band In The World (“a sort of ‘greats and gravy’ compromise,” Eddie deadpans), holding fans over, while ‘suckers-influenced outfits like The Hellacopters and Nashville Pussy began to make a racket worldwide.
When The Evil Powers of Rock N’ Roll was finally unleashed on a pop-softened world last year, all doubts were crushed squarely beneath the band’s collective bootheel. The disc picks up right where Sacrilicious left off – if anything, the ‘suckers’ forays into twangdom heightened their enthusiasm for the loud and crass, and Evil Powers sports some of the smartest dumb songs ever committed to tape.
But did the world’s most devil-may-care rock band ever wonder if the world would care when they got back?
“Yeah, definitely, I thought people would forget about us as a rock n’ roll band,” Eddie admits with a chuckle.
“That was a big concern. It was a real relief to see people respond so well to the new record.”
In the end, the Supersuckers’ crazed packaging, clever as it is, isn’t the reason why they matter. Sure, The Evil Powers of Rock N’ Roll is offensive, rank and excessive. Everybody knew it would be. But perhaps the best and most important thing about it is, when peeled to its core (and it doesn’t need much peeling), it’s one of contemporary music’s rarest finds: a great rock n’ roll album from beginning to end.
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