Dirt Track Date (1995)

This creased my attention about the time I was publishing a fanzine, came through the mails. I warmed to it a lot, having no clue what it was beyond the self-evident razor-sharp unit on display with full command of Southern boogaloo, from every pore. Digging around on the Internet for a little more information about Southern Culture on the Skids and Dirt Track Date, it appears it's the fifth of some dozen or more albums, including live sets, a covers album, so on so forth, and generally considered one of the best. So it appears at least I was infatuated with the right one (or that somebody sent me the right one) of a big bunch of choices, 1986-present: Southern-fried varieties of rockabilly, boogie woogie, and all the usual blues variations, done up to a tee with more or less straight faces, at least the music. This is a very fine band. The music is down and dirty and persistently insinuating, raw and rocking and a pleasure loud, all the things we know to say about the irresistible albums, and this is one of those for me. Overlaid on top of the grooves is a saucy wide-ranging psychotronic array of gestures, ridiculous science fiction and monster movies, Ed Roth hot rods, trailer culture, the usual freedoms of a certain vein of boozy devil-may-care. At that point, the jokes get nearly as good as the sizzling music, as indicated by some of the choice titles: "Skullbucket" (that's for an instrumental), "White Trash," "Fried Chicken and Gasoline," "8 Piece Box." But note that the jokes would not be so good if the music were not so unspeakably fine. That's where it all starts here, moving with spirit and attitude from groove to groove, approximately the Cramps times the B-52's (but these things are always so hard to calibrate with any accuracy, my appreciation for the Blasters is reflected in this mess too), 14 gem tracks in a row, each and every one dead on the money hot and full of itself and ready to go again. And the band evidently looked and saw all was so good they closed the album on the title song, featuring five whole minutes of pure dirt track din ("demolition derby figure eight"), engines droning away in and out of range, tires squealing, and not a whisper of music either. That takes a little getting used to, until you know that's the way they end the album. It is otherwise all pure pleasure.