New Wave for the New Week #162

North London's Neo-Neon-Rockabilly guys, The Polecats, started out thumping a stand-up bass and slinging their geetars as a trio (Tim Polecat, Boz Boorer, and Phil Bloomberg) joined by a succession of drummers, playing under the name The Cult Heroes around 1977 or so.  With Punk Rock being the cultural kick in the UK at the time, they soon discovered difficulty getting booked on Rockabilly shows:  their name sounded more like one of those upstart punk bands.  Early drummer Chris Hawkes suggested the name change before departing, and by the time Mercury Records scooped them up in 1980, they were forever more The Polecats.

Combining straightforward Rockabilly with a healthy dose of '70s Glam (Bolan's "Jeepster" and Bowie's "John I'm Only Dancing" were among their choices for cover songs and would provide them two minor hits in their home country), and wrapping the whole package up in early 1980s New Wave style, The Polecats became a popular live band.  Their 1981 debut album, Polecats Are Go!, was met with positive response back home.  With The Stray Cats starting to find radio success here in the States and spearheading a minor Rockabilly revival  (see The Rockats, Robert Gordon, etc.), it's no surprise that The Polecats' record proved to be a decent seller here as an import-only LP.  It should have been a natural for Mercury's American arm to jump on the fad and issue Polecats Are Go! domestically.

In typical American big-label fashion, they screwed up.  They waited a year and a half, and finally issued a seven-song EP, containing a few tracks from the LP and a few single sides. Make A Circuit With Me did, however, include its mighty title track, a killer rave-up that saw minor airplay on MTV, and remains The Polecats' calling-card single to this day.

The inexplicable lack of support from their record label left the band at a crossroads; the gap was filled with the release of Cult Heroes, a collection of early recordings, some of which were vintage cuts from when they used that name.  But most of these were also simply early versions of songs that had appeared on Polecats Are Go! in a more polished form.  A short live record, Live And Rockin', also appeared and offered some new material, but the time to strike had passed.

The Polecats soldiered on, however, maintaining a presence on the underground Rockabilly circuit and, in 1999, signed with a Japanese label to release an all-new collection, Polecats Won't Die! By now they had dropped much of the Glam edges and New Wave affectations and focused more a traditional, driving Rockabilly sound, a decision that served them well.

In the years since, a handful of "Best Of" compilations have surfaced, all offering different permutations of, essentially, the contents of Polecats Are Go! along with assorted live tracks and studio throwaways.  Any of them are fine, but your best bet is to find the CD reissue of the first album.

This week's NW4NW entry offers two clips from The Polecats.  First, of course, their classic, "Make A Circuit With Me," followed by a clip of their take on Bowie's "John I'm Only Dancing."  Enjoy!

New Wave for the New Week #63

The Rockats via last.fm

I recently picked up a copy Robert Gordon & Link Wray's 1978 album Fresh Fish Special. After falling out of CBGB's mainstays The Tuff Darts, Gordon hooked up with the legendary Wray to do two albums of straightforward by-the-numbers Rockabilly. Special was the second of the two, and is highly recommended.

Listening to that record inspired me to pull out some of the other stuff in my collection that fell under what would come to be known as the Neo-Rockabilly sound. You had The Cramps turning up the crazy and turning the genre into Psychobilly, you had The Blasters and Roy Loney & The Phantom Movers and Tex Rubinowitz putting out records that would have you believe 1960s psychedelia and 1970s disco had never happened, and you had the highly stylized New Wave Rockabilly "cats" (The Stray Cats, The Polecats, The Bopcats) cross-breeding '50s sounds and '80s visuals. And then you had this week's NW4NW featured band, The Rockats, who may have been the unheralded best of the bunch.

They started out as Levi & The Rockats, with frontman Levi Dexter and bassist Smutty Smiff as the heart and soul of the band. Unapologetically worshiping at the shrines of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, Levi & The Rockats found a surprisingly sympathetic audience in the late-'70s UK Punk scene. Playing a mixture of obscure covers and originals so faithful as to be indistinguishable from the vintage material, and doing so with the high energy buzzsaw sonic attack and callous sneer of the punks around them, the band soon had supporters like Johnny Thunders and Debbie Harry singing their praises. They came to America in 1979 and played shows with The Cramps. They made TV appearances on The Midnight Special and The Merv Griffin Show, even though they not only had no record yet to promote, but they had yet to even be signed by a label. They bopped and honky-tonked and pompadoured their way across the States, and on the night of their last show of the year on December 16th, from the stage of LA's Whisky-A-Go-Go, Levi Dexter announced the band was done. The only vinyl record of the Levi & The Rockats days was At The Louisianna Hayride, a live recording released two years later.

Dexter went off to to form Levi Dexter & The Ripchords, and later LEVI. Smutty Smiff and the rest of The Rockats, however, didn't actually want to break up the band. Guitarist Dibbs Preston took over vocals, and a new guitarist, Tim Scott, joined the band briefly. Scott would go on to have a minor solo hit, "Swear," (later covered by - of all people - Sheena Easton!) and fill in for an injured Charlotte Caffey on one of The Go-Go's final tours - making him the only male Go-Go ever (trivia buffs take note). Scott's stay in The Rockats lasted only through their debut album, Live At The Ritz (1981).

In 1983, The Rockats would have their closest thing to a hit record, the awesome title track to the Make That Move ep. "Make That Move" was the culmination of everything the Neo-Rockabilly scene of the time wanted to be. Simultaneously true to the genre's roots and modern enough for MTV to put the video into rotation, decked out in Brylcreem and twangy guitars and Jerry Lee Lewis piano pounding, "Make That Move" caught everyone's attention for a moment.

It would turn out to be The Rockats' swansong. It's a shame there wasn't more recorded of their six-year journey from the Levi & The Rockats days to "Make That Move," but they always had been a band more focused on live performance. (That two of their three slabs of vinyl were live recordings should not go unnoticed.) Preston continues to lead revived versions of the band on occasional reunion tours, although he is the only original member, and occasional releases appear under The Rockats' name, but the spark of the original band is gone. Happily, the clip for "Make That Move" survives, and is presented here as this week's NW4NW entry. Enjoy!