Licorice Pizza: Positively Sick on 4th St.

11/30/2007

Positively Sick on 4th St.

I felt like coming out of left field with something for tonight’s post. And – based on the scarcity of Google results for this band – I may have succeeded.

The Humpers hail from Snoop Dogg’s hometown of Long Beach, Calif., but that’s really the only thing the two have in common. The University of Michigan’s Daily News called The Humpers “five greasy guys rocking the way that punk was meant to,” and said, “This is the kind of music that your parents, actually, most everyone but old-school punks, will hate.”

Scott “Deluxe” Drake and Jeff Fieldhouse, guitarists for the Suicide Kings, formed The Humpers in 1989. Drake eventually gave up the guitar to concentrate on lead vocals. The Humpers achieved early success in Yugoslavia, where in 1990 they released their first LP, My Machine. To the best of my understanding, 1993’s Positively Sick on 4th St. was their first US release.

On the backside of the Positively Sick disk, Martin McMartin of Flipside wrote, “The disk you hold in your creepy little hands can redeem you, babies! The Humpers...wanna make ya puke on all your arena rock excess and jam that fashion statement you’re tryin’ to make right down yer throat. The Humpers are real. Ready to crack you in the skull with a big punk rock and wash you in the blood of rock’n’roll.