From Below Sea Level, California

From the Licorice Pizza files of “maybe you haven’t heard of these guys but you should have” comes a band from the deserts of Southern California.

Throw Rag comes from California’s Salton Sea, a barren, sub-sea level wasteland located more or less south of Los Angeles. Sean Wheeler – aka Capt. Sean Doe – has fronted the band since its formation in 1993. Capt. Sean, Dean McQueen, Franco Fontana, and Chango Von Streicher make up the current incarnation of Throw Rag.

The early versions of the band were compared to the Pogues, playing a kind of Irish folk-punk. This style was evident on their debut disk, 2001’s Tee Tot. It was just after the release of Tee Tot that Throw Rag starting getting national attention, grabbing opening slots for bands such as Green Day. They also got on board the 2002 Warped Tour.

By 2003, Throw Rag had signed with punk label Better Youth Organization and released the far noisier psychobilly-meets-Motörhead album Desert Shores. This is widely considered their break-out album, and got decent MSM reviews: Throw Rag takes the anything-goes attitude of early Damned,” wrote Billboard, “and grafts it to the purposefully sloppy riffs of boozy bar punk to get a record that celebrates punk’s cut-loose mentality that’s frequently lost in the dead-serious world of rock’n’roll rebellion.”

The follow-up to Desert Shores – 2005’s 13 Feet and Rising – continued in the punk-a-billy direction and featured a who’s who of punk legends: The Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris; Jello Biafra; and godfather to them all, Lemmy.

This afternoon’s music is from the 13 Feet and Rising album and happens to be the tune featuring Lemmy: a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.”

Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down (Merle Haggard cover).mp3

Labels: covers, psychobilly, punk

posted by aikin @ 5:05 PM