The Hangmen

"Lost Rocks"

By Geordie Pleathur
(SugarBuzz Nation)

SugarBuzz Magazine

Wow, man. This disc is so hardcore. The Hangmen are one of the most under-rated groups, ever. This long over-due retrospective is a phenomenal tribute to a sensational band. Whoever put it together ought to think of giving the Coma-Tones, Tex and The Horse Heads, the Sea Hags, Beasts Of Bourbon, and the Nymphs a similar treatment. Somebody went out of their way to really create an extraordinary package, here. The celebrity endorsements are incredible. Keith Morris, Mike Ness, Chris D., Eddie Spaghetti, and Rob Younger all take their leather newsboy caps, or Sinatra fedoras off, and proudly, knock back a quadruple shot of Jameson's Irish Whiskey, in honor of Bryan Small, and company. Sami Yaffa has jammed with them. I've covered them. The Hangmen were always total fuckin' badasses, what every other streetwise glam/trash/blues-punk band PRETENDS to be. This C.D. smokes almost everything else you got in that stack of scratchy discs, piled up by your computer. I mean, it's fookin' way, way meaner than any of that Black Crowes shit, and they stayed "punk" way longer than those rich cartoon characters from Guns N Roses, or Motley Crue. If you loathed the wanking, boring, corporate rock of Velvet Revolver, and are beyond baffled by Axl's bizarre behaviors and recent Kid Rock impersonations...If you loved Guns N Roses "Appetite For Destruction", but had little, or no use for 'em, once Izzy, and Adler left the band, and they got their money, and started boring everyone with bloated piano ballads about lawsuits, and super-models, and divorces, and endless shredder-overdubbing, well, the Hangmen never lost their edge, they still got the street in all their sounds. Bryan Small walks it like Johnny Cash. He ought to be having his weary songs crossing-over to country-radio markets.

"I Wanna Be Loved" always reminds me of Aussie punks, like the Divinyls, and Rose Tattoo. The Hangmen are way closer, in spirit, to junky stars like the Hollywood Joneses, Lords Of The New Church, Pillbox, Hanoi Rocks, Lazy Cowgirls, and the Gun Club, than any of those manipulative, commercial metal merchants, and corporate-rock millionaire headband monkeys. I see the Hangmen as the American equivalent to Smack. Or the Crybabys. My dearly-departed old friend, Amy Wichmann, from Miniskirt Mob, used to go out with one of 'em, when I still lived in a tiny box apartment, on Cherokee and Sunset. I don't really want to "dis" vintage Faster Pussycat, here, or alienate any real Faster Pussycat fans, but for me, the Hangmen really personify a true moment, and mean something more, than mookish, tattoo machismo, redundant AC/DC rehashing, or dyeing one's hair.

The Hangmen are about surviving against all odds, holding on, in spite of having the blues, no money, all your filthy laundry in an old suitcase, and nobody left to take your collect calls. I like a couple of old Junkyard songs, but the Hangmen are consistently, still delivering, way-above-average songs, that I can completely identify with, twenty-odd years after first falling in love with "Rotten Sunday". Bryan Small's minimalist lyrics just NAIL autobiographical details in a way that gets you thinkin' about your own sad life, old pals, dead loves, broken dreams, bum trips, doomed amigos, and bullshit bars you won't go back to, anymore. Hangmen make you want to buy the scary neighborhood sociopath, with the face tattoos, an airplane bottle of Captain Morgan's. You dig? They're the real deal. If you like your country music, or rock'n'roll, raunchy, and real, and resent all the jocks, soccer kids, middle-class straights, and richboy pretenders who get to dominate our music underground, in recent years, with mere money, and phony baloney posturing, with nothing to say, turn up "Blood Red" by the Hangmen, and relate.

Bryan Small's sleazy voice is full of soul--snotty, rude, and unapologetic, and utterly oblivious to the nancyboy naysayers who'd try to dismiss his proud, gutsy music with the usual Lord Fauntleroy Music School whining about how he "can't sing". He CAN sing. It's just pure raunch. Dumb suburbanite TV watchers have been trained to listen for "American Idol/Glee" types to hit the Broadway note, like it's "Fame", so they won't get it, see, this shit's got NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT PHONINESS. This is motherfuckin' rock'n'roll, strictly for my rock'n'roll motherfuckers. I know some MILF stunners, from the wrong side of the double wide, who are totally charmed and seduced by the pornographic cat-call of "Bent". This band shows all those Yee-Haw Alternative-Country bands how it's done. It just slow-burns, like a Pall Mall, from start to finish, like classic George Jones, Hank The Third, Beasts Of Bourbon, or Jason And The Scorchers. The vivid combination of Bryan's ghetto-poetry, and wounded cat wailing, with Jimmy James (from the Coma-Tones and Rock City Angels) exceptional, white-hot guitar playing, make for some of the best rock'n'roll anybody's made since all the seventies punks started dropping dead, back in the grunge years. This music is ALIVE. "Loners and junkies and liquor stores..." is a graphic snap-shot of our grim existence, lookin' out 'this here grimy window, somehow, still duct taped together, like my decades-old, leopard skin Creeper, down in "Desperation Town". "Can't Stop That Train" is a tender eulogy, reminiscent of some of Stiv Bator's most sensitive ballads. Infused with so much feeling. Other songs got that brave Joey Ramone feeling to 'em...Just heroic, heartfelt, punk rock for the people who can't escape the heartbreak, and the people who still remember having feelings. You know---like that stuff Iggy recorded on weekend passes from the looney-bin. Was it Coltrane who said, "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn..." ?? THE HANGMEN catalog is available on the planet Earth's coolest remaining indie-label, Acetate, and this killer compilation is available through a licensing agreement with the Finnish label, Hype Records. If you're a full-time rock'n'roll motherfucker, you won't need me to tell ya 'bout the Hangmen. (-Geordie)

www.thehangmen.net

www.myspace.com/theehangmen

www.acetate.com

www.hypeproductions.fi

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