Spanic Boys
Torture
Checkered Past Records

by William Michael Smith

With 3 jillion cassette tapes, 2.5 jillion vinyl albums plus a box full of 45 rpm vinyl, like the dinosaur I am I came late to CDs, prolonging the inevitable technology switch for as long as I could. One of the last "store bought" cassette tapes I acquired was the 1993 Rounder Records release of Dream Your Life Away by Milwaukee's Spanic Boys. I seldom ever look at those 3 jillion cassettes today, but every once in a while something comes over me and, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, I feel the need for speed. Out comes Dream Your Life Away and I hit the fast forward button all the way to the final track, "Air Raid." Then I turn the speakers up until there is some doubt about whether the windowpanes can stand the shock waves, whether my wife's Delft Blue plates may vibrate off their wall hangers, or whether the neighbors will call the cops. With the volume knob in the danger zone, I hit play and let some of the most frantic guitar rock ever recorded blow my hair back.

I hadn't forgotten the Spanic Boys (guitar duo Ian Spanic and his father Tom), but they never seem to make the music news and I never thought about them much except when my "Air Raid" jones would strike. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found their latest album, Torture, in my mailbox. Nutshell review?

It #*&%-at-#*%* rocks!

Fender Guitar is not in the habit of passing out endorsements to pretentious noodlers or to mild mannered minimalists. The Spanics rank right up there with those other Fender endorsees, Los Straitjackets, for straight-ahead, crank-it-up-and-pick-it-til-a-speaker-explodes two-guitar rock melt-downs. While there is no one track here with the utter insane intensity of "Air Raid," taken as a whole this is one of the hottest electric guitar records I've heard in years.

For those who aren't familiar with the Spanic Boys, their story is one of those that should serve as an inspiration to every group of musicians who gather in garages and bedrooms and on front porches to play for the love of playing, hoping one day to be good enough to become professionals and maybe earn some wider recognition and fame. The Spanic Boys were essentially a Midwest regional rockabilly revival ensemble when they got the big break. Sinead O'Connor cancelled a Saturday Night Live gig at the last moment, leaving music director G.E. Smith to scramble for a fill-in act. Always a shrewd judge of guitar players, Smith had seen the Spanic Boys and gave them a call. As it turned out, that episode of SNL was the highest rated episode ever aired and resulted in the Spanic Boys winning over legions of fans and developing almost overnight into a nationally recognized rock act.

While it is fair to say that the Spanic Boys form a direct link back to the original guitar rock traditions of acts like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and the white-boy acts like Elvis and the Everly Brothers, the Spanics are guitar students and virtuosos who have taken the art of rock guitar across any number of boundaries and forged a sound that still echoes the greats but is entirely their own. Their sound is forged on the best of rock no matter the era. There are echoes of Brit Invasion rock, of the great psychedelic era guitar giants like Clapton and Jeff Beck, and numerous musical references to The Beatles. But if pressed to pick one influence that typifies the Spanic sound, look no further than the dynamo New Wave British guitar duo of Dave Edmunds and Billy Bremner in their Rockpile phase.

The Spanics have made a habit of taking the best of the old and lovingly modernizing it, making a sound that at once is immediate and "now" but that would seem perfectly in place if it were accidentally slipped into rotation on an oldies rock station. They understand that the key element in good rock is excitement and that a huge dose of rhythm and two smoking guitars are a guaranteed formula for it. Guitar players will swoon over the interplay of these two iron-fingered maestros on tracks like "Gotta Get Back" and the Dave Edmunds-ish rhythm monsters "Little Lies" and "For Once In My Life." The tone is mean, the picking prodigious and monumental.

The Spanics have always been the type of songwriters who play with people's heads, who throw in interesting lyrical twists that range from the hilarious to the bitingly ironic. Sometimes with their boyish, Everly Brothers harmonies, they almost slip a fast one by the listener. On "Little Lies," they don't hold back in telling off a love interest who can't seem to tell it like it is with a deliciously vicious play on words.

Words from you meant to deceive
All fairy tales and make believe
I hate the way you wear your face
Both of them always in place

Guitarists like the Spanics desperately require a rock-solid rhythm section. The band has been through several changes in this area, but the latest team of bassist Melanie X of Chicago's Big Hello, whose rolling style is reminiscent of Mary Huff of Southern Culture on the Skids, and drummer Brad Elvis from the Elvis Brothers, who drives a twin-guitar rock band the way Country Dick Montana drove the Beat Farmers, play with just the kind of inventive, punk-informed big beat that lays down a solid foundation for the sonic bursts from Tom and Ian Twang. (Scratch that. Spanic.)

While they have to get lyrically tough with their love interests occasionally, the Spanics also know a rock record demands some love songs, and they've got some keepers. "When You Fall" kick starts the album with strong playing behind a deceivingly simple lyric.

Over, under, out of touch
Nothing seems to mean that much
Nothing if it doesn't come from you
When you fall I fall too

But while the Spanics are smart lyricists who have a sure feel for the rock ouvre, what a Spanic Boys album is really all about is gargantuan, string-bending, the-run-goes-on-forever guitar solos, two guitarists manically inventing off each other. In "Doing What They Tell You," the Spanics work from a tight, narrow funky main riff until the break frees them to find their own ways to see if the universe really is expanding like the scientists think. Forget the Hubble telescope and the space station; theory proven via two twanging Fenders. And on "The Man Who Hates the World," with Ms. X's nifty bass work in the forefront, the Spanics work nasty solo riffs off a bed of Beatles' Revolver period rock. The lyric is certainly something Mrrs. Lennon or Harrison could have endorsed.

The pain he gets he laughs inside
In hurting you he takes great pride
No joy in life no point in love
A waste of time so give it up
He's the man who hates the world and he hates you

The Jeff Beck/Eric Clapton influences come to the forefront on the blues rocker "Gonna Be Long Gone" with its similarities to early Yardbirds records. But for all the echoes and associations, it is tracks like the twangy "Over You" where we see the Spanics show what years of assimilation and playing can generate in the hands of two serious students of rock and its multiple forms. With the twin twangers battling each other, "Over You" takes roots rock out to fresh places only people like Dave Alvin know how to reach. While the incendiary guitar work is the center of attention, the Spanics also reach their vocal pinnacle on this dark, catchy track that, if it echoes any other music at all, might be said to contain elements of early Los Lobos, a band that also assimilated the elements of rock and forged something unique and lasting.

Colors turn to black and white, music that won't play
Happiness is gone for good and misery's here to stay
Over you
Sullen thoughts and memories is all I have to show
Frozen ground is covering where flowers used to grow
Over you

I supposed having a Fender endorsement is like having a license to just blast and pick and crank up the reverb all you want, and the Spanics do all that and more on every track of Torture except the last, "She's the Kind of Girl." A folky, quiet, sincere love song sans rhythm section, the track gives the Spanics a chance to show their delicate acoustic chops. While the playing is understated and reverent, the Spanic men take the opportunity to craft a wonderful mind-grabbing acoustic lead melody. It almost has a Greek feel to it, like something that should be played on an oudh or a bazouki rather than a guitar. There aren't a lot of "slow" songs that I'll hit replay for, but the guitar melody on this one is so beautiful that only the grossest Philistines will be able to resist the hypnotic powers of this elegant track. It makes for a great finale to an otherwise flaming album.

Some guy once wrote that the Spanic Boys were the "saviors of American rock music." Well, that's a wonderful but essentially unprovable blurb. What is provable by even a cursory listening to Torture is that the Spanic Boys are one fine American rock ensemble. Their ideas and playing are fresh and bursting with energy and vibrancy. They make rock seem important without engaging in the usual posturing and preaching, no small feat in this day when bands take themselves so seriously and go to great lengths to seem profound or mystical or socially conscious. The Spanic Boys "get it" ­ that rock and roll is supposed to be fun, supposed to lift the spirit, supposed to affect the head and feet. What it ain't supposed to be is torture.

*Feeling tortured because the Spanic Boys have decided they don't want to tour anymore? Slap Torture in your CD player and leave your prescription drugs in the medicine chest. Check out all things Spanic at www.spanicboys.com And be sure to check out the photos of the fabulous collection of instruments these guys have at their disposal.


Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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