Buick MacKane – The Pawn Shop Years
The most memorable True Believers performance I ever witnessed was on a hot June night 12 years ago at the fabled Continental Club in Austin, Texas a show that concluded with the Believers, Doctors Mob and Scratch Acid all onstage together in varying states of sobriety slogging through Gary Glitters Rock and Roll Part 2 as the clock struck 3 a.m. and the waitress commandeered the microphone to bellow at everyone, YOU MUST ALL LEAVE! NOW!! Its the moment that always stands out when I think of the Austin music scene, circa 1985.
With principles from two of the above bands, Buick MacKane is essentially that encore as full-time band. And it would be, as Alanis Morissette might put it, iRONic, if Buick MacKane were to become the long-suffering Ale_jandro Escovedos starmaking vehicle. The group started out as a goofy Golden Smog-esque cover band in the late 80s, after the True Believers broke up and frontman Escovedo started jamming with Doctors Mob drummer Glenn Benavides. Buick became a serious undertaking only recently (and may be even more of one now that Escovedos solo career is on hold and between labels).
The Pawn Shop Years is roots-rock in that its Escovedo paying homage to his latent glam-rock influences by melding them with his punkier leanings. The name Buick MacKane is cribbed from a 1972 T. Rex song, the album closes with a properly frenzied cover of the Stooges Loose, and the producer is Tim Kerr from Austin skate-punk legends the Big Boys.
Escovedos partner-in-crime is Benavides, the Austin music scenes equivalent to the late Country Dick Montana. The two have always seemed fated to end up together in a band like Buick Mac_Kane, going back to their former bands roles in mid-80s Austin roots rock. Back then, the True Believers were the older-brother figures everyone in town looked up to, carrying themselves with a dignified coolness that we lesser mortals found almost inspirational.
Doctors Mob, on the other hand, was more like your mischievous cousin the one you had a lot of fun with on vacations and holiday visits, although you were the one who always seemed to wind up in trouble for it. The Mobs T-shirt logo bore the proud slogan, Show up drunk, show up late, or dont show up at all! More often than not, they lived up to it.
With Benavides egging the proceedings on, much of The Pawn Shop Years is predictably stoopid which is to say good stoopid, the knowing kind that comes with a nod and a wink. It takes considerable gall to keep a straight face on something as straight-up nasty as Big Shoe Head, or as in-jokey as the anti-critics diatribe John Conquest, Youve Got Enough Dandruff On Your Collar To Bread A Veal Cutlet. But they pull it off.
While the albums obvious jokes likely will get most of the attention, the surprising element of The Pawn Shop Years is how much of it is just stellar, straight-ahead hard rock that would have fit right in on either True Believers album. The End is dressed up in an AC/DC fuzz-metal arrangement that works so well youd never know that, on Escovedos 1993 solo album Thirteen Years, it was an acoustic song with a violin lead.
Black Shiny Beast, another of Escovedos ruminations on obsessive cravings, is all the more powerful for the rest of the bands metallic-blues wallop. And Falling Down Again has one of those heartstopping hooks Escovedo seems to dash off with such ease.
Pretty darned fine. Now if only they had covered Rock and Roll Part 2 …