In an age of widespread depression (or lack thereof!), it’s nice to be entertained, and Austin’s Asylum Street Spankers do just that. This isn’t your glitzy, sound effects/laser show pyrotechnics, this is good old-fashioned entertainment at its best.
Spanks For The Memories, the Spankers’ Watermelon debut, allows Austin outsiders to discover what the Spankers are all about. Their trademark is performing with no electricity, facilitated by the band’s size (10 musicians), 50-year-old song selection, old-timey instrumentation (guitars, kazoos, clarinets, banjos, ukuleles, and the like), and between-song banter. Not surprisingly, producer Mark Rubin (Bad Livers) succeeded in bringing the show’s spirit and humor to disc, both in the recording technique — stick the band in a living room with one mike and go — and in the album’s content. Mysterious John’s impressions introduce songs like the child’s disbelief of a neighbor’s crime in “Lee Harvey Was a Friend Of Mine”. On “Starting to Hate Country”, washboard player Wammo complains that “Cowboy songs take the back seat when they play that ‘achy breaky’ geek/Makes me proud as hell that I’m a freak.”
It’s not all fun and games for the multi-talented Spankers, who are equally at home in blues such as Robert Johnson’s “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” or Ma Rainey’s classic “Shave ‘em Dry”. The ukuleles come in handy for Hawaiian readings of “Tradewinds” and “I’ll See You In My Dreams”. Or how about a lightly swinging version of Les Paul’s “Walkin’ & Whistlin’ Blues” for balance?
Spanks For The Memories also serves as an introduction to the individual band members’ projects. Another version of album closer “Hometown Boy” appears on blues guitarist Guy Forsyth’s Needle Gun, while Olivier Giraud’s interpretation of “Brazil” could easily work with his other band, the jazzy 8 1/2 Souvenirs. “Starting To Hate Country” complements alterna-poet Wammo’s “Children of the Cornnuts” from his solo CD Fat Headed Stranger, on which he claims he was “flannel when flannel wasn’t cool.”
A live tape sold at Spankers shows in Austin is perhaps even better, but Spanks For The Memories is a welcome debut disc from a band whose brilliance sounds accidental. Perhaps such honest devotion to their music is what enables them to have such fun, entertaining both their live and home audiences.
