Queue it up with me. Here’s the song. Seth Lorinczi brought it up with the most incredible performance story in our Just Press Record and it had been a minute since I played this one start to back.
Which, here’s my live notes as it plays in the background, hence my encouraging of you to queue it up in another tab and press play (I’m serious, I don’t know if this works if you don’t do it that way?):
“Slap your mammy” is so Devo, right? The slash title - yeah, ok, the slap back delay on the bridge pickup with the palm mute sneaking in underneath it.
I love the pace it starts at. How it’s lurching forward and the drums want to hold it back. The fills rush, but then it’s a rhythm section fight.
Plus the looped build. The song wants to break out every four bars but it’s in such a box. It’s a minute in when the piano and keyboard pushes it to a new place. A weird place, right?
They’re still rushing. Now the drums are starting to get dragged up. It’s like the democratic sway of the band has convinced them they have to come along. Maybe it’s the higher and higher registers the keyboard part wants to go to. It’s brilliant songwriting for how much stays anxiously static.
Once we get into the pulsed piano riff - the equivalent of the palm muted guitar, ahem - and the one-ee-and-uhh-two-ee-and-uhh drive, it’s like you know the words are about to start.
“Something ‘bout the way you taste / makes me wanna clear my throat.”
They’re a punk band. Yeah, artsy and experimental and all that, but Devo was punk AF.
Notice how you go back to the beginning vibe again? Not just sans-keys, but also because it’s sans keys it’s their way of making room for the vocal to almost, not hardcore but super art-core style shout over the top. I love self-actualized production tricks like this. I wonder who they were copying. Probably a 60s band. But it’s so ‘77. Maybe ‘78 on the record version here, according to YouTube. Sounds like ‘77 at CBGBs in so many ways, especially - there’s the chorus!
“I’ve got a gut FEEElin”
The emphasis. The snare now picking up the quarter note pulse to open the door for the keys to come back in. two and a half minutes before that chorus, eh? Ballsy in the best ways. And now we’re screaming forward with the swirly keyboard sound in the background.
By 3:20 or so we are so wild. That guitar… solo? The noise rock one. Sonic Youth wished it was that cool. Pavement got close by not trying so hard for it. J Mascis would be sludging us in style soon enough. But right here, it’s magic.
“Whoo - hoo - hoo - hoo.”
What a song. Can’t believe Seth saw them do this live by accident. You seriously have to play him telling that story, you can feel what a life altering and confirming moment it was for him. All I can do is dream (and watch more YouTube videos of them doing it live):
