More than 20 years after they broke up, saying "He was in that group 'Shockabilly'" can still trigger some people who don't otherwise know Eugene Chadbourne. The band were underground legends, mixing country and psychedelia with the irreverence of the post-punk years in a wave that included Camper Van Beethoven and Violent Femmes (bands Chadbourne would also work with in different configurations over the years).
They were a great, even seminal, band, but their catalog has been a mess since they broke up in 1985. Originally released on bassist Kramer's Shimmy-Disc label, their records have been released by a number of labels, generally to disappear before long. When the Knitting Factory acquired Shimmy Disc, there were plans to release a Shockabilly box set; reportedly it got as far as metal canisters being produced for packaging before the project was dropped.
After numerous squabbles, Chadbourne has gotten rights back to the records, as well as a backlog of live recordings made by drummer David Licht, and is now setting about making them available on his (literally) in-house CD-R label. Kicking it off is a disc compiling two live shows released for the first time. The first half of The Dawn of Shockabilly is from a basement show in 1982. Many of the songs are familiar from other Shockabilly releases ("Heart Full of Soul," "Good Girl Gonna Go Bad," "Psychotic Reaction"), but it's among the cleanest and most spirited playing they have on record. The 4-track recording before a small audience sounds remarkably good considering what one might assume about the conditions under which it was made.
The second half of the disc is from a Halloween show in Greensboro, North Carolina (where Chadbourne now lives) the same year, with Shep the Hep added on bass. This is more familiar Shockabilly: a bit noisier, a bit more manic, and a bit more uneven, which is to say it's probably the better set of the two (although not the better recording). When they were at their best, there was something that seemed dangerous about the group - as if they couldn't really keep it up. A cover of The Doors' "People Are Strange" zigzags through Chadbourne's Roger-Miller-on-helium vocals into a jazz guitar number and then is interrupted by an ugly keyboard noise that the other instruments follow. Other classic Shockabilly covers ("Take This Job and Shove It," "I'm the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised," "Purple Haze") also surface, as well as a sorta trippy-Dead-Kennedy version of Chadbourne's "City of Corruption," as well as an audience costume contest. An excellent prologue to what with luck will be the final and complete telling of the strange saga of Shockabilly.
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