Hostile & Nasty

Phil Irwin's Web diary is tops: No blog amenities, just raw text delivering flying spittle on life as a wage slave, competitive chess player, and angry brute. Read it and you'll be ready for the Rancid Vat retrospective, The Rest of the World vs. Rancid Vat. A selection of nasty rock 'n' roll, emphasis on the dictionary definition of nasty, it's offensive, unpleasant, and malicious. Decades ago Vat's "The Ballad of Brigham Young" was taboo, asking why Hitler didn't win, rhyming that with "original sin"; if it hadn't been on a record that was hardly ever in stores, arrest warrants would have been sworn out in Germany and Austria. Rancid Vat sound perfect for Frank Zappa's Diskreet label, sitting naturally between homeless bum Wild Man Fischer and Alice Cooper throwing chickens and feather pillows into the audience. Unfortunately, Vat came too late and, by default, settled for silk-screening their LP covers.

photo: Steel Cage Records

Rancid Vat, ready to wrestle

Details

Rancid Vat
The Rest of the World vs. Rancid Vat
Steel Cage

Johnny Casino's Easy Action
We've Forgotten More Than You'll Ever Know
Steel Cage

Related Content

• Dirty Old Town: A Low-Budget Ode to No-Budget NY
  May 25, 2011
• Gay Republicans! WTF Are They Thinking?
  March 22, 2012
• The Top Seven Broadsides Against The PMRC
  May 10, 2012
• "What About the Good Things Hitler Did?" Probably Was A Bad Headline Choice By Rutgers Student Newspaper
  April 9, 2012
• Mike Keneally Band
  January 25, 2012

More About

• Phil Irwin
• Frank Zappa
• Alice Cooper
• Adolf Hitler
• Chess

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: (Sent out every Thursday) Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Starting in Portland and now in Texas, the band also called Philadelphia home, not to mention "Hostile City U.S.A." Hostile maybe, but the irritation there produced a bang-up performance of Black Oak Arkansas's "Hot & Nasty" and another about beatings, "Loser Leave Town." Rancid Vat write from a physical perspective, the administration of sleeper holds and forearm smashes. So the spirits of blood-and-sweat-stained canvas wrestling mat and salt for your eyes are constants, courtesy of titling and a resurrection of a tune by heel-playing grappler Beauregard.

Much less life-as-struggle is We've Forgotten More Than You'll Ever Knowby Johnny Casino's Easy Action, a band featuring an ex-member of Rancid Vat. A squad of tattoo artists does old-timey grease chain rave-ups, with rhythm guitar more gutsy than the standard, and hooks furnished by enthusiastic backing vocals. "Roy the Boy" does a boogie twist and the Pretty Things' "Midnight to Six Man" is excellent. Steel Cage publishes at least a couple records a year like this and damned if they go anywhere but into collections of the hygiene challenged, since soon-to-be career women only loosen up enough to enjoy this when wrecked and downstanding. Johnny Casino needs to get on bills with sharp-lookers like the Sirens or play upper-middle-class booze orgies in really white locales like Santa Barbara and State College. Half-measures in dives lead only to burnout.