The usual mode of operation here in the Pierce Memorial Archives
\nis I get a disc in the mail from a label, and I finally get to it
\nafter a few weeks (thanks to the growing pile of discs I have to
\nreview and the disgusting fact I have only 24 hours in a day to
\nbalance work on two sites, a full-time job and a family).<\/p>\n
One disc that I was planning on getting to was
\nNoise Monkeys<\/i>, the second release from Cub Koda & The
\nPoints, and their first release in 20 years. Then, I got an e-mail
\nfrom my friend at J-Bird, letting me know that Michael “Cub” Koda
\nhad passed away on July 1 at the age of 51.<\/p>\n
I blew it. I blew the chance to write a review without such a
\nsword of Damocles hanging over my head. I blew the chance to have
\nKoda read a review of his work while he was still alive — and my
\nchance to tell him how impressive and irreverently funny the disc
\ncould be at times.<\/p>\n
You, the gentle reader, might think I’m invocating the old Irish
\nproverb of never speaking ill of the dead, but I’m here to tell you
\nthis just isn’t the case. Koda — who had earned immortality in the
\nworld of rock as the leader of Brownsville Station and the author
\nof “Smokin’ In The Boys’ Room” — truly recorded an album that was
\nadmittedly a little rough around the edges, but is a more than
\nfitting final statement from Koda.<\/p>\n
The first thing you have to do is to take the “formatted rock”
\nportion of your brain and leave it at the coat check. Then, slip
\nthe disc in the machine and push “play”. Within seconds, you’ll
\nunderstand why Coda is considered one of rock’s clown princes.
\nRelying on a mixture of off-beat humor you’d find on records in
\njukeboxes at truck stops and the three-chord purity of early rock,
\nthe band — vocalist\/guitarist Coda, guitarist\/vocalist Joey
\nGaydos, bassist\/vocalist Petey Bankert and drummer Cool Fred
\nSchmidt — plow through 10 studio tracks for the sheer joy of the
\nmusic.<\/p>\n
And you can’t help but share in the joy of some of these songs.
\nTracks like “Fast Food – Slow Death,” “Next Time” (written by
\n“Louie Louie” legend Richard Berry) and “Spit It On The Floor,”
\nNoise Monkeys<\/i> blares through the speakers like Todd
\nRundgren, only without the studio shine. It’s kind of like
\nlistening to the musical equivalent of a car race.<\/p>\n
This isn’t to say that everything works on
\nNoise Monkeys<\/i>. Tracks like “Yommo Yommo… Yow!” and “The
\nFang” just fail to develop into anything on the positive side of
\nmediocre, while the two live tracks at the end don’t add anything
\nsignificant to the picture. I almost would have preferred to have
\nheard a few more studio numbers from the one-day marathon
\nsession.<\/p>\n
Still, tracks like “He Couldn’t Say No,” “Look At That White
\nGirl Dance” and “Pusherman Of Love” revel in the pure joy of music
\n— something that I haven’t heard since the days when Country Dick
\nMontana took the mike at Beat Farmers shows. (Cripes, there’s
\nanother irreverent rock godhead we lost far too young.)<\/p>\n
It’s raw, it’s gritty — hell, it’s even occasionally ugly. But
\nNoise Monkeys<\/i> is rock that goes back to the daring side of
\nthe genre, something you rarely hear in music anymore. It’s too bad
\nthat Koda & The Points only did two albums in their career, and
\nit’s a damned shame that Koda’s voice has now been silenced for the
\nages. Yet we should not look at this disc as an epitaph; instead, I
\nchoose to look at it as a reason to be thankful that the rock scene
\nhad Koda for as long as it did.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t afraid to take a chance – a hell of a eulogy that
\nanyone should wish for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6362],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-36674","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cub-koda-the-points","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36674"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36674"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}