The Smacks! At 20 (With A Side-Order Of Hasil Adkins)
“ — Crowded in the rank and narrow ship, —
Housed on the wild sea with wild usages, —
Whate’er in the inland dales the land conceals,
Of fair exquisite, O! nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.”
— from S. T. Coleridge’s translation of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein.
So what we (that’s us, this is the Smacks! talkin’ here, or at least J.T. Dockery talkin’ for/as the Smacks!) got to make everything old new again/the past-is-not-dead-it’s-not-even-past style is a collection of old/unreleased/live tracks (25 of them) in a new time & it’s free for the downloading & the islands-in-the-streaming under the Dogwhistle collective umbrella:
Expanded Ejaculations + Hasil Adkins & the Kitchen S(t)ink We Rode In/On
which effectively makes a big swoll’d up “bonus disc” for:
Here Lieth the Smacks Protected by the Ejaculation of Serpents
(Also available for the magic price of free & also makes of Ejaculation (originally released in compact disc form at the ass-end of 2005 & made available for free online back in 2105, for its “tenth anniversary”) a “double album,” with its “expansion” now, of approximately 1,348 tracks (or at least, ya know: 52) in its now, 2018 ether-net reincarnation.)
With our first performance having occurred on Cinco de Mayo 1998, the Smacks! became born & now, with Cinco de Mayo on the 5th of May in 2018, the Smacks! turn 20 years of age. While we never quite quit or “broke up” & while we have not been performing regularly or recording/releasing new recordings, the Smacks! still exist; we are, to swipe a line from Sexton Ming: as active as an atom in the moonlight.
Next year, the Smacks! will be old enough to drink.
Expanded Ejaculations includes a complete live Smacks! show recorded mid-2000s, as originally recorded live at/broadcast on WRFL 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY for DJ Tony Manuel, of which only two songs appeared previously on the Ejaculation CD. Five songs recorded for “chapter III: ‘Crash That Gash’’’/“chapter IV: ‘Glug, Glug, Glug’” but were not used for the 2005 disc, along with an alternate version of “All the Disgusting Parts Taken Out,” from “chapter I: ‘Smells Like Hot Blood Tonight.’”
Not to mention an acoustic guitar solo by Brian Manley, recorded for the “lost” Smacks! album, working title Finger! Finger! (after the Harry Stephen Keeler novel by the same title). Not everyone realizes Manley actually studied classical guitar at the big state University of the Wild Cat they got there in Lexington. True story.
Then we got a “Hasil Adkins Interlude,” with a live recording of “You Won’t Believe Your Thighs!” by the Smacks! recorded at the Dame, Lexington, KY, Oct. 8th 2003 (opening for what would be Hasil Adkins’s final live show in Lexington; Manley concludes the song, saying, “Hasil is up: next.”). We toss in 3 excerpts from Night Life by Hasil Adkins (Hog May vinyl, Creeps Records CD) with the Smacks! (Manley on additional strings, Dockery on percussion, sessions produced by Jeffrey Scott Holland — presented in this context for free streaming/downloading for historic/educational consideration). Then, as capstone, we throw your way a baby-bathwater cover-version of Hasil’s tune “Your Memory,”recorded by the Smacks! for a proposed Hog Maw label Hasil tribute record but never released.
Expanded Ejaculations includes the complete The Appendicks: rare home and live recordings as it appeared from the Ejaculation compact disc but not previously included with the 2015/“10th anniversary”download/streaming version. Which points to something we’ve never directly pointed at before, which is the fact that the last track of the Appendicks included a “hidden track,” an excerpt from a home-recording made in the wee-small hours by Brian Manley & Hasil Adkins as they partied/stayed up late to practice speaking their Chaldean (with drinks) as a duo/duet after the after-party by the dawn’s early light for the benefit of the tape-recorder following the Smacks!/Hasil Adkins gig at Lynagh’s for the SoUP Festival in October of 2001.
Hasil died in April before the original release of Ejaculation in November of that same year of 2005. Ejaculation was dedicated to his memory in the liner notes & at the time we quietly placed that hidden coda on the last track, so that anybody brave enough to allow the compact disc to keep playing past the last song of The Appendicks would suddenly get smacked with the voice and sounds of Hasil & Manley.
If you’ve read this far & feel like reading further (farther?), we got more parenthetical digressionary fables of foibles, pictures, videos, clippings from old reviews & who knows what all in a pissing-in-the-stream-of-consciousness scrapbook of over-saturated and/or blurred memories, etc.; even an entire resurrected review of “Ejaculation” by Jesse Saxon.
Allow us to reacquaint yourselves with our style:
Manley: a trailer trash teenage immortal psychic are-you-a-boy-or-are-you-a-girl-front-man/lycanthrope, bent on Bowie for President, Iggy Swagger, a Paul Stanley voice never left at home & a rocket up under & hanging down or pointing up between the bottom of his oh-so short skirt and the tops of his thigh high platform boots, while his guitar does not go gently TWANG into that good (?) night.
Dockery: Dressed in suit & tie, hand-rolled cigarette ah-dangling ubiquitous, surly-suave n sharp like a sport from Another Time, garbling out bitter/sweet come hithers & barks of unfair preachings of the End Times, with a New Testament hand & and a Old Testament mind, not minding if he do-dies, all the while cleaning his pointy-toe boots and looking in the mirror between beats, sneaking another sip from his Big Orange (well, sneaking maybe two or three sips).
A simple, working-man’s band. Sexually democratic & suited up when off the clock & ready for show business on an hourly wage budget by whatever riffs, hooks, crooks & fog machines necessary.
Somewhere the Smacks! are in some bar somewhere more ‘n likely south of the Ohio River in some shit-hole town & all the girls there understand. In that moment trapped in time for that crowd which is both a moment lost yet reverberating forever they might be fools but THEY ARE GODS (of the room).
“A two-man band on a art rock bender offers up twenty-seven tracks of minimalist skronk that’s better than one would expect.” — Razorcake, full review (attributed to “Jimmy”) of Here Lieth the Smacks! Protected by the Ejaculation of Serpents, circa 2006
“…songs that range from the painfully noisy to the devilishly inspired. A little ode to insanity called ‘Locked in the Cellar’ is the kind of lo-fi gem Dr. Demento would wet his pants over. Moving easily between rockabilly, incomprehensible punk, and ingeniously wrongheaded lyric-driven madness, this duo can make you shake your head with despair and your ass with joy all at the same time.” — Chris Herrington, from the Memphis Flyer, circa 2003–4 (most likely a review of our “You Won’t Believe Your Thighs!” CDR)
We (that is, I ) caught up with Brian Manley to discuss the Smacks!/let him speak, memory like the Nabokov, back in May of 2016. Sticking the microphone of our trusty tape-recorder to his face, this is (one of) the sweet-nothings he said:
Playing three quarters in the round, snare and reverbed nickel strings ricocheting off a brick wall, we slugged through another set at the Rudyard Kipling. As usual, Louisville shows seemed to be the drunkest. Maybe they weren’t, but there was always some fucked up moment at Louisville shows. I can’t remember the set list or the performance leading to the end of that show. The Rud’s beer and bourbon were typically free, and they most likely regretted that when we played there.
I remember not having a plan on how to end the set, but, as usual at that time, would just do whatever occurred to me. Sometimes it was a dance. Sometimes violence. Sometimes nothing at all. Tonight, I decided, as the last of the noise was pounding out, to pull my dick out if my pants and start slamming it into the strings of my guitar. I did this standing up, but realized the effect was minimal, so threw the guitar down on the ground and began jackhammering the pickups.
I was drunk and limp. There was no pillar of machismo, no hardcore adrenaline that stiffened me in some kind of unity with my bro at the scene; it was a simple slamming of a retreated soft cock and pillowy nutsack against electric guitar strings. I humped, throwing my hips into on the ground, my mushy genitals being squished into pickups, creating a muted clamp and ring with the distortion.
I really had no idea what the crowd was doing; if they were watching, interested, disgusted, happy, rocking, having a laugh, or leaving. I had no idea what Todd [aka J.T.] was doing, other than I still heard drum sounds, and that meant to keep going. So I kept humping and smushing, never fully pulling my pants down, just cramming a squeezed ball of spiritless, drooping sexflab into strings, almost like straining spoiled chunky yogurt through a cheesecloth. I heard my girlfriend, Sarah, say, ‘oh my god, why…’
That show is one of the few that are brought up to me the most often, usually by random people sharing a memory of seeing us. Often, I don’t even know some of these people. They didn’t know us, sometimes. Barely even knew the band that well, just happened to see us a few summery nights of our existence.
I recently met a friend of my girlfriend’s; he brought this story up out of nowhere to his wife, who told Niki, and it came back to me. There are two Louisville shows that get mentioned to me still, despite having happened 10–15 years ago, and both were at the Rud, and both involve either my dick or puking. Two totally different shows, I swear.
One concept that began to creep into the Smacks! persona (I mean persona as a band, not as me as a stage persona), was to play with cliches associated with various types of rock music, as well as a blender mix of other genres from throughout popular culture. We often would try to stride a line that both satirized the cliche, as well as embrace it as a love of show business in all forms.
I mean, in one breath we can tell you a million reasons why a band like KISS is stupid and mock them in ways you might not even know they could be mocked, while in the next breath, bound about the room expressing the dearest love for the men in the band, the things they say, and their music.
In looking at some of this cliches and aspects of rock culture, and the sub-genres of rock, and the impacts they have had, one thing that still surprises me is shock value, and the fact that people in the 21st century will still get shocked by some very simple things. I mean, the same things that Bowie or Cabaret or Iggy Pop or Madonna or GG Allin or early jazz used to push buttons, either purposefully or not, still offend and shock and turn heads and titillate.
Things like nudity, crossdressing, and sexual lyrics still excite and arch eyebrows. Why these things have not become boring at this point, or more pointedly — inoffensive — confuses me. At the time, I always thought that as a culture we’d progress past being wowed by a naked person or someone talking dirty and move beyond grade school. I mean, once you’ve heard or seen it a lot of different ways throughout art/music/literature history, the shock seems like it would lessen. But, that collective memory does not seem to keep it’s mold, and every generation is waiting to be newly shocked by the same tropes. But, that’s what makes classic stories classic, and it’s something I understand better the older I’ve gotten.
This is all a short but heady way to say that after some time playing together, I decided I would always cross-dress in the Smacks!, to dress as a trailer park teen girl wearing, lipstick, cutoffs, fishnets. And a lot of our songs went from being about items in the news or psychedelic violent dreams to songs about fucking, penis and vagina, and cum.
“Man, there’s some strange brew in those Kentucky stills. Smacks! is a two- man gang from Lexington who play almost comically primitive gutbucket garage slop. It’s scary, desperate stuff that more often than not
devolves into ugly, abusive noise. So, of course, they call themselves a ‘glitterbilly’ band. Hell, the guitar guy even wears make-up! This gloriously weird album is divided into chapters (and subchapters), much like some ghey European power metal band would. Except Smacks! are not ghey, they are terrifying. Some of the songs (or sub-songs, whatever) seem to be mutated Kiss and Bad Company covers (I swear I heard Black Diamond in
there somewhere, and ‘Sex Apple’ IS ‘All Right Now’), and when the dudes get around to singing, it all starts to gel, in an early Redd Kross kinda way. Mostly, though, it’s a mudbath, and I like it. It’s exactly what would happen if a couple of retarded guys in a Harry Crews novel formed a band in between burning down the barn and fucking a goat in the ass. Glitterbilly forever!” — Writer unknown, review of Ejaculation CD appeared on the now defunct Sleazegrinder website, circa 2006.
Into the Negative Zone? The above photograph was taken by Jesse Saxon (and given the weird Negative Zone treatment for a show-flyer, later), year unknown, definitely pre-2000, before Yats (where it was taken) closed in Lexington, KY. To cast words to the picture to get the picture, that’s Manley in the foreground, shirtless on the mic & on a leash held by Mike Connelly (Hair Police, Wolf Eyes, Clay Rendering), Ross Wilbanks (Hexose, FreeSound Records) at right. The figure with the guitar in background is Jennifer Ray, playing her one & only show guesting with the Smacks! With my (J.T. Dockery’s) hair, as Jesse said at the time, “Flying higher than it’s ever flown before.” I do have a dose of memory here (I think) that we are performing the final tune of the show which appeared as the final track on the “electric” side of of the FreeSound cassette-release, Shut the Fuck Up! This is Rock N Roll! (The title came from the improvised line from Manley as retort to hecklers in the crowd, which can be heard on the release of the same title.)
Above is the cover to a rare CDR-release which contained advance-promo/rough mix selections from the then forthcoming release of Here Lieth the Smacks! Protected by the Ejaculation of Serpents. Photograph is of Manley in his performance-gear for a show in Louisville, KY, taken outside the Hideaway, circa 2004–5. As this reporter recalls it, the “Bend Over, I’ll Drive” sweatshirt was given as a hand-me-down gift to Manley from a practicing drag queen/“fan” of the Smacks!
Following is a complete contemporaneous review of the Ejaculation CD (which we seem to remember appearing in a local alternative weekly that came & went as a newsprint/tabloid publication, but we can’t remember the title of it, however; we located this text in a virtual archaeological dig online as it was reproduced in an old forum): by Lexington, KY musician/artist/stylist, Jesse Saxon:
I can’t see doing a write-up for the Smacks! CD without laying down a bit of generalized beef to chew on. Something to soak in while you daydream of the musical miscreants who conjured the “Sex Apple.” Anything to help you understand just how foul the monkeyjuice that these guys swim in really is.
It takes two, baby. On one swollen hand you’ve got J. Todd Dockery, a man who enjoys rolling his own cigarettes, and, at times, rolling up his shirt sleeves to threaten God, ghost and beast alike with his crooked drumsticks. On the other you’ll find Brian Manley, a small ferocious creature whose double-dips into the No Drug Test Zone of guitar have inspired more whys than hows from those smacked the hardest. Two gurgling carnies sharing life, voice and, most importantly, the overall blame for grimy content. Off duty they live in rank amongst the raccoons and opossums, and are generally untidy. The Smacks! Ignore parking tickets, subpoenas, and mail in general. You see them all of the time stopped outside of convenience stores figgerin’ out junk food wrappers or pointing at items of interest with sticks and other found objects. The Smacks! are the grunting sound around the corner; the last gasp of vaudeville. They come in late everyday and sleep in the Laundromat when the pinball’s out. If you think the Smacks! can’t hold a job then you’d better get it straight…No job can hold the Smacks!!
Butchered, bacherlorized and half-crazed, they wander out of their “yards” and into your gardens to piss on your petunias and eat your rake. But don’t let them touch anything…you’ll be sick for weeks. They smell like everywhere they’ve been, plus onions. And no one can stop them ‘cos it’s been seven years already and now there’s this new CD, but its not just any CD…it’s a twenty seven song CD. Is this supposed to be a career retrospective or something? Are the Smacks! plannin’ a plane crash on tour? Perhaps they’ll choke on chickenbones in the parking lot, instead. But, a greater problem is at hand. Every song on this CD is a bad egg, and soon our streets will reek as 27 slack-jawed smacklings roam the rubbish bin district, searching for vice and cheap fuel (vice).
No album of such length and mastery should suffer the embarrassment of nominal brevity. Payphone Took My Quarter at the Lexi-con Border was considered for the title, however, after hours of considerable chewin’ and inner circle legislation the crew o’ two opted for a slim-lined Here Lieth the Smacks! Protected By the Ejaculation of the Serpents instead. Despite its aura of innocence, this disc handles its biz with the communicable grace of gum on the sidewalk. One wrong step and these guys might find the bottom of your shoe. With a Smack! in your stride you’ll stick it to the whole neighborhood with confidence and class. Slum along with the boys as they stop to give the landlady a little bit of that mid-month smoochy smooth talk. Right on! Don’t you worry about her though. One listen to the new Smacks! CD and she’ll be swoonin’ with the rest of them, especially once they put down some that “I’ll do the dishes tonight” croonin’ that’s made them famous…the kind that’s drenched in grease. The only sound with that slow-handed, slow-roasted assurance she needs to feel like a woman without all the rent. Hear this tuna melt burn best on tunes like “Locked In a Cellar”: “Ahhmm…Locked in a cellarrr…all alooone…” Hear a distant voice beneath the door on the floor holler, “This ain’t no goddamn metaphor!” Yeah, these guys spend a lot of time lookin’ up from the bottom, and it takes a certain kind of hurtin’, that’s for sure. You’ll find this perspective theme returning again for “The Drowing Song Parts 1 & 2.” Two parts ‘cos it takes awhile, ya know, but they drown proudly with every flush.
When Mr. Manley asks “Where Are the Drugs?!!” you’ll know that’s its already too late. And what about this “Sex Apple” biz-ness anyhow? Once the Smacks! take their brand of hickey rock down AC/DC street there’s no turning back. Who else could/would rhyme lunch, munch and crunch in song without shame or fear of retribution? Rumor has it that a public performance of “Sex Apple” was once segued by a moving, “this one’s for you, Mom”; an apparent appeasal to requests from kinfolk in the audience. A New York band that shared the bill that evening were left to ponder family life in Kentucky…But what the Smacks! wanna know is, if New York is supposed to be so great, then how come no one calls it the “Big Sex Apple”?
Let “Big Hands and Thighs Slappin’” warm your soul with each tender touch. Who needs scented candles when it “Smells Like Hot Blood Tonight?” Explore strange medicine cabinets with Brian’s crusty guitar on “Last Man on Earth.” Dive “Into the Negative Zone” and have “All the Disgusting Parts Taken Out.” Every one’s a sinner.
With talent like this, you may be wondering “why the shabby duds?” Hey, these guys donkeys free of charge, but their performance fee/bar tab ratios have been compared to the plight of yesteryear’s sharecroppers. What little dough they can scrape past the “company store” is usually re-invested into guitar strings and drumsticks (chicken).
Are you ready to join the boys as they take the “c” out of “charm” for good? The Smacks! say “Get It! Get On It!” Look, if you wanna ride along in their musical mopbucket, you’d better dig the sloshin’ or get lost, ‘cos the Smacks! have got no time for your stooped questions.
— Jesse Saxon. October 2005
Polaroid shot of Hasil Adkins with the Smacks!, including the groovy frame J.T. (that’s me, speaking) maintains the photo as of this writing for posterity proverbial. Snapped at the after-party aforementioned for an October 2001 show at Lynagh’s Club (don’t look for Lynagh’s; it’s no longer there) in Lexington, KY right before the after-after party, at which occasion Manley/Adkins recorded what would be the “hidden track” at the close of the Ejaculation CD/now the close of Expanded Ejaculations. Bonus trivia: what Brian is holding up in the picture is a copy of the A.B. “Happy” Chandler 45, “Come Back to Your Kentucky.”
Speaking of Hasil, with our Night Life inclusions on the Expanded Ejaculations, I intentionally shied away from the “hits” from that, Hasil’s final recording of new material. Fans of the album have already made videos for consumption in the public-square/tower of Babel of songs from the record such as “KFC,” “Raw Meat” & the more tender (more tender than KFC chicken and uncoooked meat product, anyway) stylings of “Walking in the Garden with Amy” (the latter being an “official” video from Jeffrey Scott Holland/Transylvania Colony, which is the de facto video hub online for Holland’s Creeps Records imprint that released Night Life in its limited edition/compact disc format). So I present these here. All the songs in the videos here feature Manley and/or Dockery accompanying Hasil.
I like chicken do you like chicken do you like KFC:
I like it fried I like it cooked, give it to me raw…whew, tasted good:
And the Lord told us “welcome home,” when I walked to heaven, with Amy, last night:
Recently Professor Manley reported from the road that he was driving back from a trip to NYC and as he sped along on the way to the soil of his Old Kentucky Home, he tossed in a random mix-tape into his truck’s player. Not knowing what was in the mix, Manley was surprised at the sudden synchronicity, driving through Hasil’s homeland and on the cusp of the 13th anniversary of his death (a funeral we both attended) & the occasion of Hasil’s birthday (if he were still among us on this thin raft of the mortal coil, he woulda been turning 81 on this recent April 29th of 2018 (he died on April 26th 2005, just shy of his 68th birthday)), to be hearing a whole bunch of Hasil tunes as he sped as passer-by through the length of Hasil’s Hills of West Virginia. Then there’s this reporter/yours unruly talking about Hasil for a documentary (which, for more connections, one of the promo-trailers for My Blue Star actually contains a cut that flashes to footage of Doc & Manley at Hasil’s funeral in 2005 + the time I first bought a “bag of bacon” for Hasil was the day after show the early morning/“night” prior Hasil & Manley recorded the “hidden track” used on Ejaculation). So for side orders within side orders, feel free to take this tale of bags of bacon, to go:
And if you’re still hungry & speaking of Jeffrey Scott Holland/Creeps Records, we can also travel back in time to a time, to roundabout 1996 or so, when there was no Smacks! as of yet and before we actually met Hasil (initial contact was made with Hasil by Dockery in Dec. 1998). Holland & Dockery performed as Cheeseburger & Fries. Later, Manley would often join us on mandolin, at which point CH&FR would expand to “Cheeseburger & Fries w/ Eggroll). Not only that but often Dockery & Manley would perform together pre-Smacks! when Holland wasn’t around as “Eggroll & Fries.” (And let us not forget that CH&FRw/EGR would sometimes even alternate our persona/s to become The Kentuckians (always Holland/Doc, sometimes also with Manley), which was an electric band that served to perform Holland’s songs/his project that enlisted us.
We know for a fact that Manley was at the show from which the recording below comes, as on other songs from the same show he can be heard yelling out several times “Spider-Man!” which was a request for a staple of the CH&FR set at the time, our rendition of the 1960s cartoon show theme song. But this here’s Cheeseburger & Fries taking “No More Hot Dogs” out for a date in front of a private Christian (no less) collegiate audience:
Above image, the Smacks! at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage, Good Folk Fest, November 2012. That would turn out to be our final live performance, re-grouping after I/Dockery had been in Vermont for a spell, and after this performance, ultimately I called the case shut, that the arthritis what had been afflicting my fingers/hands since even before the founding of the Smacks! had finally over all the years & through all the beers wrought enough permanent damage to the joints of my digits that I could no longer control the sticks to play a drum kit up to my own personal standards, so with this show, to my mind, it was better to walk off the stage from the drums, not to return.
1998–2012 was a good run of more shows/touring than we can or care to recall, although 2018, at 2o years in, seems a good time to look back. Below is video of the actual last song from that last set. An incongruous day-time gig (we mostly lived, breathed & performed in shadow, but sometimes were spotted out & under the sun). The audio seems to cut out toward the end of the video, which just adds another layer of weird closing-reverberance (or lack thereof) onto a glimmering glimpse of the end of (at least for us) an era (or at least the end of another beginning, but ain’t that the way of things, though?).
But, WAIT: there’s more (atoms active in the moonlight, slight return). As Phil Lynott once sang, “ When they say it’s over / It’s not all over completely.”
While the Smacks! may have hung up our stockings & spurs, we never ceased to be; in fact, continuing beyond 2012, we merely morphed/evolved. Two shows were played in 2013 (one in Columbus, OH, the other in Lexington, KY at Institute 193) to promote the release of the first volume of my three volum’d (2013–15) DESPAIR comic book series, along with projected images from the art, but with no drums, making a kind of live “soundtrack” for the visuals. See below, photo from Cumbus, Ohio.
We also performed, again, in this incarnation in 2015 for vol. 3, supporting Fantagraphics cartoonist Josh Simmons, in Columbus, OH & then morphed yet again to support Devon, Gary & Ross in Lexington (along with old pal Trevor Tremaine’s “Attempt”) at the request of Robert Beatty as a one-off, improv group with Manley & I, plus two more players (Thad Watson & Tyler Back), as “Despair Quartet’s ‘Insect Policy,’” which also served as a Lexington release show for the 3rd, and final, of the 3 vol.s of the DESPAIR series. (I/Dockery will always remember of this show 1.) artist Gary Panter doing his Philip K. Dick impersonation for me and 2.) serving as witness/sitting next to & chatting at Al’s Bar with Gary as he drank his first ever bourbon.) Beatty’s poster for the gathering of the tribes/celebration of the lizards/bourbon, below. To quote Hasil Adkins, “It’s the good life/if you can stand it.”
“That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die” — H.P. Lovecraft
And here’s a taste below, presented by the aforementioned Creeps/Holland outpost of the Transylvania Colony, of a future-past version of what the Smacks! intended to become post-Ejaculation but the fates did not allow, a rough-mix version of “Backstage Pass,” as song recorded for the “lost” album, known by its working title of Finger! Finger! If Ejaculation was two-man gutbucketry that was presented as more epic than gutbucketry by rights should ever be epic in presentation, this “lost” album was meant to be a two-man ban putting out a record that sounded like a full band, a proper “studio” platter, over-dubbed with bass and back up vocals, other assorted instruments & even a goddamn flute solo on one song (true story) & presented in tight intentional, connective/constructed flow one song to another, a definitely sculpted “Side 1” & “Side 2” without a chapter or sub-chapter in sight & we had a Vision of touring/performing to promote it as a power-trio with our pal Thad Watson joining us on bass for a new version/Vision of The Smacks!
But that particular tomorrow never came. However, that album is not totally lost (thus the previous quotation marks), as a near-completed version of it (but not mixed and/or mastered) is in the vaults of our good friend Paul Puckett, so who knows: maybe someday to celebrate our 21st or 22nd or 25th or even our 30th birthday, if we’re all still alive, we’ll sit down at Puckett’s studio and lock that “lost” record down & release it at some point in some form/s, to give more births to more ancients in some once & future New Time.
There were other releases by the Smacks!, pre-Ejaculation. On cassette: Shut the Fuck Up! This is Rock N Roll! & on CDR: You Won’t Believe Your Thighs! & a split CDR with the (All) American Werewolves, Having a Splendid Time, Wish You Were Here, Love: the Smacks! But, well, shit: I ain’t even got copies of those for myself anymore.
Who knows what might or might not get re-released in some form/s, not to mention the mountain of home/live recordings never released from the unexpurgated Appendicks, besides the “lost” Finger! Finger! album which may surface someday. Or not. Anyways, what the hey hey ha ha, a last clipping here as the 20th birthday memorial scrapbook starts to close up its pages; here’s a look at Manley’s cassette-art for the first ever release by the Smacks! on Creeps Records:
Well, as the poet Paul Verlaine wrote, “Music before all else / Music again and forever.” Maybe the Smacks! might say stockings & spurs come before music (and if not music, at least “glitter-billy”) some/most of the time-time, but either way, we sold our souls for rock and roll & we liked it.
May the Ejaculation of Serpents Protect Us All.
Brian Manley continues to perform & record music, such as Sociological Liver Pills, The Delighters & with the project/band Insect Policy. He can be heard regularly harnessing the airwaves via the magic of electric radio in Louisville, KY WXOX 97.1 FM (also broadcast live online as well as in archived versions of the live show) with his Night Train Cocktail Lounge program.
J.T. Dockery is semi-“retired”from music, but he continues to hoe visual & narrative rows, primarily in comics, such as with the books: In Tongues Illustrated, Spud Crazy (with Nick Tosches), DESPAIR vol.s 1–3. Work in print most recently appeared in Metal Gods: A Tribute to Judas Priest with his adaptation of Priest’s song “Electric Eye” into comics & a “pin-up” drawing for Josh Bayer’s RM. He’s currently working on a collaborative project with writer Ed McClanahan as well as two more book-length comics of his own design in process/progress.
Manley & Dockery continue living their lives & doing their works where all of us live our lives & do our works: in The Future & therefore continue to collaborate, most often in the form of art/narrative projects. Dockery did the album art for an Insect Policy cassette. The aforementioned Metal Gods book also contains Doc’s illustrated/hand letter’d version of Manley’s love letter to/defence of Priest’s album Turbo. On the immediate horizon, Doc’s illustrated version of Manley’s story, “Normal,” is set to be included in the forthcoming issue #4 of the zine, Pop Wasteland & as of this writing, they’re intending to expand “Normal,”following its appearance in the zine’s pages, into a stand-alone, illustrated book.
GOOD NIGHT! WE LOVE YOU! SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!
Signed,
The Smacks!
