Supersuckers

When you sit down and think about it, you don’t really have too much to bitch about. The Supersuckers did release an album as recently as 1997’s country slab, Must’ve Been High. And they have been touring so much that if you’re not ear-bleeding and butt-pregnant at least twice a year, it’s only because you’re not doing your job in getting out of your house and down to your town or city’s best nightclub (which, by the way, the Supersuckers consider the craziest, loudest, rockin’-est nightclub in the entire world).

It’s just that 1995’s Sacrilicious was a Supersuckers rock record, and, no matter how good true country music is, no matter how great Must’ve Been High is, the Supersuckers are a rock band. A hard-bit, hard-biting, roach-sucking pack of drop-outs who want have sex with your mother. (Not metaphorically, not generally- Your mother. The woman you call Mom. They’re all dying to screw her. At the same time. And Bolton’s going to throw up on her.)

But wait, that’s not all of the wait! Yes, it’s been since 1995 for a rock record from the hardest rocking band anywhere, but even 1995’s Sacrilicious can’t quite count, because, good as it was, Reynaldo Allegre, he of the blister-guitar, wasn’t even in the band at the time. That was the year Reynaldo had to paint Satan’s house. It’s back to 1994- which is looking to me like nearly five long and blurry years ago- and La Mano Cornuda to get all Supersuckers, all rock, all tracks! Fuck me! Five years ago, I was drinking hard, looking good, and cracking dollies’ heads on my bed board. What a difference five years can make!

So now we say “Finally!” After all the touring, after all the shows where the rock poured like cheap-ass beer and the kids fell in love and then fell in vomit, it’s time for another Supersuckers rock record. Call the album “The Album Formerly Known as The Supersuckers Play Your Mom.” (Don’t write 1999-666; that’s a cop-out.) Call this the kind of record that lights the bong, cracks the beers, deals the cards and falls on the roommate’s goddam pig. Play it at the four’s- the one for sleeping and the one for waking. Play it so loud that you can’t even hear it- Supersuckers aren’t made for listening, they’re made for living inside your nutsack. They’re made for kicking your boss in the teeth or just for laughing at him because you’re ripping him off. Supersuckers rock because they’re shoplifters and drug addicts and gamblers and burglars and whoremongers and they care enough about each and every one of you to want you to be, too.

As of today, The Album Formerly Known As The Supersuckers Play Your Mom sits in a can, burning through one shelf after another while it waits to rip the knuckles off anyone who tries to pick it up. And I think the world is just a little better off for its existence. I know I am, and if I knew when it was coming out and who was putting it out, I’d be in even better shape.

by Chris Schneider