These end-of-the-seventies Kangaroo Kuntry no-goodniks (they’re not nice boys, they sing in one song, they’re bad boys in love in another) couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be rockers like the Faces or punkers or even blues rockers (complete with slide guitar) so they did it all, and did it all so well both Axel Rose and Izzy Stradlin would go on record saying they changed their lives.
Fronted by a gravel-voiced skinhead nice guy named Angry Anderson, who’s not very good when it comes to pet care (or singing) and admits his T.V. has him pussy-whipped, Australia’s Rose Tattoo shared producers with AC/DC and made their mamas glad dingoes didn’t get ‘em as babies by taking their 1978 self-titled debut LP to numero uno on the UK heavy metal charts.
Big city boys from Sydney, or “Sin City” as its lovingly known by the innumerable feckless rubes who’ve been accosted by brigands in its environs over the eons, Rose Tattoo sing about gang wars and prostitution and garbage and “cockroaches so big they got bones” and some stone cold killer named Astra Wally and dead parrots even, and while they’re always trying to give you the impression they’re rogues destined to die with a switchblade in the eye, it’s hard to escape the suspicion they help little old ladies across busy thoroughfares and always place their empty Foster’s cans in the proper trash receptacle. They’re “rock ’n’ roll outlaws” and they’re on the run, but only to Cleveland for their next gig.
Which brings us to opener “Rock ’N’ Roll Outlaw,” which features this humongous Jimmy Page guitar riff with a slide guitar taking solo turns while Angry does his best (not-so-great, but that’s what so lovable about it) AC/DC turn. No big chord changes, no bridge, just keep it simple hard rock statement of purpose.
“Nice Boys” is speedy non-stop punk in which Anderson tells (for no reason I can think of) the story of a good girl goes to seed welcome-to-the-jungle style while returning regularly to the song’s raison d’etre—nice boys don’t play rock and roll, with Angry being sure to add, “And I never was!” A real sonic blast complete with boned cockroaches and a million flies, and heartily recommended to the Sydney Chamber of Commerce as a theme song.
“The Butcher and Fast Eddy” is a real gangland epic with the butcher (real surprise!) being the good guy and Fast Eddy the villain and a real braggart although Angry notes, “And he claimed he was better… than most,” so how much of a braggart could he be? It proceeds at the stately pace proper for an epic (it has about as many stanzas as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”) and ends with (spoiler alert!) Eddie’s switchblade sticking in his own chest, which just goes to show you should never bring a knife to a knife fight.
“One of the Boys” (not to be confused with Mott the Hoople’s big noise maker) is a double-time hard rocker that reminds me of “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” and features lots of slide guitar show-offery and Angry growling about how he’s going to die young and how he’s “Never gonna suffer a straight man’s fears” which I don’t think means he’s gay (but could!). The best part is where he sings, “Bad girls love bad boys but/Good girls love ’em too” which is very Billy Joel of him, and as your humble scribe (a good boy) can tell you is totally true. Nice guys don’t just finish last—they never get laid either.
“Remedy” is pure punker with get-up-and-go to spare about how “That good old fashioned, good time remedy they call rock ‘n’ roll” is gonna save your head and soul, which basically makes Angry Anderson the Bob Seger of punk! Its velocity makes the next cut, the slide guitar-drenched “Bad Boy for Love” sound like it’s being driven by a teenage girl with a “Novice Driver” sticker on the back of her car, but what the number lacks in jet propulsion it makes up for in ferocity, what with Angry trading thirty days in the county hell for thirty years cuz the minute they let him out he found his favorite girl in bed with a guy not named Angry and shot ‘em both, which I would submit makes him less a bad boy for love than a character out of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song. There’s a jailbreak in there too (why not?), but I think they catch him and it’s a real pity it doesn’t end in a hail of bullets like the great “Indiana Wants Me” by R. Dean Taylor.
“T.V.” is a great two-minute blast of power punk, and the best part about it is whereas your usual punker would spend said two minutes casting aspersion on the boob tube and the boobs who watch it, Anderson spends his two minutes casting aspersion on the boob tube while conceding he’s a stone junkie: “You brainwash me senseless/Tearin’ my brain apart/I ain’t got no defenses…you got me beaten from the start, yeah.” The honesty is admirable, because I’m betting all those other punkers castigating the T.V. sets they would never admit to owning never miss an episode of The Masked Singer.
“Stuck on You” is a homely, ramshackle ballad and sorta love song: Angry’s lover’s got a lover so he’s settling for jailbait and you get the idea’s he known her for about 20 minutes but he’s already stuck on her “like a rose tattoo. But the best part of the song, the part of the song that will always endear me to Anderson is the totally from-out-of-nowhere stanza that goes:
“I had a colored parrot, but it made me cry
I just forgot to feed it, and the little bugger died
I had a fish named Sam, he lived in bowl
I heated up the water, so he wouldn’t get cold
Now he’s gone, now he’s gone.”
Poor Angry—he’s so sentimental when it comes to his pets he kills ‘em!
“Tramp” is a furious basharama with slide guitar galore and has Anderson complaining his “balls are dry,” which whether he used a blow dryer or his boxer shorts is a mystery—what isn’t is that this particular tramp is “sittin’ on the fellas’ faces,” I guess cuz there are no chairs handy!
Even better is album highlight “Astra Wally,” on which Rose Tattoo rips it up and tears it up for just one second short of six minutes without pausing once for breath. God only knows what to make of Astra Wally—one minute he’s a “super fun thing,” the next Angry’s singing “Go do a deal Wally, go kill a friend/Go do a deal Wally… kill another friend/Go do a deal Wally… kill another friend” which could mean Anderson’s being sarcastic but he doesn’t sound it.
I get the idea Wally’s a dealer who gets high on his own supply, OD’s even, but it’s a mystery as to whether he dies because Anderson keeps singing “It ain’t funky comin’ down in jail,” which I’m sure it isn’t, not that I would know. I spent two hours in a jail cell once and my biggest gripe was the lack of reading material, by which I mean there wasn’t so much as a copy of Highlights magazine, which you can find in any dentist’s office.
Rose Tattoo are (they’re still out there) the greatest hard rock band to come out of Australia this side of AC/DC, but have they gotten their due? These guys should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and on the ASPCA’s Most Wanted List) based on “Stuck on You” alone, and if “Astra Wally” doesn’t melt the wax that’s been accumulating in your outer ear canals like a flamethrower in Madame Tussauds, you’re not playing it loud enough. Just make sure your goldfish is at a safe distance. You don’t want to boil the poor guy alive.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
