Wails From the Crypt (An Occasional Series): Poodle Rock Lives!!!

From the December 1979 issue of Stereo Review, please enjoy...

NIGHT OF THE LIVING POODLES

One of the interesting things about pub crawling, especially in a major metropolitan area, is that sometimes you chance upon the birthing of a whole new sociological phenomenon. Usually, of course, you don't realize it untill a few months, even years, later, after you've read about it in some-trend-sensitive, circulation-under-forty-thousand tabloid, but that's the risk you take. For example, seasoned observer that I am, I had no idea, on a long-ago summer night in 1973 when I stumbled into a stygian Bowery dive and noticed the bass player of the band rending his T-shirt on a tiny stage between solos, that this was the soon-to-be-legendary Richard Hell in the process of inventing punk rock fashion. In the immortal words of the 2000 Year Old man -- who knew?

Be that as it may, I have noticed that an entire new subgenre of rock-and-roll -- utterly without redeeming social value, shamelessly anachronistic, and bereft of any media attention whatsoever, has been festering of late, like some some hideous herpes, right under our collective nose. Cogniscenti (there are a few of us) refer to it as Poodle Rock, though not because it has anything to do with the antics of the group affectionately known as the Fab Poos. Briefly stated, Poodle Rock is the music purveyed by any group of musicians sporting long shag haircuts, flashy eye make-up, platform shoes and immense stacks of Marshall amplifiers. It is invariably loud and heavy on the macho posturing (even when performed by women) and it invariably sounds like a variant of what Bad Company plays on an off night, although there are some exceptions.

Its antecedents are obvious: the 1969 Rolling Stones (many of these bands have all but memorized the dialogue in Gimme Shelter), the 1971 Rod Stewart and Faces, the snake-period Alice Cooper, and the latter-day KISS (especially in New York, where Ace and Gene and the rest are viewed as local boys who made good). Among its distinguishing characteristics is that all the bands put ads in the Village Voice giving height requirements. It used to be called Glitter Rock, Heavy Metal and Big Rock, and most critics have long since written it off as fatally passé and even irrelevant, which of course explains why so many groups, signed and unsigned, are attracting large crowds by playing it.

In New York City, Poodle Central is a place called Great Gildersleeves, located on the Bowery just down the street from the shrine known as CBGBs (and easily sighted because of the expensively garish neon sign out front). Gilderseeeves started out as a sort of less-uptight alternative to CBs; they booked blues bands, mainstream rockers and three-chord weirdos without a thought about what was hip and what wasn't. Unforunately, the major labels began using it as a showcase room for aging heavy-metal veterans, attendance picked up and the owners realized they had a potentially good thing going. The result? An endless succession of the most boring, obnoxious (and proud of it) bands in Christendom, complete with tired old theatrics (smoke bombs in this day and age?) vacuous groupies, and an audience dressed exactly like the performers.

On an average night at Gildersleeves you might see...the Richie Scarlett Band. Scarlett is a guy capitalizing on a physical resemblance to Keith Richards in such an obsessive manner tht it verges on the pathological. He gets this year's "Jeff Beck Erect Left Nipple" award for performing in a leather jacket without a shirt. His music sounds like what a Sherman tank looks like, and it has been known to reduce more than one listener to whimpering "I'll talk, I'll talk..." Then there are The Brats, who've been playing drivel in white-satin gangster outfits since the days of the Mercer Arts Center, apparently without wising up. At a recent performance they attracted nonmusical media attention when one of their flash-pots exploded prematurely, sending several patrons to the hospital, Any press is good press...Or you might take The Bonnie Parker Band -- please! Ms. Parker is a bass-playing young woman with a voice like Gabby Hayes and a stage demeanor that suggests Rod Stewart on angel dust and testosterone. And there's Falcon Edy, a power trio with a lead singer really bugged that he's not as good looking as Roger Daltry...Moonbeam, with a lead guitarist who will answer much in heaven to Jimi Hendrix...and Face Dancer, of whom I will say nothing except that their name is not the worst thing about them. There's more, but I'm, uh, pooched out.

When I reread this recently for the first time in years, I actually laughed out loud.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up to begin with is that over at a rock critic's forum I frequent on Facebook, there was a mini-brouhaha the other day over a so-called genre that's been dubbed Yacht Rock. (The fight, among other things, was over whether Steely Dan and Christopher Cross both belong in it. I found the whole thing pretty stupid, actually.)

In any event, it reminded me that I had invented a much more apt genre/and title back in the day, and I figured it needed to be re-introduced to a waiting world.

Hence the above.

I should add that out of curiosity, I looked up a couple of the bands/artists name-checked in the column and to my, er, delighted surprise I discovered that some of them -- Richie Scarlett, Bonnie Parker and a couple of the others -- are still plying their trade in public here in the 21st century (although their home club Gildersleeves, which was my actual subject, has been gone for ages).

To which I can only say, in all sincerity -- Rock-and-roll Lifers of the World, I salute you!!!