Fu Manchu
No One Rides for Free

THE REVIEW

The debut of Fu Manchu (year of Brant Bjork 1994) is a service station on some sunny California highway, where the '70s rock of Blue Cheer, Lynyrd Skynyrd and company can fill up on Big Muff, load their trunk with watts, and tuck themselves under the hood of six-thousand-cylinder amps.

Scott Hill (guitar and vocals), Edward Glass (lead guitar, later in Nebula), Ruben Romano (drums, later in Nebula), and Mark Abshire (bass, later in Nebula), however, pump gas their way. So much so that in their case, the very label "stoner" can be misleading.

Did Kyuss have the dust of Palm Desert? Fu Manchu has the beaches of San Clemente ("a Spanish village by the sea", as the official site of the town says). Did Kyuss have drugs? Fu Manchu has babes. Did Kyuss fry their brains in the desert sun? Fu Manchu brought out the suntan oil and Hawaiian shirts. It's not that one is necessarily better than the other: they're just two different ways of interpreting rock 'n' roll.

At our station, it's unlikely to spot Iommi or Butler getting an oil check (with the only exception, perhaps, of the opening of "Mega-Bumpers"). It's much more likely to share the checkout line with the spirit of the left-handed guy from Seattle (the one good at playing), appearing in the form of monumental distortions ("Snakebellies"), vacationing with graceful southern diversions during the solo phase ("Ojo Rojo" rulez!). Simple riffs, pachydermic rhythms kept between the ears to shake them like a Coca Cola while headbanging ("Superbird"), fill-in of guitaristic trumpeting ("Ojo Rojo"), a vocal delivery that is the epitome of slacker attitude, and an acoustic-beach ballad to play on the beach at sunset, thinking of a girl with a floss bikini who stole your heart ("Free and Easy").

"No One Rides For Free" is all this: it is music for hanging tough guys with the window down and the stereo blasting. It's music to listen to while pulling down the panties of the summer girl of the moment with your teeth. It's music to slot into the tape deck as you launch your Cadillac on an equator of asphalt cutting through the desert, heading towards a sun yellow and huge as the entire horizon...

...Go with the Fu!