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Rating: "Imagine Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Johnny Cash, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, George Jones, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Dolemite, Thomas Edison, Uncle Jesse, Grandpa Muster, Groucho Marx, Johnny B. Goode, Casanova, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Sitting Bull all rolled into one person and you'll start to get the idea"... sure, all this is taken from the website dedicated to him, sure it’s biased, sure it’s an impressive series of names... sure, it’s also insufficient and limiting for even the slightest understanding of the absolute madness of this character and his music.
Hasil Adkins was born in 1939 in Madison, West Virginia (USA), he was struck by the music of Hank Williams, whose "one-man-band" ethos he embraced; so while his hands are busy on the six-string, his mouth is divided between singing and the harmonica... his feet "dance" frantically on the pedals of a rudimentary drum set. Country is his training ground, but when rock‘n’roll shakes the deeply conformist American society of the mid-fifties, he is struck by it, creating in him the urgency to set up a rudimentary home recording studio. On the other hand, the theme of Adkinesque lyrics is at least outside any thematic and productive scheme, even in the "demonic" world of rock, enough to keep him always out of the loop, even the most underground one, for at least a good quarter of a century. Beheadings, alcohol, moral and physical depravity, chickens and red meat are the central theme of the vast majority of his songs (more than 7000 composed in his career, which he could perform at any time during a show, upon request; in addition to the 2000 covers), so much so that his furious rockabilly was only rediscovered in the early eighties thanks to the psychobilly wave, of which he instantly became the soul and godfather.
In the late '70s, Billy Miller (The Zantees) and Miriam Linna (A-Bones), future founders of Norton Records (www.nortonrecords.com), discover a rare 1958 single, where Hasil sings about a girl he is strongly attracted to, describing her in "She Said" as a jar of decomposing meat. The two share this illuminating discovery with Poison Ivy of the Cramps, who in '81 made an incredible cover for the B-side of one of their singles. Five years later, the newly founded Norton Records, a Washington D.C. label, releases the first (!!!) album of Hasil Adkins, "Out To Hunch", that revisits his over twenty-year "non-career", bringing together a couple of singles released for a local honky-tonk label and released in the late fifties (legend has it in no more than 100 copies) plus a whole series of songs in perfect balance between dementia and schizophrenia ("No More Hot Dog Baby", "I'm Happy", "Hot Dog Baby"), where he doesn't spare energetic and hyper-fast guitar riffs ("Ha Ha Cat Walk Baby", "Truly Ruly") supported by adrenalized cyborg rhythms, on which he perfectly fits out-of-place words and hysterical and demonic verses.
Completely out of control covers of "High School Confidential" (Jerry Lee Lewis) and "Memphis" (Chuck Berry), as well as absolutely disorienting the less ""normal"" tracks present, for which "We Got A Date" and "I Need Your Head (...This Ain't No Rock N' Roll Show)" seem like lost recordings of a completely drunk and ether-dosed Captain Beefheart. There are also testimonies of Hasil's obsessive love for chickens, for which we find the adrenaline-charged "Chicken Walk" or the lopsided "The Hunch", from which he also drew a crazy and depraved dance (in which one was supposed to mimic the movements of birds in the yard).
Hasil took his freakish circus caravan around until April 26, 2005, when he left this earth, relieving the nuisance, of being the alcoholic and bastard son that the American dream never spoke of... and whose voice it never liked to hear.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 She Said (02:48)
Why's don't I tell you what it is?
I wen' out last nigh' and I got messed up
When I woke up this mornin'
Shoulda seen what I had inna bed wi' me
She comes up at me outta the bed
Pull her hair down the eye
Looks to me like a dyin' can of that commodity meat
And says
And says
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Wooooeeeeahhh!
So this time we got waay over here
(Where?! Where?!)
I don't know, since it was early dawn's light
She jumped up outta the car
She pulled her hair down her eye
She looked to me like a dinosaur 'bout to jump outta that seat
She said
She said
She said
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Wooooeeeeyahhhh!
So this time we got waaay over here
And then we went waay down here
We got all the way over
'n that lady sound like this:
Oooooo! Oooooo!
She said
She said
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Yoo ee ah ah!
Wooooaaahhyahh!
So this time we went waaay over there
Now things was really gettin' goin'
Boilin' up with the blisters
She sound like this:
Ooooo! Ooooo!
She jumped up outta the car
Pulled her hair down her eye
And do you know what she tol' me?
Do you know what she try to tell me?
She said
Ooooo! It feel so goood!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo woo eeeeeyahhhh!
Yah yah yah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
Woo ee ah ah!
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