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«Are you ready for the country» asked Neil Young to anyone listening 50 years ago and what he meant then is still not entirely clear to me today, whether due to my ignorance or Neil's ambiguity. But I'm not alone: Waylon Jennings, for instance, some years after that song tailored it to himself with a few tweaks and made it fit perfectly, but I suspect he had something different in mind than Neil; and then Jason Ringerberg came along and he too made it his own, and if I'm still not sure what Neil was asking, then, now and always, I never had doubts about Jason's intentions. At the dawn of the '80s, he moved with his guitar, harmonica, and baggage from Sheffield – Illinois, not England – heading towards Nashville, exactly that: Nashville, Tennessee.
What Jason wanted is easy to say: if you have a copy of “Fervor”, pull it out and look at the posters pasted on the fence behind the four handsome guys, they scream that in a few days Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and Hank Williams will arrive in town, make sure not to miss it – even though you cannot know that one of those shows will never take place. Then take your copy of Sniffin' Glue, the famous one where on the cover there are 3 chords and the exhortation to form a band. This is what Jason wants: to reclaim as a commoner what is quintessentially popular music; and he wants to reclaim it right there, in the place where that music prostituted itself beyond redemption, under the eyes of all the pimps busy counting piles of money.
In that place, Nashville, Jason immediately gets involved with someone named Jack Emerson: the guy is a madman, as much and more than Jason, imagine that he even set up a record label, Praxis: put like that, who knows what you imagine, in reality, Praxis is a windowless room in a basement just outside Nashville, with the only comfort being a toilet in CBGB's style. Except CBGB's is in New York, but in Nashville, there's Frankenstein's, the only place where you can meet the right people for Jason and Jack: so, those two put up an ad like «If you can play something by Hank Williams and the Sex Pistols, drop everything, a gig at Praxis awaits you» and they stick it on the entrance. And in a matter of a few months, someone shows up: a guitarist who is stylistically and physically the epitome of tackiness, one Warner Hodges, and a certain Jeff Johnson who boasts of playing the bass and finally someone who gets sent to the drums, just like street soccer games when someone randomly gets made the goalie because you can’t play without a goalie, Perry Baggs is his name: Jeff and Perry seem decent enough but in a couple of years they’re a horrendous cross between two New York Dolls and two random Poison members. In the end, the normal one is Jason, with his leopard print cowboy hat from which improbable sideburns peek out and a pulley instead of a tie, to say nothing else.
Boys and girls, from Nashville, Tennessee, JAAAAASOOOOOON AAAAAND THE NAAAAASHVIIIIILE SCOOOOORCHEEEEERS.
It doesn’t matter that the reference to Nashville immediately disappears – just Jason And The Scorchers, forever; what matters is that from holes like Praxis and Frankenstein's came out a band which, for a year straddling between 1984 and 1985, could with so much merit be included among the best on the face of the earth, one capable of inventing a genre as simple as it was unheard of before then, rock'n'roll plus country plus punk plus hard rock. In theory, it could never have worked, in practice it worked wonderfully, at least during that famous year and a little more: it worked despite Jason who on one side craved to be the reincarnation of Hank Williams and prayed every night that Johnny Cash would come to his senses and Warner who on the other side only and solely had Angus Young in mind and loathed country and folk, swearing up and down that before playing such crap Jason would have to get over his dead body; or maybe it worked precisely because of this; and don’t you even think Jeff and Perry were extras, because they wrote beautiful songs. But everything in its time.
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And at the beginning, there was the time of “Reckless Country Soul”, a very concise debut that lines up 2 originals and 2 covers – Hank Williams, of course, and Jimmie Rodgers – amateurish and raw as you like, but those 10 minutes were more than enough to establish Jason and company as the best thing to come out of Nashville since the '60s, with a heavy load of dreams to realize and promises to keep. And it's also the only testimony in the name of the Nashville Scorchers.
The next year, indeed, on the cover of “Fervor” stands the new and shortened moniker, Jason And The Scorchers.
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With a couple of songs and a few extra minutes compared to its predecessor, “Fervor” is the splendid mini-album that greatly fulfills all the promises made: among the raids of a “Both Sides Of The Line” with nerves well exposed and that shot that is “Can't Help Myself” – originally watered-down country with an orchestra by a certain Tim Krekel – leaving you breathless as at the end of a short but intense run; the mid-tempo of “Help There's A Fire”, “Hot Nights In Georgia” with Michael Stipe on backing vocals – as well as co-writing “Both Sides Of The Line” with Jason, and how the paths of the Scorchers and R.E.M. crossed is worth writing a treatise on – and “Harvest Moon” which you wish would never end; and that wonder of pure and simple country that is “Pray For Me, Mama (I'm A Gypsy Now)” – no rock'n'roll, nor punk, much less hard rock among these grooves.
So beautiful and impactful is “Fervor” that at EMI – I mean, at EMI – they decided to build bridges of gold for the Scorchers so that good old Jack had no choice but to close Praxis and live a life of leisure until the end of his days, with that 64-tooth smile plastered on his face from dawn to dusk.
The first thing they did at EMI? Simple, they re-released “Fervor”. I can already hear you grumbling, well, just as I thought, the greedy capitalists flooding the market with reissues, deluxe and über-expanded versions, useful about as much as a popsicle in the North Pole. Well, I respond, this time you’ve said something silly. Because within the EMI version of “Fervor” there's one more song compared to the Praxis version, and if that song is a mind-blowing version of “Absolutely Sweet Marie” then there's nothing left to do but thank heaven for the greed that reigns supreme in the high offices of a multinational and acknowledge that in those days, indeed, Jason And The Scorchers is one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands you might lend an ear to. And carriers of a cocky attitude with few equals, like when, just regarding the Dylan cover, Jason confesses to some journalist that to convince Warner, Jeff, and Perry to record it, he told them it was one of his compositions, they believed him without batting an eyelid, and gladly recorded a punk version. And thus capable of bringing home, along with country, even certain folk which an intellectual aura in the end might harm.
...
Then the wait for a “difficult third album”, which could be their first full-length effort, and the hope that it won't make “Fervor” regrettable – because an LP is one thing, the mini-LP another, the EP yet another, and the format kills many – encouraged by enthusiastic reports from those who see them at work on stages from one side of the oceans to the other.
Two years pass, 1985 leads to “Lost And Found”, the album that ... I don’t know how to put it ... it’s not that it cools the enthusiasm or makes “Fervor” regret ... no, it’s just that it surpasses “Fervor”. A devastating album from every point of view, and every time I have nothing better to do than the utterly useless list of the 50 albums of the decade, “Lost And Found” is unfailingly there: one time the Violent Femmes are included and the next they give way to Hüsker Dü, and the Dream Syndicate replaced by Lou Reed, but “Lost And Found” remains there, immovable, like so many minor albums, which you know full well they are, but you can’t help but have deep affection for.
Much credit goes to the first side, of a beauty that is overwhelming just to think about it: “Last Time Around”, “White Lies”, “If Money Talks”, “I Really Don’t Want To Know”, “Blanket Of Sorrow”, and “Shop It Around”, one after the other are blows that knock you down without mercy and when you get up stunned, they are there to bring you down once more: Jason spitting blood into that microphone and blowing like an obsessed man on the harmonica; Warner spinning like a mad top and not missing a power chord; Jeff and Perry grinding a rhythm that gives no respite.
Certainly, one side is not enough to contain all the momentum these four madmen have in their bodies and that overflows at the starting of side b – the quickstep of “Lost Highway” – and in the beautiful farewell of “Change The Tune”; in the middle, yes, you can get up, and they even soothe your wounds with three great country ballads that if you have a heart will rip it out, like that “Pray For Me, Mama” from before, “Far Behind”, even more.
I confirm, Jason And The Scorchers is one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands you might lend an ear to in the blessed year of 1985 and I remain tuned into J&TS radio from Nashville, surely.
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In 1986 I didn’t have the slightest idea who Jason And The Scorchers were, but I read a review – either Eddy Cilia or Federico Guglielmi, no other chances, my record library at that time is almost exclusively their fault – of “Still Standing” which mixed things up between the Rolling Stones and Sex Pistols, maybe because of the explosive version of “19th Nervous Breakdown” or not, it doesn't matter, anyway I bought it without hesitation.
How much I liked it, back then, this album, how much I loved it and how much I still do, the solfa I talked about before, in short.
It was this way that, riding the wave of enthusiasm, I first went to recover an article by Cilia in the April 1985 Mucchio Selvaggio, then I rushed to Disfunzioni Musicali and got my hands on “Fervor” and “Lost And Found”. And I saw the light, which is not always a good thing, because in full light you see all the flaws that blind love hides from you.
With a soccer metaphor, Jason And The Scorchers at the height of “Still Standing” is like that team that plays spectacular soccer blindly against every opponent, finishes the first half 4 to 0 and in the second half merely manages the result and you, standing in the stands, get a little bit bored, even though you still have in your eyes all the beauty your idols have shown off in the first 45 minutes. Out of the metaphor, the side A of “Still Standing” is beautiful, truly beautiful: it’s true, you immediately realize that something sounds different, not out of tune, just different, maybe Jason, maybe Warner, maybe it's Jeff and Perry, but who cares in front of the sequence of “Golden Ball And Chain” with its almost gospel-punk stride, the hooks bordering on power-pop of “Crashin' Down”, the barrage of punches set in “Shotgun Blues”, that little gem that oozes parental wisdom and honey of “Good Thing Comes To Those Who Wait” and in closing the country and also punk gallop “My Heart Still Stands With You”; and if side B opens greatly with Jason and the others doing the Sex Pistols doing the Rolling Stones, it’s what comes after that with hindsight – translated, “Fervor” and “Lost And Found” sounding in my ears – doesn’t convince me much anymore, not even the assault in “Ghost Town”, as if Warner had turned the volume up too much, Jeff and Perry had followed him blindly and Jason was left stunned and undecided about what to do.
And yet, today, while I’m writing this stuff, I tell myself once again: to have more albums where out of ten tracks, more than half are so beautiful that you remember them word for word, note for note, even after almost 40 years have passed since you first listened to them.
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There's only left to say that the “Fervor” marked by EMI with “Absolutely Sweet Marie” opening, “Lost And Found”, and “Still Standing” are found in the double CD “EMI Years” which a few years ago you could practically get for free.
Tracklist
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