Lazy Cowgirls

A Little Sex and Death (Crypt)
by Jon Sarre

As punk’s mainstream profile sinks further into the gutter from whence it came and the trend sniffers pronounce the beast dead so they can go back to dancin’ their empty lives away (designer drugs don’t carry the guilt in the morning the way heroin does), it’s goddamned appropriate that an outfit that has steadfastly ignored the fads and what’s hot lists since, well, since back when Kurt Cobain was just another high school loser, should release a new record. The Lazy Cowgirls, son, maybe you’ve heard of ’em: born and bred like Johnny Cougar in the heartland of America, they fight for truth and record deals and stuff in the cesspool that is Camera Country, Los Angeles, California. Ya listen to ’em and ya realize who the Supersuckers listened to the day before they bought their Les Pauls. Here is the band that put up some of the numbers that today’s pre-fab punkers connect their riffage to. The Cowgirls are legendary, like the Heartbreakers, right, only more prolific and unlike Johnny Thunders, lead guy Pat Todd’s ticker ain’t so callused that some sweet young thing with a nice ass and a wicked mind can’t crush it ‘tween her thighs. Ya got tales of bad luck, hard luck, no luck, hittin’ forty and still chasin’ the big one and wonderin’ whether yer own mortality is gonna get you first. To wit, the subjects of countless blues songs, the refrains of a million guys in tens of thousands of bus stations, everyman who can do no more than look his maker in the eye and say “I gave it a shot,” all phrased by a guy who sounds like the sand is runnin’ quicker than he can unload the stories up his sleeve, accompanied by buzzsaw Gibsons which punctuate his sentences with yet another five second solo. Sure, I know you’ve heard this all before, but somehow it makes a difference when it comes from the master’s mouth.