Nine Pound Hammer – Live at the Vera – Review

Nine Pound Hammer

Live at the Vera (Scooch Pooch)
by Jon Sarre

An hour plus worth of post-humously recorded reasons why I never really paid much attention to these country hucksters weaned on Grand Funk and AC/DC before (and, quite possibly, a coupla examples why Blaine Cartwright got sick of leavin’ his wife at home and started Nashville Pussy). Yeah, Blaine’s pre-Pussy vehicle was Nine Pound Hammer and maybe Scott Luallen’s irritating, cheeky hick imitations inspired him to do all the fuckin’ singin’ himself next time.

It’s not that this caught-in-the-act in Amsterdam ain’t the balls draggin on concrete live document it’s supposed to be, it’s just not all that interesting. The originals are all breathless beer’n’speed fueled takes straight outta Hee Haw with rednecks surfin, courtin’, car wreckin’, headbangin’, shootin’ drinkin’, smokin’n’screwin’ like the Dead Milkmen’s burnout south of Ma(n)son-Dixon cousins. If it was all a joke, it’s not really a new one, just long. With the exception of the sidelong “Train Kept a Rollin'” (nods to Aerosmith, Vanilla Fudge, blah, blah, blah), their covers (Sam the Sham, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and, uh, Golden Earring) hint they shouldn’t’ve been writin’ songs in the first place.
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