The Maggots – This Condition Is Incurable – Review

The Maggots

This Condition Is Incurable (Bad Afro)
by Jon Sarre

The front cover’s got the Swedskiis who presumably make up The Maggots clowning around in a cemetery (mebbe even that one in Georgia!) and one guy’s got a jacket on like the one Fonzie usedta wear and another guy’s sportin’ Ponch’n’Jon highway patrol shades, so mebbe yer excused for thinkin’ this is gonna be stupid… But lookie see, it ain’t, or if it is, it’s really fuckin’ cool unidimensional stupidity, like stickin’ a cherry bomb up a hamster’s ass. A trio of Gyropeons punchdrunk on old timey Amerigarage unknowns (and semi-knowns like DMZ and The Flamin’ Groovies, who both get cover song treatment here) formin’ foreign syllables and three chords into shakedown cold sweaters’n’the occasional Stonesy paleboy soul turn copped offa anonymous ’60s Jerkwater USA high school dance band combos. I figure at their dumbest, they can kickdown their Faust-on-the-dirt-track yarn, “Chicken Race With Satan,” with essential subject matter tacked on via Larry and the Blue Notes’ “Night of the Phantom” 1966 no-hit only-released-cuz-Tim-Warren-says-so, or cop an idea from my fave Portuguese TexMex Roky and the Aliens coverband, the Tedio Boys, on “She’s From Outer Space,” or the ultra-gross-out-but-thanks-for-the-thought “I Wanna Be Your Maggot” and make it good like the two-time loser with mebbe a statutory rape charge hangin’ over his head (“Cat Fight”) sung to the tune of damn-near any number of Chuck Berry licks ripped off by Johnny Thunders or rip-off the Sonics (or Stiv Bators or Coco Cobra and the Killers) rippin’ off no-relation-to-Chuck, Richard Berry’s “Have Love, Will Travel” (“The Maggot Man”). They not only get real good but real gone like Elvis figured was the way to go, and if it’s good enough for the King, it should be good enough for you, kid.
(www.badafro.dk)