True believers

The Oblivians bow before Berry

by Carly Carioli

I'm not sure exactly what kind of salvation the Oblivians -- a group from Memphis usually referred to as garage, trash rock, or blues, but whom I prefer to think of as the next rock-and-roll band, period -- had in mind on their latest disc, . . . Play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron (Crypt). It is, as advertised, a soul/gospel album -- the product less of a love of God (of course) than a love of old rockin' '40s and '50s gospel albums by the likes of the Reverend Utah Smith and the Reverend Louis Overstreet. Listening to their version of the traditional "Live the Life," with reverential organ and blurry, lumbering distortion up against the soulful, invigorated (and quite possibly drunk) moan of Greg Oblivian, you'd be hard put to distinguish between the two affections. Then there's the lyrics -- "You've gotta live the life you sing about/In your songs" -- which, when you consider what the Oblivians have been singing about for the past couple of years, ain't exactly church music.

One of my favorite Oblivians songs is "Drill," from 1996's Popular Favorites, which is about a guy who gets off on drilling holes in the walls of cheap motel rooms and watching adulterous couples fuck. On the one hand, it's a celebration of crass voyeurism, and there is probably no thrill truer to the heart of a rock-and-roll fan than that one. On the other hand, it's not even the singer's fantasy: it's Chuck Berry's. The line "I found my thrill/I found my drill" plays off Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill," but the title, music, and crime pay tribute to Chuck and his own indictments for criminal voyeurism at his estate, Berry Place.

If you always knew that what Chuck really wanted was way more sinister and kinky than anything white-bread Richie Cunningham could have been thinking about, then you'll understand that if the Oblivians have any fantasies at all, they concern wanting to be Berry. It's implicit in their songs that Berry and rock and roll are all about raunchy, knuckle-dragging, shitbag stuff. The Oblivians' task, then, has been to unlock rock and roll's inherent crudity and translate it to now -- to make sure that in 1997 (or whatever year it happens to be), rock and roll remains true to its eternal promise of living down to the standards of community indecency, however deep they may plummet.

Then again, rock-and-roll salvation has never been pretty, and the Oblivians' primitive roots and noise, their blotto, poontang-crazed jive-ass ruckus full of sleaze and squalor, has been no exception. Their 1995 debut, Soul Food (Crypt), set them instantly apart from the rest of the trash-rock underground. It teetered on the verge of chaos, whooping and hollering like a mutoid cross between Little Richard and the Sonics, with a little Ramones-reduced C&W thrown in for good measure, and production levels sporting the fidelity of a vacuum cleaner or a really bad muffler. All three band members (that would be Eric, Greg, and Jack Oblivian) played guitar and drums and sang -- nobody has ever played bass. In the process they ripped through Lightnin' Hopkins's "Vietnam War Blues," the Dave Clark Five's "Anyway You Want It," and -- a couple of years before Trio enjoyed the Volkswagen commercial revival of "Da Da Da"-- that group's "Ja Ja Ja" and "Sunday You Need Love," turning rinky-dink German elementary-school new wave into blitzkrieg teenage tantrums, thus repaying the debt that became outstanding when Trio covered "Tutti Frutti" on their 1983 swan song, Bye Bye. And that's not even mentioning the Oblivians' own classics: "I'm Not a Sicko, There's a Plate in My Head" and the lascivious three-chord howler "And Then I Fucked Her."

In between Soul Food and a solo venture by Jack Oblivian came 1996's Popular Favorites. This was a shattering dose of maximum R&B with a little sensitive tough-guy balladry on one song, "Bad Man," that probably could have been a hit for someone; a dance-craze number you could actually dance to ("Do the Milkshake"); and scads of drunken bad-ass dementia that by turns suggested Jerry Lee at his bawdiest ("You Better Behave"), Phil Spector at his most virile ("Strong Come On"), and the Stones at their garagiest ("Trouble").

Which makes . . . Play Nine Songs all the more awe-inspiring. (When the band played here last week, they omitted the album from a set that, though it was a blast, Greg afterward characterized as "the worst show we've played in a long time.") Invigorated by the church-organ blasts of New Orleans eccentric Mr. Quintron, Greg pleads and preaches through three traditional tunes and Jesse Young's "Mary Lou," plus five of his own -- including the opener, "Feel All Right," which sounds as if it had been recorded at the altar of the wildest tent revival in Tennessee. If rock and roll's got any sense left, it'll go down and get baptized.

Carly Carioli can be reached at ccarioli@phx.com.