When Supersuckers get their wings

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

There are those with loaded guns and those who dig, as the wandering stranger likes to say, and in their many years as America’s most notable Motorhoids, the Supersuckers have done a little of both—years in the hole but years in control, too, extricating their band from industry tangleness and making a self-sufficient rock machine that can indeed cover Ice Cube and Outkast and Jimmy Reed if it decides to. Last full album was 2003’s Motherfuckers Be Trippin’—rock, ass, bubblegum and bruises—and discography since is heading into shit-hits-the-fans territory with EPs recorded live at a New Orleans Whole Foods, live at Bart’s in Boulder, live in San Diego and live in San Francisco, too, and if arranged on four stereos playing simultaneously they will bring the Supersuckers to temporary corporeal form right inside your personal entertainment pentagram. Last leg through California they were doing split sets—one rock, which is where they started, and one country, which is where they exercise, and which they put together on an old LP that was a weird mix of Ventures, the Seeds, Morricone, Duane Eddy, Iggy Pop (“Roamin’ Round,” written from the other side of the passenger’s glass) and Santo and Johnny with Eddie Spaghetti’s oddly direct and effective lyrics—the Westerberg school of aw-shucks sophistication, odd only because guys with cowboy hats and sunglasses like Eddie are more often spotted roadying for Hawkwind or riding A-bombs 50,000 feet directly south. If rock & roll records aren’t selling this year—as these wandering strangers like to sing—then Supersuckers records will still be doing something. Understand—this is the part where we dig!

THE SUPERSUCKERS WITH WAYNE HANCOCK THE BLUE CAFÉ | 201 THE PROMENADE | LONG BEACH 90802 | THE BLUECAFE.COM | SAT 8PM | $12 | 21+

Tags: blue cafe, Long Beach, Music, the supersuckers