History doth record that a very famous sportswriter (in times long gone by) would officially, each spring, kick off the first game of the baseball season--by standing up, turning to his compadres in the press box and stating simply, yet grandly: "Baseball, gentlemen..........baseball."

Okay, for all those among you who still "believe in the magic that can set you free".....

The Mooney Suzuki, gentlemen........The Mooney Suzuki.

(What? "Ladies" and Gentlemen? Blow it out yer P.C. ass. You seem to have forgotten this: "The men don't know, but the little girls understand.")

Had enough hyperbole yet? Oh, ya'd better chew carefully. We have a WAYS to go!

If you've drifted in here from elsewhere and have not yet read of my first encounter with these Heroes Of The Future, then do go back to my account of CAVESTOMP 99, Part Five and catch up. That piece was written immediately after my first Mooney Suzuki experience, and can hopefully convey what a kick in the stomach it actually was. If you HAVE already read it, then you'll want to note THIS little nugget, which I pulled (and hereby reprint with kind permission) from an interview by Ken Shimamoto at the I-94 Bar site:

SAM: Yeah, I just said that about [how] I wanna reach kids, and then I remembered at the same time, this guy that saw us at Cavestomp--in his 40s or something--wrote a thing about us on the Internet that was the best....we couldn't have tried to describe what we were doing better ourselves. He just GOT IT and not on an obsessive, Older Record Collector kind of level.....

TYLER: Although obviously he WAS this older record collector type, it was refreshing to see that he was more into the fact that he remembered what he was before he became the record connoisseur that he was, when he was young and when he had FIRST HEARD some of these bands like the Yardbirds or whatever, and how excited he was and how new and fresh it all was. This was back in the days when, say, disco was popular and to get into the Yardbirds and love that kind of music when he was a child or teenager is sort of like what we're trying to do, I guess. Whereas he had disco and horrible arena rock in the 70s, we now have Korn and Limp Bizkit.....

SAM: WHO?

Well, that'd be ME, wouldn't it. Nice to be appreciated by those whom you're appreciating. Though I did have a word or two with Tyler afterwards....concerning his placing my childhood in the wrong decade. No harm done. Then, as on stage, I knew just what he meant.

So what DO they mean? Oh, the temptation to over-intellectualize! To wax erudite. To go all Roger Des Swanns.....("...the blues came up the Mississippi River from the city of New Or-Lay-Awnnnn").....but I won't. I got away with that in the Cavestomp piece on account of my sheer spluttering glee at having seen a pure sugarflash of a set played by kids barely into their twenties.....(and one who yet is not!).....but you don't get away with that TWICE. So, some plain facts.

By the time I picked up a guitar and figured out which way you actually HOLD the f***er, it was mid-1968. There was a lot of really wonderful music around, to be sure, but it had begun to veer toward the pretentious. No problem there.....I'll defend the Strawberry Alarm Clock to the death, dopey clothes and all. Why? It was FUN. THEY were FUN. And as ridiculous as the lyrics may seem in the cold gray light of history, they too were FUN. Anybody see a pattern yet?

Only problem with the concept of PLAYING that stuff in public (as well as the requisite Hendrix, Cream, Doors, Airplane, etc.).....was that there was a certain Killer Attitude that that music didn't allow us. The 1964 Brian Jones was not on that stage. Nor was the 1965 Jeff Beck. Sharp Dresser 1966 Pete Townshend had left the building, and The Guy Who Would Write Tommy was wandering around, talking to himself. Again, NOTHING WRONG WITH ANY OF THAT. But, as we were coming up, we didn't really have the opportunity to dress like sharks and play like razors. Weird as this might sound, audiences at high-school dances in 1968 and 1969 had already had enough of Dirty Water and Let's Talk About Girls. Sad, eh? And four years to go till the release of the original Nuggets and re-legitimization, if there's such a word.

And by 1977-78-79, from the Jam through the Knack, it just seemed too CONTRIVED to make this sort of thing out of yourself. Y'know? It's hard to explain. So I skipped the skinny ties. Kept the same hair. (Yeah...like this hair would do anything ELSE.)

So ANOTHER twenty years go by and suddenly I'm faced with this bunch of kids who are DOING IT. NOT like it was a project for Anthropology Class, but like they had BEEN THERE, been frozen in a block of ice, and thawed out just in time to warp the musical history of the next century. It seemed REAL. And yet, a complete and utter sham. That in itself was the immense power of that Cavestomp set. You just didn't know whether to laugh or to scream. So I did both. For half an hour, without a break.

These kids have done a lot of homework. If you wanted to be a smartass, you could stand there and play Count The References. "Yeah--that's a Relf move." "Wayne Kramer." "Paul Weller 1976." But honestly, there's no point. It's too much fun. Like I said in the earlier piece, it's a big joke and we're ALL IN ON IT. In lesser hands, these ploys would be cannon fodder. ("Let's kill 'em! They stole some shtick from Iggy!!") But somehow it's okay. Brilliant, even. Nobody was ever fooled by James Brown being led offstage, then suddenly throwing the cape off and slamming back into the song. You KNEW it was bullshit. But it was GORGEOUS bullshit. And these guys will do the same thing for you.

So, here's how it goes, as far as I know: (and I'll let 'em keep the names they use) Sam, the singer, has a vision. Not really fully formed, but a vision nonetheless. Puts an ad up on the bulletin board at Other Music, looking for kindred spirits. (I probably saw it, too.....though it wouldn't really have stuck out from any of the others.) Among the respondents is John, who plays bass and is apparently about six and a half weeks old at the time, near as I can make out. He calls the number he sees on the flyer, and allegedly sells himself in the following manner: "I know I'm YOUNG, but...." To his credit, apparently Sam--instead of being too cool for the room, and saying "Go away kid, ya bothah me"--Smells The Teen Spirit (sorry!) that he's looking for, and figures what the hell.

They pull in a couple of other guys and record a demo or two, and cause an oddly instant buzz. I vaguely recall hearing their name back then. But it's just as well that I didn't see 'em at the time. Not that they weren't good--(who knows?)--but the thing is, this early incarnation of Mooney Suzuki sounds more like Velvet Television than what they eventually turned into. (You can hear this yourself, on their homemade 45 Tearing Me Apart.) Really nothing at all like the flaming buzzsaw they would later become.

Improbably, they find their missing link working at his parents' cider mill in New Jersey. And why not? After all, apples and Rock And Roll go all the way back as far as....as.....uh, well, never mind.

Tyler is a truly savage guitarist. No matter what he does, it works. In his fervor, he sometimes bends a note totally off pitch and somehow it's still perfect. He actually jumps into the audience SEVERAL TIMES in a set--which would normally be extremely annoying--but for him, it works. In a cutting contest I could play the little bastard under the table and still lose. I'd have to vote against MYSELF, in fact. He's invincible.

Same can be said about Will, the drummer.....who's in his early twenties, and looks it, UNTIL he gets behind those drums. At Cavestomp, I thought I was looking at a 14-year-old kid. Who still has that LOOK ON HIS FACE that every adolescent has the first time he grabs those sticks and starts hitting things. That look that says, "If I do not hit as many of these things as possible, as hard as possible, in as short a period of time as possible, Satan And His Legions will prevail over all the firmament." It's brilliant to watch. He always seems to be thinking, "I need more HANDS!!!!!"

Sam, on stage, is the coolest thing I have ever seen. A block of ice. And it's all a load of crap. Beautiful, Majestic, Towering Crap. When he takes those sunglasses off and steps out into reality, he's the nicest, most polite and even-keeled kid you'll ever meet. So much so that, if you are Deeply Suspicious Of Everything--the way I am--you'll wonder, just for a second, if he's laughing at you behind your back. ("Why, good morning, Mrs. Cleaver! That's a lovely dress you're wearing today!") I've decided that I don't care if he IS. It's good. It's all good.

John is a wild man. I have seen him fall down on his side and walk himself around in a circle, and never miss a note. Where does a kid his age (18) even LEARN that?

So, anyway, I write my little Cavestomp memoir, post it, and a couple of months later I hear from Will, in an e-mail which is headed "How much do we owe you???" Shortly thereafter I hear from Sam, similarly. And then, I note that--in April--they are playing at CBGB, headlining a bill that also includes the GREENHORNES--the OTHER big revelation from Cavestomp, and about whom I'll write more elsewhere. Suffice to say this is a show we can't miss. So we don't.

A few days in advance of the show, I get a copy of their self-pressed 6-song CD, which manages to capture all the power of their stage show. Fabulous. Sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel. Just perfect.

Sam has promised to put us on the list for the show. I protest--having made the erroneous assumption that these are just a buncha kids that are too nice for their own good--and tell him we intend to pay our way. He responds, via E-mail, "If you don't want to be on the list for our shows, then you'd better not tell us you're coming." Well, okay!

We get there good and early, and find out--of course--that we're not on the list. Ha! Good! We win! We pay, we go inside, and eventually run into Jon Weiss and Alex--both of whom are also big fans of both the Mooneys and the Greenhornes. We stake out an enclave along the wall. A couple of Greenhornes see us and wave. Patrick, the drummer, comes barrelling over and we exchange pleasantries. (Do remind me to write a similar gushing tale about the Greenhornes when THEIR album comes out--soon, I hope--because they deserve considerably more space than they're gonna get here. This ain't THEIR story, after all.)

Finally, Will arrives and comes over. I haven't seen him up close before now, and I don't recognize him. He looks his age. Behind the drums, at Cavestomp, under stage lights, he looked like he was 14 years old.

Sam's right behind him. Without the glasses. Well, him I recognize. He's incensed that we had to pay to get in. Both of them are extremely friendly and--again--so polite that you almost think they're sticking it to you.....but of course they're not. (Right??) Three bands later, they leap up and turn the stage into shredded wheat. This set is similar to their Cavestomp set (of course I don't really know the songs yet) but adds the Yardbirds' I'm Not Talkin'....what colossal nerve!....and yet they pull it off like it was their own song. Their between-song banter sounds like nothing so much as the Kick Out The Jams LP. No accident, I suspect. But as I said earlier: if you try to count references with these guys, you'll trip over your abacus and go flying. They smoked the place up, if you had any doubts.

Saw them again, in late May or early June, I think....at the Mercury Lounge. Here they come, carrying their gear THROUGH THE AUDIENCE.....(the "Merc" has no backstage or even wings)......brilliant.

They were even more powerful that night, as hard as it was to believe. John in particular was a virtual cannonball. Will was all over the place. And it was NOT November this time. Hot as hell in there. After they finished up, Will came over and asked how it sounded. He was wringing wet. I clapped him on the back and said "I dunno, boy.....I don't think you SWEAT enough." He made an effort to focus his eyes and said "Yeah, I think I do."

Well, at this point their "real" album, recorded for Estrus Records, is done, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. It's not due to come out till September 5, 2000. Will says he should have one for me sometime in July or August.

What happens next is both truly bizarre and wonderful. One evening in July, I'm sitting at home and the phone rings. It's my little teenage minion Eric, calling from the store, sputtering in glee. "The drummer from the Mooney Suzuki was just here! He left you a CD! Oh my God!"

Will, apparently, had taken the time and trouble to figure out where my workplace was--we had discussed this only in vague terms--and had popped in to surprise me, a scant 18 hours before piling into a hot van and leaving on a cross-country tour. How about that? And I wasn't there.

So the next day, I got the CD, put it in the machine, hit "Repeat" and let it play all day. (The last time I did this was in 1997, when I got Black Monk Time--so this is not exactly Faint Praise.) Boom. Bang. I tell ya. This music truly makes me feel like a kid again. Like I could actually pick up a guitar and bounce off some walls. Somebody stop me before I actually DO it. It wouldn't be pretty!

All the songs I recognize from their live set are on here, including re-recorded versions of most of the songs on the 6-track CD and singles. If I have one tiny little beef (and no one's ever accused me of Tiny Beef, hur hur) with it, it's that the recording doesn't have as much RAMALAM to it as the demos did. But the new stuff SOUNDS better. Hard to explain. The demos sounded like mud but, well, FLAMING mud. This is, remember, a TINY beef. On a scale of 1 to 10, the new album is only a twelve, as opposed to the demo's thirteen. Here's a picture of it so you can find it easily. It looks just like this, except of course YOUR copy will not DANCE. (But YOU will.)

Well, as I write this, the album won't be available for over a month. If YOUR calendar reads anything post-September 5, 2000, I recommend that you run screaming to your nearest discerning music shop and scarf one up. My record-store-workin' days are long gone and I am, regrettably, no longer able to block the door and FORCE YOU TO BUY ONE OR YOU MAY NOT LEAVE THE PREMISES. (Don't laugh too hard, High Fidelity fans. Many many copies of A Can Of Bees, The Pop Group, and Laughing Dogs would never have made it out the door without this particular method of, uh, "salesmanship." The customer would virtually always thank us later.)

Oh, yeah.....the biopic? It'll happen. Absolutely. And I'm thinking AHEAD. I'm bucking for the role of Tyler's dad. What? What? GRANDFATHER? Oh, all right. Jeez.