Sounds From The Junkshop #94 - Kitty Hudson

 

"Bud, Jack, speed, pills, loose girls, cheap thrills, I've got 24 hours to kill..." - Kitty Hudson - 24 Hours To Kill

If the history of Sounds From The Junkshop should have taught you anything dear reader, it's that while some of the bands we cover on here had a brief moment in the sun only to disappear back underground soon afterwards, there were also a fair few who never really graduated beyond the toilet circuit and remained a secret known to only those who bothered to seek them out. Similar to our earlier columns on the Dead Pets and Zombina & The Skeletones, Kitty Hudson are another one of those bands who your correspondent pretty much happened upon by happy accident. To the best of my knowledge, they never made the pages of Kerrang or Classic Rock and at this point we were still a good decade or so away from magazines like Vive Le Rock, which would probably have been more their natural territory, from existing. But the truth is that they put out a brace of pretty damn awesome albums in the mid-noughties and I think that they deserve a Sounds From The Junkshop column all to themselves rather than being crammed into the Footnotes section (speaking of which, tune in tomorrow for the latest one of those)

Hailing from Croydon, home of Captain Sensible, the two mainstays in Kitty Hudson were frontman/guitarist Richie and bassist Al plus a Spinal Tap style procession of drummers - the group would later be rounded out by guitarist Keef, also of the excellent Dead Identities (another band who I'm sure we'll cover on here in due course). Richie had started out in a band called the Waterbratz in the mid-'90s who also featured three of the reprobates who would go on to form the excellent Drugdealer Cheerleader (again, more of whom in a future SFTJ). Kitty Hudson seemed to crop up a fair bit on the Wildhearts featuring Five Miles High website and had a few tracks featured on a lot of the glam punk compilations put together by the likes of Screaming Tarts and Bubblegum Slut that ended up in my collection around this time which I think is where I first discovered them.

The group's debut album Three Chords And The Truth was a barrelling slice of Thunders/Stiv style snottiness powered along by tunes like MIA, Homer J and Everybody Loves You When You're Dead (not to be confused with the Stranglers song of the same name…or the Babysitters one for that matter...actually feck me, THERE'S a band we need to do a Garbage Days Revisited on at some point...sorry, I’m getting distracted here, back to the main story) with their Johnny T influence being brought to the surface with a cover of the Heartbreakers' I Wanna Be Loved. The following year's Fiends In Low Places saw a couple of the tracks re-recorded with better production with some other good new 'uns like Numb Dumb Scum and If You Can't Live Without Me (Then Why Aren't You Dead Yet?). There was a definite hint of the Yo-Yo’s in there as well in the simple “booze, riffs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll” approach which was a definite plus.

Now theoretically, Kitty Hudson could possibly have hitched a ride on the whole post-Darkness/Crue biography sleaze rock revival wave but despite a good reputation in the capital, it didn't really happen and I think I can probably reason why. While so many of the clueless trend-chasers who latched on to that scene were spending more time investing in Boots hairspray and spandex than actually writing any tunes that didn’t sound like cliched fourth division Pretty Boy Floyd soundalike rip-offs, it looks as though KH just looked at the whole charade, shrugged, said fuck it and kept on with their switchblade-sharp Thunders/Dead Boys approach ie same influences as a lot of the original '80s glam metallers came up with but taking it off in a much more ferocious and enjoyable direction.

2005's 24 Hours To Kill was another good 'un, right from the moment the title track leapt out at your throat from the speakers with others such as the I Fought The Law soundalike Bought And Sold, Blue Cross Sail and Rock Motherf**ker quickly becoming live favourites as well. Unfortunately while the group were quickly gaining converts, press acclaim outside the fanzines wasn't forthcoming with the likes of Classic Rock et al instead concentrating on atrocious Vauxhall Conference level hair metal bandwagon jumpers like Red Star Rebels and Jack Viper, both of whom promptly vanished straight back to obscurity after about three months of infamy each. Ah well...

The group would press on for a good decade or so after 24 Hours To Kill but gigs were becoming rarer (to be fair, the group never seemed to venture outside the capital much in the first place although I saw them a few times at the sadly missed Trashstock festival in Nottingham on a few occasions) and I don't think any new material was forthcoming (or if it was I can't seem to find it on my Ipod). The last time I saw the band was at a venue in Camden around 2014 or so (I really want to say it was the Flowerpot, Jay from Beans on Toast's old venue, but I seem to remember it being somewhere around the Chalk Farm end of town?) where the group were joined by then-new drummer Robin Guy, formerly of Rachel Stamp, Antiproduct, GMT, Sham 69 and about fifty other bands! They put on a good show that night with all the old favourites present and correct but a year later, the group would abruptly split after a good decade and a half.

Richie, Keef and Robin would go on to form the Fiascos with Spizz bassist Ben Lawson who put out a trio of great singles (Built For Speed and Destroy The Radio being particular highlights) before Robin's cancer diagnosis put the project on hold for a bit - thankfully he's now recovered and is back up drumming with Sham. There was talk of an album coming out before the lockdown put the kibosh on that but as this column went to print, news broke that the band would be playing their first gig in many moons next week in Horsham. ‘Baht bluddy time as we say up here in Yorkshire.

I'll hold my hands up and say that I've been out drinking with Richie and Keef a few times during my London days and even shared a stage with both of 'em at different times for acoustic gigs in the past and they're both absolute diamond blokes - it's always good to meet people in bands you like and discover that they're genuine nice guys on top of being top drawer rock 'n' rollers. Sadly I'm not sure that any of the three Kitty Hudson albums are still available (no sign of 'em on Bandcamp or Itunes) but if you can track 'em down somewhere then they're well worth a listen for some enjoyable razor-sharp zero-f**ks-given sleaze-punk. In the meantime, fingers crossed with the Fiascos now back in action that their album finally drops soon. Rest assured a review will be incoming here as soon as it does.