Sounds From The Junkshop #114 - Motochrist

 

"Folsom cures to prison/Now I'm stuck in Pelican Bay/There ain't no way now, that I'm goin' out this way..." - Motochrist - Hang 'Em High

I've mentioned a few times in SFTJ about bands who emerged from inferior '90s sleaze bands but Motochrist are a bit of an exception in that their frontman Danny Nordahl had already chalked up two great bands prior to getting this bunch of reprobates together. In the late '80s, he was bassist with the Throbs whose The Language Of Thieves And Vagabonds was, as we've discussed, a great doomed slice of gothed-up sleaze rock sunk by a mixture of Birdland/Gay Dad levels of over-hype and landing just as the grunge nuclear winter hit. After that, he would move on to New York Loose, another great band whose switchblade sharp street-smart Noo Yoik punk would have probably seen them go on to be chart-conquering megastars in pretty much any era except the one they actually emerged in when Britpop was the movement du jour.

Following the break-up of NY Loose and singer Brijitte West relocating to England, Nordahl and his NYL bandmate, guitarist Marc Diamond, would move west to L.A. and put Motochrist together with guitarist Ricky Vodka and drummer Chad Stewart (a man who seemed to be on the cans for nearly every L.A. sleaze band that passed through Bradford Rio's in the mid-noughties - Love/Hate, Faster Pussycat, Bang Tango, the Tracii Guns version of L.A. Guns...the list goes on and on, trust me). Motochrist really could've been a sleaze-rock-by-numbers travesty but, similar to Spiders & Snakes who we covered on GDR a couple of weeks ago, these veteran sleaze rockers were thinking outside the box and they came up with one of my favourite albums of 2004 in the process.

The album in question was Greetings From The Bonneville Salt Flats, a brutal slice of riffed-up scuzz rock which absolutely eviscerated most of the competition. Right from the churning riff and Lemmy-esque vocals of opener Hang 'Em High, this one grabs you by the neck right from the word go and refuses to stop until the final strum of the jokey honky tonk country strum of closer Three Sheets To The Wind ("This guy says 'hey man, I fucked your mom'/I said 'shut up dad, you're drunk'"). One part Motorhead, one part Ramones, one part Zodiac Mindwarp and one part Love/Hate at their heaviest and scuzziest, it's an absolute beast of an album and the likes of Someday, Six Shooters, Six Strings And Six Packs, the pure Ramones style pop of Real Fast Car (they also do a competent cover of da Bruddas' I Just Wanna Have Something To Do on there) and the groggy El Diablo are absolute beasts of songs.

Motochrist are still a going concern but they've only put out two albums since ...Salt Flats although both are well worth checking out - 2010's Corvette Summer has the snarling Snow Beast and the brilliantly OTT Big Love while 2015's Chrome has the storming I Don't Ride, Bitch, the snarling Brunch, Nap And Complain and the surprisingly anthemic closer If You Leave Me Now. So, hopefully by that reckoning we'll have another one surfacing soon? Fingers crossed...

To the best of my knowledge, Motochrist have never toured over here in the UK which is a bit of a shame. I remember they were due to come over for a few gigs just after I moved to London including sharing a bill at the sadly missed Gaff venue in Holloway with Brijitte's new band the Desperate Hopefuls (featuring Richie and Keef from SFTJ alumni Kitty Hudson) but for whatever reason the gig and tour both fell through. I dunno if it was complications or there was still some animosity there over the break up of New York Loose (I do remember there was a song on the second Desperate Hopefuls album From NY With Love called Typical Drunken Loser (In A Band) which lyrically sounded very much like a bite at either Danny or Marc but I've neither heard this confirmed nor denied).

I won't lie, I miss Motochrist - I'm guessing they're still an active proposition (unless Covid has put them on hiatus) but all of them seem to have about five bands on the go so I dunno if that kind of limits their productivity a bit - as well as Chad's various other bands, Danny is also in Taime Downe's current Faster Pussycat line-up and a reformed Throbs while Marc also plays guitar for the Dwarves. Either way, I think it's safe to say that in depressing times like these, the world needs more scuzzed up Motochrist goodness to make it seem just a little bit better. All three of their albums plus the 666-Pack EP come highly recommended. Cue up a shot of your favourite poison and enjoy.