Smokin' Dave and The Premo Dopes
Huh?
Disgraceland Records
By William Michael Smith
 When you're stuck
in time
Over-exposing the sublime
I suspect there will never be another band like Knoxville's
Smokin' Dave and The Premo Dopes. A power trio in the loosest
sense of the term, The Dopes define for me underground rock (disdaining
the more familiar label head Dope Todd Steed lampoons in his
indictment of the music scene in "Alternative"). But
the Dopes never bothered to call their thing anything but rock
n roll. Yes, for anal-retentive classificatory-driven music
geeks who like to argue this pointless crap, they were post-punk
and post-New Wave. Derivative? Guilty as charged, although
they chose to "derive" from the likes of Frank Zappa
and Captain Beefheart and The Clash rather than from Gram Parsons
or Elvis or Uncle Wilco. Truth is (and their albums bear this
out in spades) the Dopes could give a damn about labels and influences
and music geek masturbatory pseudo-intellectualism. With utter
clairvoyance, they saw, distilled, and reported how the whole
thing was going somehow horribly, horribly wrong in the early
'90s.
Like a manicured front lawn
Rock n roll's got too much lipstick on
Like a trimmed and cut front lawn
That you're afraid to walk on
("Play me some alternative, man!")
This final reissue of The Dopes' trilogy, 1992's Huh? shows
what an intoxicating contradiction The Dopes were with their
smartass wit and biting humor and jazz school training and indifferent
disdain for the evolving alt.rock and alt.country scenes. They
formed a beautifully cavalier rock band that seems so unselfconscious
and natural that, listening to the album in the dark, I visualize
a band of loose, gangly ragdoll puppets dancing in an uncoordinated
herky jerk to strobe lights as they flail their instruments.
As always with The Dopes, we get huge doses of sardonic Zappan
social critique and political commentary supported by odd, angular
progressions that whisper rather loudly "Mothers of Invention!"
While The Dopes could no more write a hit than they could be
mistaken for a hit-machine manufactured, choreographed boy band
like In Sink, they can author underground anthems of the highest
magnitude. Level the corporate radio playing field with equal
airtime, and "Gimme Keith Richard's Blood" could go
platinum. Set purposely to a Stones groove, this one goes for
the lyric jugular.
I wanna feel like I've lived a million thrills
But my body and mind ain't the kind that wanna pay those bills
I wanna see 20, eatin' bean sprouts and tofu
But every now and then I wish I'd been livin' like a rock star
do
Gimme Keith Richard's blood
I wanna get drunk without drinkin' that much
Gimme Keith Richard's blood
I wanna get high, don't wanna do all the drugs
Humor is a difficult element to incorporate into popular music.
Most attempts result in a cringing lameness, but The Dopes manage
somehow to utilize the humor element often and effectively. And,
like Rodney Daingerfield, they are as likely to be the object
of the joke as is some innocent bystander or obvious easy target.
The Dopes even critique their own love lives and, unlike Jackson
Browne, see no need to be coy or metaphoric.
Ain't gonna use my right hand
For love anymore
Second best, it's still less
I ain't settlin' for
Ain't gonna use my right hand
For love anymore
The Dopes, from their clear vantage point in Knoxville, were
one of the first bands to lampoon the glitzy self-important pretentiousness
of Nashville, long before it became one of the de rigeur
pandering chauvinisms of the alt.Texas movement. The strummy
"You Must Be From Nashville" takes a vicious swipe
at the Nashville ethos.
Got a thing for celebrities
She knows a ton of these
She once went out with old Buck Owens
Her mom got rich through divorce, of course
Also got a thing for celebrities
She once went out with old Buck Owens
You must be, you must be
You must be from Nashville
You must be, you must be
Straight from that Cashville
In an aside, Steed expands on his worldview with "when
I look at this girl it makes me wish/that everybody would just
be poor/now I ain't no commie, I'm American for sure/but when
I see the wealth of corruption that diseases the people of this
land/it almost makes me wish this Appalachian boy would abandon
the free market economy for which it stands."
While The Dopes maintain legendary status in Knoxville and
Steed continues to gig regularly either solo or with other band
projects like Apelife or his recent whoever-can-play-tonight
Suns of Phere ensembles, time passed The Dopes by as grownup
responsibilities intruded and they scattered. The world is a
more mundane place without them. Huh? makes for a beautiful
and fitting headstone on their grave.
*www.disgraceland.com
Contact William Michael Smith at wms-at-rockzilla.net
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