There are certain bands - and I know every city has them - that you really had to have lived in a certain city at a certain point in time for them to penetrate your consciousness. Scruffy the Cat was most certainly one of those bands, and since I grew up in their city (Boston) in their decade (the 1980s), their name instantly calls that place and time to mind. To be honest, I don't think I could tell you what they sounded like, beyond a vague "rock" descriptor, but listening to WBCN and college radio, reading club listings, and shopping in the city's finer used record shops, I know I heard and read their name (and their music) time and time again over the years. Whatever the KCMU DJs thought of old Scruffy (and it's nice to see at least a few people dug 'em), it's heartening just to see that their record made it all the way over to Seattle, got a little bit of airplay, and that the band was even "welcomed" by KCMU to a show at the Backstage. (Oh wait, I guess I just disproved my original thesis. Well, I'm very happy to see that Scruffy the Cat made their way out here and penetrated a few consciousnesses west of the Mississippi.)
The band reunited briefly a couple years ago to raise money for frontman Charlie Chesterman's cancer treatment. I haven't been able to find much news about Chesterman in the past year, so I hope all is well. Best wishes from Seattle, Charlie!
"Honestly... this is some lame ass music. But I'll play it under the guise of variety." "No catnip for you. And I shall take away your scratching post. This is one cat I like." "What? No McCaughey writing credits?" "Boy, these guys ROCKED!" "Yeah, but nothing so spectacular that hasn't been done better already." "Like the sheep song, right?" "Or 'Hey Bop a Rebop.'" "Oooh, 2 vs. 1! You guys are so tough." |
A little internet detective work, combined with reading between the lines in our DJs' comments, leads me to believe that this is not the first LP copy of Sandra Bernhard's double LP Without You I'm Nothing to grace the shelves at KCMU. There's no date on this record, but it was originally released …
It's hard to know where to begin with a legendary rabble-rouser like Jello Biafra (still rousing the rabble with his new band Guantanamo School of Medicine, whose White People and the Damage Done came out this year - actually, that band name and album title probably tell you a lot more about Jello …
