Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 9. 1ts May 1973

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen play Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favourites

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen play Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favourites

A collection of roadside rockers from a truckstop band whose forte, if it can be called that, is skat cum Big Bopper vocals over an undistinguished rhythm backing.

They impress as a bunch of local lads getting together Saturday nights down at the local cafe in some small American town straddling the highway, serving up generous if mediocre helpings of 50's rock, fast-moving country numbers with lots of busy pedal steel, the jukebox playing "Truck Drivin' Man" and to show their influences a nicely sentimental laid back "Kentucky Hills of Tennessee" (sic) which comes on much like the Band's "Rocking Chair".

Commander Cody, whose contribution is a few Jerry Lee Lewis piano riffs, has gathered together seven airmen from various lost planets but for such a tribe it's hard to see what they all do. Bobby "Blue" Black is up front a lot on pedal steel though he's no Sneaky Pete or Bill Keith; Andy Stein is likewise on fiddle and sax.

They've produced a record all about trucks (no!), guns and love, whose saving grace is its lack of pretension and obvious sense of enjoyment. The highlight is "Mama Hated Diesels" where they send up themselves and their genre beautifully with a tale of an anthropomorphic truck which splits a marriage right down the middle, "Mama hated Diesels so bad/I guess I knew it was something to do with Dad".