Brownsville Station: Air Special (1978)
Vinyl pride week continues its rainbow-pattern parade with this 45-year-old orange wax from Ann Arbor, MI’s favorite sons, Brownsville Station (here credited as just Brownsville), and let me tell you: over the past few years, I’ve had quite roller-coaster romance with this band.
After buying and discarding 1973’s covers-laden Yeah!, whose only saving grace was Brownsville’s only Top 5 hit, “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” I figured I was done with them until a cheap-o copy of ‘74’s School Punks teased me back, and another of ‘75’s fabulous Motor City Connection seduced me for good.
As a result, the core trio of vocalist/guitarist Cub Koda, vocalist/bassist Mike Lutz, and drummer David ‘H Bomb’ Weck (augmented here by second guitarist Bruce Nazarian) have joined my shortlist of pet underground/underrated '70s rock bands, though I’m not beyond ripping them a new one when they deserve it.
And I’m afraid I have to do that where ‘78’s Tom Werman-produced Air Special is concerned, because it shows a somewhat desperate band for whom novelty numbers like a tribal cover of Bo Diddley’s “Who do You Love” (*) seemed to be the only gateway to the charts, after their preceding, self-tiled album’s only modest hit, the ultra-corny “Martian Boogie.”
Oh, but it got worse -- much worse -- when the boys took a couple of ill-fated steps onto to the disco dance-floor on the God-awful “Never Say Die” and “Love Stealer,” before coming to their senses with in-character efforts like the hard rocking “Taste of Your Love” and trad-bluesy “Cooda Crawlin’.”
But, in the end, Air Special’s eleven cuts (ten if you discount the jazzy interlude “Air Mail Special”) delivered just two five-star numbers in the anthemic, shoulda been-a-smash “Waitin' for the Weekend,” and the growling “Fever” (**), both of which were sung by Lutz instead of the increasingly disinterested Coda.
By the time the album wrapped with the ‘50s rock-steeped “Down the Road Apiece,” Brownsville Station had sort of come full circle to their likewise-inspired debut album, No B.S., some eight years earlier, and so the time was ripe for them to call it a day.
And by the time Lutz and Weck revived the Brownsville Station name for 2012’s Still Smokin’, their most recognizable member, Cub Koda had been dead for a dozen years, having expired on July 1, 2000 after an up-and-down battle with kidney disease, at the age of 51.
But I’ll note, since this will be my final Brownsville blog, that Coda went on to record several solo LPs before hosting The Cub Koda Crazy Radio Show, and then contributing his expertise on blues, rock, and doo wop to numerous CD liner notes, All-Music Guide reviews, his ‘Vinyl Junkie’ column in Goldmine magazine, and the Blues for Dummies book.
Fare-thee-well, Cub and Brownsville Station -- it’s been a pleasure getting to know your music and history in recent years.
* Is it just me or does this arrangement sound just like The Bangles’ 80s chart-topper, “Walk Like an Egyptian”?
** Is it just me (part two) or was this the song that landed Weck the co-producer and engineering gigs on southern rockers Blackfoot’s Strikes album?
More Brownsville Station: No B.S., A Night on the Town, Yeah!, School Punks, Motor City Connection, Brownsville Station.
