A strange coincidence got me thinking about this…
Last night I was at Maxwell’s in Hoboken for my friend Brian Musikoff’s art opening. While mingling I ran into Pete Martinez, drummer of The Coffin Daggers. He was telling me about a great rockabilly show they had done somewhere in Ohio and how pleasantly surprised he was by the turnout. This lead to a brief discussion about the long, underground history of rockabilly.
In specific we talked about psychobilly acts like Reverend Horton Heat and an old favorite of mine … Elvis Hitler. I had gotten to see the band back in the early nineties at a bar somewhere in NJ. Later on last night—with no prompting from me—my friend Bill Hamilton of Beelmedia mentioned Elvis Hitler’s ‘Green Haze’. It was a brilliant tune where the words of the ‘Green Acres’ theme were set to the music of ‘Purple Haze’.
This strange coincidence got me thinking about what might have happened to this psychobilly phenomenon. So I hit information goldmines like Wikipedia and MySpace. They were formed in mid eighties as the vehicle for the musical vision of Jim ‘Elvis Hitler’ Leedy (vocals). In the band were Damian Lang (drums), Warren Defever (bass) and John Defever (guitar). They toured all over and released three albums before disbanding in 1992.
There were several reunions in 1998, 2003 and 2004. Other than that, not much has been going on. Although I did stumble across their MySpace page where they talk about their 23rd anniversary show in Detroit. That was held on June 30, 2007. Sorry I missed it. But then again … I was nowhere near Detroit on that day (or ever). But I do plan to keep an eye out for any future movements.
And I’ve long since lost my copy of ‘Disgraceland’. If anyone knows where I can get a copy of that or ‘Hellbilly’ (1989) or ‘Supersadomasichisticexoialidociuous’ (1992)—perfereably on CD—please let me know. Accroding to the Elvis Hitler MySpace page; they got none!
See Also:
Elvis Hitler
The Coffin Daggers
Reverend Horton Heat
Beelmedia
