aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
#017– The Creamers – ‚I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick’ (Fierce Recordings ’89)
Hello friends,
as you might already have gathered, quite a lot of the singles which I chose for this series, the ones I consider to be amongst the best ones ever issued, I first heard on John Peel’s Music. Now, even if not all of you have followed Peel as religiously as I have done, you will surely know that his musical tastes often were somewhat, let’s say, difficult to accept by the average listener. ‘Obscure’ was a word which didn’t exist in his vocabulary, but it surely existed for record companies/distributors/importers … consequently it wasn’t always that easy to get hold of specific records, at least not in the German diaspora where I grew up.
The thing is: there seems to be a linear ratio between the obscurity of a record – or a band – in the 80s and the lack of information about it/them on the internet as per today. You would imagine every bloody little thing to be available online by now, but this is not always the case, I found.
Today’s band, The Creamers, are a suitable example: I wish I were able to tell you more about them, apart from the fact that by now they are being considered as one of the best “second wave” LA/West Coast punk bands of the 80’s and 90’s. Comparable to The Lazy Cowgirls (in fact the bassist and the drummer eventually became Cowgirls), but with the distinction of a great female vocalist (Leesa) and female guitarists (Rosa and Judy).
These days you take this for granted, of course, but in 1989 “girls on guitar”, especially in the punk scene, by and large still were an anomaly … perhaps this is why The Creamers blew me away the way they did. This and the music, of course, them churning out their brand of Ramones style gut-whirling, ear-rupturing brand of punk rock was just unbelievable!
So, it might come as a bit of a surprise, that my choice for today (again a B-Side: what is wrong with me?) is a little more melodic perhaps, although not lacking at all in toughness:
mp3: The Creamers – I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick
The band went through many changes and put out many more records, but this single – and the album it came from (‘Love, Honor & Obey’) is always what I think of when I think of The Creamers. A great band and if you love old school punk rock with scalding female vocals, this one’s for you!
And if it was, well, that’s what the comment section is for!
Enjoy.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 