hickey: the best album you’ve never heard

Photo by Dave Morffy, courtesy MattyLuv.com.

I’ve always said that if I were to start a record label, I would make sure that my first release would be to reissue Hickey’s self-titled debut album, one of the best records released in the ’90s, and one of my favorite punk recordings of all time. Fortunately for all of us, a label called 1-2-3-4 Go! Records did what I was too lazy to do last year, and unleashed Hickey’s 1st Album on the world. But some things never change: just as the album went almost completely ignored when it was originally released in 1996, the reissue was overlooked by all of those unlucky enough to miss them the first time around.

Hickey were from San Francisco, and were led by Matty Luv, who died in October of 2002. (Check out this great tribute site to Luv, with lots of music.) Hickey released a number of 7-inches during their brief, three-year lifespan, but it’s that full-length album that so succinctly and wonderfully defines their genius. It’s 11 songs in 37 minutes, with one song, an operatic finale detailing the entire history of the world (the actual CD contains an amazing illustrated booklet with an apocalyptic drawing for each lyric), clocking in at 24 minutes. Ten songs in thirteen minutes for the rest, but what a packed thirteen minutes they are. (The album was originally released on Probe Records, and you can check out three Hickey songs here, just scroll down.)

The Hickey boys did not believe in choruses. Or verses. Or bridges, for that matter. Instead, their songs are musical streams-of-consciousness: hook with snarling vocals, another hook with sweet vocals, a 15-second instrumental bit, yet another hook, the end. It’s an incredibly ambitious songwriting style, with enough catchy bits and hummable melodies for at least two or three albums packed into two or three songs. There are some choruses — they were crazy, but not that crazy — but they often appear in unexpected places, and the songs are so compacted that you can think about blinking and miss ‘em.

Take “Basic Tips for Hunting Squirrel Success,” which totals 42 seconds in length, twelve of which are taken by a vaguely Middle Eastern guitar intro. After that, it’s a race to the finish, with a maddeningly fast tempo that’s off-set by a ridiculously catchy melody, with Luv hollering, “I’d really like to know,” before the song fades out into a sampled PSA outro. (The succeeding tune, “Sean’s Mohawk,” follows a similar pattern in 57 seconds.)

There’s such a great mythology to Hickey, as well. I first heard about the band from my friend Patrick Gough, who used to drum for Pitchblende, which released records on both Jade Tree and Matador (the other members went on to form Turing Machine). When Patrick first told me about the band, he lead off with a Voodoo Glow Skulls anecdote, which should be etched into the annals of music history.

The Wikipedia summary of this story is good and to the point, so I’ll quote them:

Probe records released a 7″ which was made to look as if it were a split between Hickey and the Voodoo Glow Skulls. One side was actually Hickey playing the song “Food Stamps and Drink Tickets” and the other side had members of Hickey playing a trumpet that was stolen from Voodoo Glow Skulls over the playback of answering machine messages left by Voodoo Glow Skulls members and Epitaph Records employees demanding the return of the instrument. The 7″ also falsely had the Epitaph Records logo on the back as Epitaph had no part in the release.

According to the zine included with the 7″ the two bands played together at the now closed Nile Theater in Mesa, Arizona. Matty Luv, singer of Hickey, made disparaging remarks about Epitaph Records and the commercialization of punk. After members of both bands had a confrontation, the venue owner ejected Hickey. In response, Hickey stole a trumpet out of the Voodoo Glow Skulls van.

After receiving threats on their answering machine, the band returned the trumpet. They released the Voodoo Glow Skulls & Hickey with a zine chronicling the whole affair.

You can actually hear the song on this Hickey MySpace page.

My favorite songs on Hickey’s 1st Album are: “California Redemption,” which opens with a great line (”You don’t need a doctor/ [UNINTELLIGIBLE]/ You just need to be siiiiick”), and then tears into an impossibly catchy, cheery and powerful tune; “Stupid Sun,” a song that I swear Supergrass must have ripped off at some point (I love the really quiet, almost introspective “underneath the stupid sun” part); and “War of the Super Egos,” which is ridiculously epic despite lasting only one minute and 42 seconds.

In its entirety, the album is an unheralded and undisputable masterpiece. Imagine a feistier Minutemen raised on speed metal, pop-punk and maybe Thin Lizzy. It’s one of my favorite records of all time, and I implore — nay, BEG — for you to give it a spin.