Tuesday Tuneage

Phantom, Rocker & Slick - "Men Without Shame"

1985

A quick history lesson: The Stray Cats were that neo-rockabilly band in the eighties that were half as good as The Blasters. They had a monster album, Built For Speed, that landed them hit singles and a big presence on MTV. Then they stuck around, causing my brother - who had dug them - to yawn and say: "They were fun for one album." They are now known as being the band Brian Setzer got his start in. He's had quite the career since, but I stick with what I wrote fifteen years when I requested that he should "please jump, jive, and wail yourself onto that late-night-eighties-music anthology infomercial that is your destiny."

Earl Slick is one of those guitarists who wasn't Stevie Ray Vaughan that sessioned on David Bowie albums. He did not appear onstage with Bowie when I saw him in St. Paul in 1987. Those guitarists were Carlos Alomar and Peter Frampton.

Phantom, Rocker & Slick appeared when the the two lesser-known Stray Cats, Earl Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom, joined forces with Earl Slick. Why? Maybe it was because the kids of America's heartland were clamoring for a Marvel Team-Up of the Stray Cats rhythm secion and a random Bowie session man. Or maybe record company execs were hoping for returns similar to the wildly successful supergroup HSAS a couple of years earlier. (Yes those last two sentences exist solely to see if you are paying attention.)

And maybe, just maybe, these three guys liked playing in a group together. That shows in "Men Without Shame", an underrated Q-98 staple from late '85 and into '86. My college buddy OC claims to have listened to the album this tune is on in the last year. That claim is probably true. Wikipedia claims the band wrote the tune in ten minutes, a claim I want to be true. Wikipedia also claims these guys stuck around for a second album, but there's only so much I can buy from friends and Wiki, you know?