Overdub the chirping, the rustling, the campfire crackles with the soundtrack to Magnolia Thunderpussy. The clickety clack of hipsters rifling through rows of records and CD's. Customers firing off litanies of must-have records. A derelict wind of words exchanged as paychecks get cashed on rare gems, and behind it all the kick drum of a song taking shape, a hip-hop groove, a heavy metal anthem, and enough blood and guts rock-and-roll to satisfy Mick Jagger.
The 55-year-old Kubat, owner of Magnolia Thunderpussy, has made a life of selling music. The store whose name comes from Indian legend or an acid-laced vision, depending on whom you talk to, has sputtered, evolved, grown, shrank, flourished, and withstood the onslaught of changes the music industry has undergone in the last 34 years, from the birth of compact discs, to the advent of hip-hop and MTV.
It has evolved from a small family-owned-and-operated shop stocking a couple hundred top-selling Billboard artists like Led Zeppelin, Elton John, and Aerosmith in the early 1970s, to a veritable warehouse storing colossal racks of tens of thousands of records, hundreds of T-shirts, posters, pins, and even video games. Kubat says you can find anything from "Abba to John Zorn" on the shelves, and a quick jaunt through the store will send you past Goths armed with fists full of metal, and indie kids going ga-ga over the new Bright Eyes album.
And the records keep spinning.
Wailing guitars kicked-off Bird on a Wire. The juxtaposition of Spurgeon’s twangy vocal work laid-over a 1990’s post-grunge groove works delightfully.
After more arcane tax information for the crowd from Spurgeon, the band launched into Liver Spots. The track has a full sound, with the two guitars trading riffs back-and-forth, with a bass groove that chugs along nicely.
The funkiness of Pixie Dust was next, with Spurgeon reciting the lyrics in an almost spoken word cadence. The tempo was ratcheted higher midway through, as they let loose and rocked.
“I started up Used Kids in 1986,” remembers sole remaining owner Dan Dow. “Ron and I both worked for another record store called Mole’s… I could actually briefly explain why it’s called Used Kids.” True to his word, Dan goes into a short explanation of Mole’s relationship with a record store down the block specializing in new releases, School Kids, where customers could take credit from for trading in old records at their shop. “Anyway, School Kids moved into an upstairs level spot and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you guys move downstairs for Moles and then people will get this concept better?’ Fortunately for me, the guy who owned Moles didn’t want to, but I did and Ron was working there too, so we both went down and literally overnight set it up and started.”
Thanks the Crispy Nuggets/Medical Records collaboration, we have the possibility to check that EP plus seven unreleased tracks the band recorded at the same time. "Visions","Shattered Glass", "Ceiling" and "Believe Me" were the tracks originally on the 12" and they were a mix of upbeat new wave with synthpop inserts where the guitar arpeggios, Dana melodic voice and synth catchy lines were the main elements. Also the unreleased tracks follow a similar path and it's a fortune that songs like the sensual "Why Baby", the minimal synth melodic "Nine-7-9" and "Like A Man" (lovers of Kas Product don't have to miss these tunes) and the mysterious "Hey You" won't stay in a dusty closet no more.
We think of Ohio as a Rust Belt state, and most of its great rock acts have a Rust Belt feel—Pere Ubu’s industrial Cleveland, Devo‘s deadpan robot town of Akron, Guided by Voices‘ Dayton. But Ohio borders Kentucky and West Virginia: if you ever do contract work for the state of Ohio you may be asked to fill out an affirmative-action form that says whether you are “Appalachian.” Mays, born in West Virginia, told an interviewer that she heard “a lot of bluegrass on the radio where I grew up,” and you can hear its twang in her voice, on “Sad,” and in Harshe’s voice on “1≠1,” from He’s Drunk (1988): “Can’t get one to equal one, I never seem to get what I want,” that song goes, as if even the laws of arithmetic conspired against her.
