For the Cheater Slicks It's Still About Sex, Violence and Comedy

Boston 1992. Dinosaur Jr. had signed to a major label, hometown heroes the Lemonheads released their breakthrough album It’s a Shame About Ray and Nirvana were playing the MTV Music Video awards.

In a big college town where everything was about grunge and the CMJ music chart, times were tough for the Cheater Slicks , three low-rent scuzz-rockers in love with 60s garage, the Stooges and the Cramps. Even the fact (or because of it) that GG Alllin’s brother Merle played on their debut album didn’t get them any love outside the local ‘weirdo’ scene.

Releasing an album of obscure garage rock covers on a small Australian label called Dog Meat didn’t help matters.

But the record Destination Lonely actually proved to be a fantastic album of lonely, garage gems and drunk punk blues. Long out of print it is about to be reissued on another Australian label Desperate.

The band ending up ditching Boston for Columbus Ohio, another college town but one more suited to their lowbrow tastes. They continued to release a string of incredible albums on labels such as In the Red and Crypt , worked with Jon Spencer and developed a cult following across the US and Europe. Even after a brief hiatus after drummer Dana Hatch suffered a heart attack the band continue to record and perform

Dana talks about the record and the time back then.

Noisey: The name ‘Destination Lonely’ comes from the stomping 1966 Huns song that you covered on the album. Does that represent the sentiment of the band at the time?

Dana: Absolutely. We couldn't get dates. The three of us just sat around drinking every night. The girls in Boston were into smacked-out indie rockers. We all had big Elvis-style sideburns, which couldn't have helped. So when we began assembling the album the themes of loneliness and desperation kept coming up so it became kind of a concept album.

Dan Clowes’ cover illustration of the sweating and creepy loner guy is perfect for the record. Was he commissioned specifically for it?

He was but it was all his idea. He modeled the cover after a Nat King Cole album Ballads of the Day. We thought it was beautiful, just perfect.

The album includes covers of the Lost Souls ‘This Life of Mine’ and the Mood’s 1966 track Rum Drunk. What did you know of Australian music at the time?

We knew about the better-known stuff like Q65 and Missing Links and we were Scientists fanatics. Then Dave Laing from Dog Meat sent us a cassette of more obscure stuff and we picked those two songs for a single.

How did you hook up with Dog Meat?

We always put our address on the back of our records and Dave contacted us that way. He wanted a Troggs cover for the Groin Thunder album then he wanted us to do a 45 of Australian 60s punk covers. We'd been recording a lot of covers and a few originals just to get a feel for recording as a three-piece so we sent him everything and most of it became Destination Lonely.

It was recorded in 1992. What was your situation like then?

We recorded the tracks in 1990 and 91, all before Nirvana exploded. Our situation in Boston was dire. We had no audience and the bands we played bills with hated us. There were various oddballs who were into us but we went to Seattle for a week in 1992 and were much more accepted there. In 1994, when we were on In the Red and working with Jon Spencer, there was some major label interest. Byron Coley and Don Howland were writing pieces on us for big magazines and In the Red got a development deal with Warner Brothers so it was a heady time.

‘Time and Again’ has a real emotional edge and sense of heartache and then there’s the song ‘Murder’ which is almost comedic. How were you guys approaching songwriting at this time?

Same as we do now. Tom comes up with a chord progression and we bang away at it until it sounds like something then whoever's going to sing it, Tom or I, writes the lyrics. Tom's songs tend to be more melancholy and reflective, like Time and Again. I'm more of a wiseass, I've never written a wholly serious song. A good lyric to me has sex, violence and comedy in equal measure, like a Russ Meyer movie.

‘Murder’ has become one of your most well known tracks. What is the story behind that?

We'd written the music and a guy named Bill Sutherland was singing for us at the time and he called it “Moron's Moon”. When we kicked Bill out, Tom and I agreed to share vocal duties. When Tom asked how we were going to write lyrics, I told him it was easy and wrote the words to “Murder” and “Bruno's Night Out” in five minutes off the top of my head. Of course, that was a total fluke. Ever since then, writing the lyrics has been the hardest part of the process. Murder was always the most popular song live. We would use it as a club against audiences who were ignoring us.

You had a heart attack. Where were you when it happened? Did you know it was a heart attack when it was happening?

I'd started passing out at shows and doing coke to get up on stage. Then one day I was at home, feeling weak and short of breath and when my hands and feet fell asleep I knew what was happening and told my wife to call an ambulance. What was odd was that I was wide-awake, alert and a little stoned through the whole ordeal. I kept thinking about mundane shit then reminding myself that I was dying. Afterward word spread quickly about it, condolences poured in and the weekly free paper wrote about it but I was still alive. So I felt like a ghost for a couple months. I lost weight, started eating healthy and exercising, laid off the white stuff and when I started playing again I had more energy than before. So any change was for the better.

The album has been out of print for years. Mikey Young gave it some nice reworking. What’s your take on the final product? I like the fact that there’s no nostalgic liner notes.

I love how it sounds now, much more in your face. For us, it was definitely not an era to be nostalgic about. We were barely scraping out an existence in a city that didn't give two shits about us. In a few years we'd be travelling the world and partying like rock stars but not then. Commentary sucks the very life blood out of rock and roll; I've come to believe from watching so many documentaries where you see a few seconds of exciting footage then five minutes of some old fart reminiscing. The music always speaks for itself.

'Destination Lonely' will be released on Desperate records May 30.