Unsung Album #3: “The Katies” (Self-titled)
Any time someone gets kicked off a tour, it bodes well.
Example: KISS were kicked from the opening spot on numerous tours in the very early ’70s because they were blowing the headliners off the stage and making them look bad. The same thing happened to The Katies. They were kicked from a tour with – I THINK – the Verve Pipe. (Forgive my lapse in memory – we were friends, it wasn’t a big deal at the time, I’ve since relegated that tidbit to the cut-out bin of memory. If you don’t know what a cut-out bin is…then, oh, Jesus. I’m old.)
I guess at at the time it wasn’t a big deal because, well, it wasn’t a bit surprising. The Katies were like a force of nature live. I had the privilege of seeing them many times during their first-album tour in 1999, and it was one of those moments where you were so purely happy to be in the presence of such an amazing fucking rock band. It wasn’t intellectual, it wasn’t thought-provoking, as such – it was just radio-friendly, hook-drenched rock the likes of which America hasn’t seen since Cheap Trick’s heyday in the late ’70s.
It’s miserable to me that The Katies only released one record simply due to label negligence. It’s not a new story, but it sucks every time – after signing them and determining in about, oh, four weeks or so, that, even though the single was charting, they couldn’t figure out a good method for marketing the single so it caught on even faster, Elektra dropped The Katies and a second record never happened. (Though if “Sideways,” an oft-played live song that would have been on the second record, is any example, it would have blown the doors off.)
But – be thankful. The one and only Katies’ album is out there and available on iTunes. Buy it. Seriously.
It should be noted that The Katies weren’t necessarily “cool.” Their first single was called “Noggin’ Poundin’,” and while it had a chorus that got inside you like heroin, that’s a dumb title. In fact, I wrote it off before I ever heard The Katies, and quickly devoured my shoes once I actually heard them. One of the hookiest songs on the record has an equally jackassy title – “She’s My Marijuana” is maybe the lamest song title I’ve ever heard. But the song? All hooks.
That’s the thing about the first Katies’ album: the songs that don’t club you over the head with their hooks make sense in the context of so many songs that do. The Katies knew how to balance the melodic harmonies with the straight-up riffs that made the floor underneath you beg for mercy. And I miss them.
