A Walk in the Sun

"Come on, come on, come on take a walk in the sun!" That is the lyric, in its entirety, to the Hazzard Hotrods tune "A Walk in the Sun." The songs on this release, Bigger Trouble (a reissue of the inessential in shorter form Big Trouble), were supposedly spontaneously created by a group including Robert Pollard, Mitch Mitchell and Tobin Sprout who jammed at a Dayton video store in 1990. Pollard's lyrics were inspired by the video boxes surrounding them, the titles all shared with films. In some cases, Pollard is able to create something from the title. In others, like this, he is not, content to chant the title as part of an admonition to the listener. It's bland bar band music that wouldn't keep you from wandering out mid-set after you finished your drink.

The film itself is a 1945 World War II tale starring a young Lloyd Bridges. I'm not so dedicated to this effort that I'm willing to watch an old movie to see if there's any possible Pollard relationship to be found, but I will point out that the tagline for the film, as reported on its IMDB listing, is "THEY FOUGHT BEST WHEN IT WAS HOPELESS!," which is just about the best way to sum up the commercial-appeal-be-damned mindset of Pollard and Co., who churned out memorable music when no one cared. Consider songs like this, however, to be the exception, earning the disinterest of all but the most dedicated fans.

39 Steps

Apparently, the songs on Bigger Trouble (originally issued in a more abbreviated form on limited-edition vinyl as Big Trouble) were improvised on the spot in a store called MC Video, the band obviously inspired by the racks of VHS boxes surrounding them. In this case, the Alfred Hitchcock film "The 39 Steps" spawned an odd song that begins with Mitch Mitchell's slowly descending bass line and Robert Pollard singing, somewhat tentatively, "I walk in I see you. I touch you, I feel you, you touch me." Mitch quickens the pace a bit and Pollard picks up on it, with more confidence now singing "I want you, you want me" as the things are driven into a steady, rocking 4/4 beat with the bar band strums of Tobin Sprout's guitar and Larry Kellar's drums. It's anybody's guess if Pollard's largely unintelligible vocals have anything to do with Hitchcock's tale of an innocent man wrapped up in counterespionage and intrigue.

The band does pick up on Pollard's chant of "39 steps," filling in behind his vocal as the song comes to a close. By the time they settle into a groove and get to that point, one might be forgiven for thinking some thought actually went into the song's creation. It's a lo-fi creation that, if it was ever more fully explored, might have yielded something useful. As it is, it's the sound of friends jamming in front of a boombox, given a public airing because of the appeal of everything else they did subsequent to that jam session.