That bizarre discretion makes his takes on “Come On Little Mama” and “Hey Excessive Faculty Child” much less troublesome than, say, the Stray Cats’ “She’s Horny +17,” which far too eagerly broadcasts its lecherous designs. These historic re-enactors from Massapequa have been taking rockabilly again into the High 10, however lesser-known bands just like the Blasters and, particularly, the Cramps have been cratedigging for left-of-center inspiration and placing their very own indelible stamps on previous blues and rockabilly numbers. Behind the Magnolia Curtain, although, seems like an album that might solely have been made in Memphis by artists steeped in native lore, by of us who drove by the boarded-up Stax constructing every single day, who possibly ran into Furry Lewis sweeping up on Beale Road, who knew the place all of the our bodies have been buried. It’s full of huge concepts, however by no means sounds brainy or summary. It’s at all times particular, at all times purposeful, at all times lurid. Behind the Magnolia Curtain kicks you within the head and the intestine, after which it kicks you within the ass.
There’s an intimacy with the supply materials, but additionally a way of immense risk. Falco invited members of the Tate County Mississippi Drum Corps as much as Memphis to play on the document, and you may hear their booming bass drums and slithering snares on their model of R.L. Burnside’s “Snake Drive” and Ary Barrosso’s “Brazil.” The latter is without doubt one of the most lined songs of the twentieth century, however that bouncing refrain of drums, together with Falco’s marblemouthed croon, completely transforms the melody. This melding of punk and fife-and-drum blues has impressed locals for years, together with one-time Panther Burns guitarist Lorette Velvette (“Come On Over”) and the Oblivians (“I Could Be Gone”).
Tough Commerce picked up Behind the Magnolia Curtain, and shortly the Panther Burns have been on the highway greater than they have been in Memphis, with a lineup that modified nearly each night time. A couple of members performed just one present, others even much less. The official checklist of gamers previous and current consists of old-timers like Burnside, the Memphis Horns, Teenie Hodges of the Hello Rhythm Part, and the Bar-Kays’ Ben Cauley, together with youthful artists like Jim Duckworth (of the Gun Membership), Jim Sclavunos (Teenage Jesus & the Jerks and later the Unhealthy Seeds), Alex Greene (Reigning Sound), Roland Robinson (who wrote Rod Stewart’s hit “Infatuation”), and plenty of others. Chilton left the band not lengthy after recording Magnolia Curtain, however his brief tenure invigorated him: You’ll be able to hear him tinkering with these concepts all through his profession, particularly on his 1979 solo debut, Like Flies on Sherbert. Discovering intention in inscrutability, he solid a means ahead.
For Falco, it was unimaginable to maintain that chaos of prospects, and never simply because the musicians in Panther Burns couldn’t assist however hone their chops. People get used to loud and unhealthy, they regulate to the din, so the seen turns into invisible as soon as once more. His subsequent albums, together with 1987’s wonderful, Chilton-produced The World We Knew, burrow deeper into his personal persona, which is eccentric and mysterious in a particularly Southern means. He left Memphis for Europe within the early Nineteen Nineties, maybe with the concept the easiest way to grasp your own home is to go away it, but he stays intently related to that metropolis as a soapbox historian, at all times beating the drum for the forgotten and the never-known. With Behind the Magnolia Curtain, he confirmed generations of locals how they could rediscover and redefine Memphis music, how they could draw again the curtain as soon as extra.
