None of the Above: Shoulders Story
Michael Slattery, Todd Kassens and company belong in the pantheon of great Austin bands
Whenever I do one of my “Greatest Austin Bands of All Time” lists- about every three or four years, it seems- I forget about Shoulders. I forget about that hot July 1990 night at Wetlands, when a Hole in the Wall band not only killed in New York City, but hacked the body and dumped it in the East River. This insanely-caffeinated hobo circus band was Waits Against the Machine on one song, Captain Beefheart backed by U2 the next. The crowd went apeshit on a waltz about a crazy uncle that made the flowers grow, and I was right there in the middle of it.
That’s really the test of a popular local band. How do they do on the vicious road when very few people know who they are?
What other Austin band could open for the Pogues and hold their own? (OK, I’ll give you the Hickoids). Or play to thousands of fans every night in France, where their near-perfect debut LP was released in ‘91 by the Musidisc label? Trashman Shoes peaked at #2 on the French rock charts, unable to topple Nirvana’s Nevermind.
When Shoulders played Chicago that year, I wrote an advance story for the Sun-Times, then watched them like a proud papa, as they lay waste to a packed, delirious, Lounge Ax. We go back.
In 1986, Shoulders won the first Corky’s Star Search, a battle-of-the-bands series I put together at the Continental Club while I was a columnist for the Austin Chronicle. You couldn’t really make any money off the Chron, who paid a dollar an inch for articles back then, so the best you could hope for was enough to cover the speed it took to write it. I kept the door at Star Search, which, with $1.50 cover, sent me home with about $40 after I paid the sound guy. We’d have three bands every Monday night, with the winner advancing to the finals.
The first Star Search championship came down to a choice between Go Dog Go, who I leaned towards, and Shoulders, who the other judge Mike Hall (Wild Seeds/Texas Monthly) preferred. “They have the songs!” Hall insisted, and I was thinking, yeah, but my band has Jennifer Cook. I was thinking like a promoter, not an artistic assessor. The poppy Go Dog Go was a bigger draw than the artsy theater rats with the Casio on an ironing board. But Mike’s commitment won me over.
The Shoulders that made their club debut in 1986 was not the one that would storm the airports and hotels of Normandy and Dunkirk five years later. Having just changed names from Early Humans (with Shaky Graves’ mom Amparo Garcia-Crow on bass), they were an idea band with little sonic thrust.
The band’s core has always been vocalist Michael Slattery, a New Orleans native, and Todd Kassens of the Dallas suburbs on guitar, who write all the songs. But the addition of drummer Alan Williams and bassist Chris Black brought the necessary power to drive the carnival in their minds.
The next time I saw Shoulders was at that infamous Wetlands showcase at New Music Seminar, when they went from “hey, cool” to “holy shit!” I’ve seen only Joe Ely and the Butthole Surfers come from Austin to cause such pandemonium on the road. So why is Shoulders often passed over in the pantheon of great Austin bands?
I think it’s because they weren’t part of any scene, they were their own island. No other Austin band reminds you of them. And you can’t align Shoulders with one club. They belonged to the Cactus, run by their one-time manager Griff Luneburg, and to the Hole In the Wall, and La Zona Rosa, and Liberty Lunch and the Continental, where they held a 30-year-anniversary residency in 2016. Tonight they’re playing the Reunion of Electric Lounge, which closed near this date in 1999. The fun never stops, it just slows down.
“Tell us more about Corky’s Star Search”
As Crappy Star Search winners, Shoulders received an assortment of prizes from Chronicle advertisers, including $200 in merchandise from Strait Music. The day after Shoulders won, I got a call from Strait that there was a strange band there that claimed to have store credit. Shit, I thought the ad rep set that up!
Corky’s Star Search was as low-rent as a contest could be, but it went on for three-four months because Corky needed the cash. The other winners were 2 Nice Girls, who beat out Chlorine in a controversial decision (the drummer was Louis Black’s girlfriend), and I think it was Agony Column or Tyrant Swing who took the final crown. Not many people came out on Monday, and there was some bitching about the judging process (I ended up being the only one), but the main reason I ended the series was that I hated being the doorman/bouncer.
Mark Pratz made it clear when he gave me Monday nights that I had to handle everything besides the bar and the sound, and I was not to call the police if trouble broke out. Clubs can run afoul of the TABC if there are too many “calls to service.” One night a metal band from San Antonio brought about a dozen fans, who came in the backdoor during load-in to skip the $1.50. They were butthairs from the start, heckling the other bands, who had their fans, too. A fight between two fans of opposing bands broke out, and I had to try and break it up. Then I was on the ground, looking up at a brawl. “Call 9-1-1!” I shrieked to the bartender, who didn’t move- the rule. “Do you want to go to jail!” I tried to shout some sense in the situation. They finally stopped, but 15 minutes later, it was on again with the two original guys. Their friends were able to pull them apart, and the show continued with menacing glares from across the club.
The San Antonio band was actually pretty good, the best of the night, but there was no way they were gonna win.
Here’s a good story on the Electric Lounge by Jeff McCord of KUTX.
Saw them at the Cactus one night years ago. Was it JD Foster who dragged me along? Yet, it's like a dream. Sometimes I wonder if it's a night I dreamed up. But no! Trash Man Shoes . These guys!!!! Now I know. It was real.
And to get your $1 an inch from the Chron you had to chase down an elusive Louis and his pica ruler on Friday afternoon.