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I found Tod A.'s band Firewater in 1996 on the tail of their debut album Get Off the Cross, We Need Wood for the Fire. Instantly became one of my favorite bands. As I often do when I find something I like, I dug around for more of it, and somehow, found Tod A.'s previous band, Cop Shoot Cop. I have no idea how this happened in the pre-internet era - not a ton of people know Firewater, but even fewer know CSC; maybe my record store guy hipped me (RIP Bobby). Anyway, CSC was a NYC noise rock outfit featuring two basses (one tuned high, the other low), a drum kit of scrap metal, a pair of loopers, guest brass and, aside from this album, no guitar. The two bands were keystones of my life's soundtrack from 1996 to the mid-2000s, Firewater for when I was feeling respectably seedy, the sludgy snarl of Cop Shoot Cop for when my bile was overflowing.
Somewhere along the line, CSC fell through the cracks. Firewater did too, more recently, a casualty of the fact that I mostly listen to records these days and only the first album is on vinyl. I did my periodic look around Firewater reissues the other day (if you know Tod, tell him to press albums two through five already, damn) and history repeated. I remembered Cop Shoot Cop, and learned Cleopatra reissued my two favorite albums - Ask Questions Later (1993) and Release (1994). It's the '90s all over again. Or, I guess, more accurately: nothing's really changed ("Surprise, Surprise," the opener on Ask Questions Later, could easily have been written in 2001, 2016, 2020, and this week). How depressing. Maybe that's why all these songs are so boozy and hopeless. |
