Boxcar Willie/The Plasmatics - Creem

King Of The Road
Boxcar Willie

New Hope For The Wretched
Beyond The Valley of 1984
Plasmatics

Joe (Noir) Fernbacher, Creem, 9/81

With a dervish-like roll of rheumy eyes and a hearty “Whuuu-woooo!!!” the latest late night mahatma of K-Tel Kulture, Boxcar Willie, has crossed the storm-tossed Atlantic and ensconced himself in the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of America. Thirty, forty, sometimes even 55 times a day, Boxcar’s cherubic face, looking much like Woody Guthrie after a particularly violent bee attack, is seen hawking with tilt-headed lovingness, the songs that have made him America’s favorite hobo in England. Hey man, half a million albums sold ain’t bad. Unfortunately, along with all of this newly found fame, the legend of Boxcar Willie has acquired the ugly gristle of celebrity rumor.

Psst! Cum ’ere. Did you know that Boxcar Willie is really Sid Vicious? No? Sid didn’t die. You didn’t know that? Well, as the tale is told, Sid was crawling through Kennedy airport one day when he was accosted by a band of short Oriental types sporting pencil-thin moustaches and foot-high pompadours. They were chanting, in an undulating volume, “Ohhh, Rose-A-le-EEE!!!” All in some kind of strange new Mandarin brain control language they’d seemingly just learned from the United School of Disassociated Languages (student loans available for those who qualify...).

Vicious was last seen being led out into the sweltering brown maze of a hot summer night, presumably under the control of these strangely wailing dwarves. Well, after a few weeks inside a snot-flecked purgatory--actually just a little garage just outside of Paramus, behind an abandoned Meineke muffler shop, right across the street from a satellite store for REPO auto auction warehouse (y’know--all through, all done)--Sid, now sporting a two week beard, an extra 200 lbs., and a nifty red ’n’ blue railroad bandanna, walked out into the blazing sunlight and immediately began “Whuuu-wooooing” his way to the gray environs of England, where he instantly became a wild-eyed wanderer of that country’s vast prairie lands.

Of course, by now you’ve guessed that those diminutive moustachioed Orientals were in fact the latest hybrids of K-Tel Kulture. Long rumored, the merger between the forces of Rev. Moon’s Moonies and Slim Whitman’s Slimmies has, in fact, happened. A significant event to be sure. Especially significant to those heretofore insignificant bands of K-Tel worshippers whose only inebriations have been grainy reruns of Veg-O-Matic, Ginsu, and Wok commercials. Worshippers of late night schlock whose minds are filled with shimmering visions of Jackie Gleason’s famous “Chef Of The Future” sketch--the moment of origin for the entire K-Tel Kulture.

What with Slim’s merger with the Moonies and the burgeoning incidence of Boxcar Willie lookalikes ambling through the malls and airports of America, the K-Tel junkie no longer has to be ashamed of the imitation lamb’s wool coat on his back; or that Select Tool hidden in a leather case on his hip; or that...

King Of The Road is the title of Boxcar Willie’s contribution to this new and expanding cultural milieu. Composed of 20 songs taken from his humorous Column One Records--the best of those being Daddy Was A Railroad Man and Boxcar Willie Sings Hank Williams And Jimmy Rogers--this album has all the repeatable songs that’ll bring smiles to any hobo as he rides the lodi through the great wastelands of America. Amazingly effective are Willie’s renditions of “Boxcar Blues,” “Hank And The Hobo,” and, of course, those rousing numbers from the TV commercial--“Move It On Over,” and “Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” If you believe that, you’ll believe Nixon was innocent.

(DISSOLVE)

(FADE IN)

The room is dark.
Wind whistles past the window in a hush “wooo-wooo...”
Suddenly there’s a massive flash of lightning.
The room is momentarily ablaze with light and shadow.
Seated in the center of the room is a heavy-set, motherly woman, wearing a skin-tight t-shirt with “Poseidon” emblazoned on the front and a pair of frilly red ’n’ black filigree panties with a huge signature etched on their sides. That signature--Shelley Winters.
The room darkens once again.
Thunder rolls down the street like a Don Carter bowling ball deep in its strike groove.
Another lightning flash.
The portly figurine picks up a bubbling beaker from the floor. Hesitates a moment. Gulps down the contents.
Darkness.
A voice cackles.
Silence.
A voice whispers over and over again: “Oh no, oh yeah, oh no, oh yeah!!!”
Another flash.
The portly figurine has vanished.
In her place stands a buxom young woman in [tight] leather pants, black strips across her hard nipples, and a two-tone Mohican style haircut. In her hand, a sledgehammer and a framed picture of TV personality [ha-ha] Tom Snyder. She begins to chant “oh no, oh yeah, oh no, oh yeah” then smashes the picture.

(SLOW FADE)

While Boxcar Willie and Slim Whitman are busy creating the guts and glory of the K-Tel Kulture with their past hit compilations, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics are giving said Kulture a noble, and often savage, sense of aesthetics.

Both of the Plasmatics albums are K-Tel hits (that is, possessing K-Tel consciousness), wallowing in the klieg light misogyny of mainstream hitdom.

Further cementing their right to K-Teldom is their amazing track record with the Tomorrow show. It’s nice to see ole Tom getting his nut off at some ex-porn queen and a pair of absolute stun-guitar sahibs as they destroy cars, TVs, etc. in a small studio somewhere high up in the skyscraper heavens of whatever “C” it is Snyder works for.

To hear “Butcher Baby” and “Won’t You,” in between Wendy O’s attempts at intellectual coherency--nice bit of contradiction there Wendy, but--is a late night watcher’s delight. I’m just waitin’ to hear “Plasma Jam” and “Sex Junkie” on Carson...

Whether these three albums are good or bad is absolutely irrelevant. The fact that they “are” is testament enough to the power of K-Tel Kulture. The fact that these three albums make sense when played track to track is testament to either this reviewer’s complete madness or his surreal cramps--hey, with us K-Tel guys it’s ALWAYS that time of the month. Oh yeah, just for reference sake the big “underground” rage for us K Tellers is Dennis Weaver’s portrayal of the Night Attendant in Touch Of Evil...

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