Customer Reviews

Smokin' In The Boy's Room: The Best Of Brownsville Station

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This band led by rocker & writer Cub Koda is known primarily for their hit single and teenage anthem "Smokin' In The Boy's Room" (hence the title of this disk). However, the band is more than just a one hit wonder. This motor city band combined a healthy dose of humor via Cub Koda with some punkish blues/rock to form a lethal combination. The music sounded like a combination of other Detroit bands such as Alice Cooper mixed with the blues/rock of the early J. Geils Band. Koda's influences are early rockers like Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and others along with bluesmen like Slim Harpo, John Lee Hooker and Junior Parker. The band released six albums during the seventies mostly on small labels. None of the individual albums are currently available on compact disc. The band consisted of Koda, Michael Lutz on rhythm guitar, bass and vocals, Tony Driggins on bass before Lutz switched over and first T.J. Cronley and then Henry Weck on drums.

The set contains 4 non-lp tracks which were issued as singles and are rarities. The set also contains a number of crunching covers like "Jailhouse Rock", "Road Runner", "Rumble". "Let Your Yeah Be Yeah", "Barefootin'", and "I'm The Leader Of The Gang." Koda's wry sense of humor and stage banter can be witnessed in such tunes as "Kings Of The Party", "Mama Don't Allow No Parkin'" and the John Lee Hooker rewrite "Martian Boogie". It sounds as if he were an influence on Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band or vice versa.

The sound and liner notes are excellent from Rhino as usual. My only complaint and the reason I did not rate this higher than four stars is that the disk is only about 65 minutes. Considering the original albums are all out of print Rhino could have at least utilized the entire time available on the disk. Cuts such as "Be Bop Confidential" and "Sweet Jane" were left off among others and could have easily been added to fill out the remainder of the disk. If you enjoy your boogie ragged and with a dose of humor this set is recommended. Fans of Motor City rock and roll will also find much to enjoy. Note that the original version of "Smokin' In The Boy's Room" betters Motley Crue's by far.

I have read the others reviews with great interest, but would like to add some comments of my own.

I grew up near Flint Michigan in the late 60's and early 70's, and BVS would play a venue called Sherwood Forest on a consistant basis. They played alongside such notables as Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Tea Garden & VanWinkle, Argent, Mike Quatro Jam Band, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Catfish Bob Hodges, Tower of Power and many others.

But the star attraction of the night (The shows started at noon and went to midnight)would always be Brownsville Station. I once seen Cub Koda jump from the top of a moving van to the stage and land on his knees. God that had to hurt. (Cub is deceased now by the way.) They would suddenly stop in the middle of a song and request that all the kids would go home and address a brown envelope to Brownsville Station, fill it with all their money and send it! These guys were hilarious.

Apart from the fun, these guys ROCKED. This IS rock by the way. Forget Smoking in the boys room, try "Rock and ROll Holiday" and "RoadRunner". This was the REAL Brownsville Station!

Concerts and music, once gone, echo dimly in the past and in our mind become forgotten moments. The vibration known as Brownsville Station will never leave me.

"Well I dont care where you come from, you dont have to be ashamed of having fun, Just roll with me baby and lose all your blues & just get down with some blue suede shoes"

We're on our way, to a Rock & Roll Holiday!
Cub Koda / Brownsville Station

Boy, Did this CD bring back the memories! Who could forget seeing Brownsville Station perform "Kings Of The Party" and "I'm The Leader Of The Gang" on The Midnight Special back in the early 70s. They even had ol Wolfman Jack howling for more. This band was pure party boogie woogie(much like Foghat). "Smokin In The Boys Room" will always be their signature cut. Their music just made you want to jump up on Momma's Kitchen table and start dancing. Saw BS open up for the James Gang and Joe Cocker in Jackson, MS back in '74. Glitz, glamor and high heel shoes...Cub Koda was a real hoot. Wish this CD would have included a few more cuts from the School Punks album. To me, School Punks was the definitive BS vinyl. Motor City Connecton really showed their maturity and glad to see a few cuts made it on this CD. This band was underrated in my opinion, but their live performances was what made this band priceless. Forunately, I got to see Cub Koda once last time at a club in Lansing, Michigan in '89. If you were a party animal of the early 70s, this cd is a must.

One of the bands that first got me into rock was Brownsville! Their lyrics are hilarious (i.e.THE MARTIAN BOOGIE), the playing fast & fun (lke rock should be), ans Cub Koda has such a distinctive voice it all comes together in 1 gloriouspackage! Forget Motley Crue's lame version of SMOKIN' IN THE BOYS ROOM---Brownsville id it first and they still smoke!

I saw the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors (a lot), Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane and many other groups too numerous to name in the '60's and '70's but when people ask me who put on the best live show, it was Brownsville Station. Brownsville Station, led by Cubby Koda and Michael Lutz, with TJ Cronley and Tony Driggins played the grand venue of the Falls Church (Virginia) Community Center in the early 70's. What a show! They were Led Zeppelin playing loud "electric" versions of fifties boogie rock! And they knew how to rock and roll.

Brownsville Station had two stacked Marshall on the front of the stage, and during the show Cubby, climbed the amps, up ten feet or so, stood on top like King Kong, and jumped to the stage playing "Roadrunner". He'd run and slide ten feet across the stage on his kness while playing a solo.

(The great version of "Roadrunner" on the recent Aerosmith album is more a copy of the "Roadrunner" on this album than the Bo Diddley original)

After the concert we eagerly awaited the album "No BS" which came out later that year, (with the ugliest cartoon album cover in rock history, drawn by one of the groups girlfriends). What is best on this album are the songs from "No BS". Unfortunately, songs like "Bebop Confidential" (with Michael Lutz sounding like he had far far too much, umm, caffeine), and "Rocking Robin" are missing, while this "best of" includes too many lesser works, and sound-alikes.

Where is "No BS"??? Why can't I buy that?

Until it is reprinted, this is as close as you can get to the magic that once was Brownsville Station.

Incidently Cubby Koda, was nicknamed for a Walt Disney TV Show Mousketeer with similar large rimmed glasses. After BS broke up, he changed his nickname to "Cub" and wrote erudite music reviews in the "All Music Guide", before he died in 2000.

Motley WHO??? The title trash track of this boot-stompin' compilation was a number two juvey delinquent call to arms when i was in high school and has been ever since. If that's all ya know about CUB KODA and his grinnin' gang of Detroit Rock City brats, then fer cryin' out loud, whattya waitin' on??? Slap it on, tune in, and shut up!!! Ya got yer rocked up reggae tune (LET YOUR YEAH BE YEAH, as JIMMY CLIFF never envisioned it). Ya got yer killer glam-slam (GARY GLITTER's punk anthem I'M THE LEADER OF THE GANG). Ya even got THE MARTIAN BOOGIE, a spaced out JUNIOR PARKER-meets-THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATER mind-meld that was a DR. DEMENTO SHOW fave for light years. Plus, you also get THE great lost killer rockin' rollin' single of the seventies, LADY PUT THE LIGHT ON ME. Acclaimed liner note king/music journalist CUB KODA does the honors here, chronicling the band's slow rise and free fall; if only he'd penned an entire book about them before he went to that "great greasy gig in the sky"! Far too many platters have had the gall to claim: "MADE LOUD TO PLAY LOUD!"...only BROWNSVILLE truly meant it.

RATING: FIVE "HIGH FIVES"

Brownsville Station doesn't get the credit they deserve for helping to make a way for punk to explode as it did later in the 1970s. But "Smokin' In The Boys Room" is as classic a piece of punk blues as you will ever find, even if the high-school-confidential brattishness (that's a compliment, by the way) of the lyrics will forever prevent it from being seen that way otherwise. (If you think the blues connection is a stretcher, be advised that Brownsville masterbrat Cub Koda has long since made a respectable career as a blues archivist, anthologist, and even musician; he played a very respectable slash-and-burn slide guitar turn on a refreshing Hound Dog Taylor tribute album, backed by Taylor's actual pair of Houserockers to boot.) It was an unqualified 1973-74 smash and it deserved to be; amidst the swamp of British glitter and the indecision of American rock and soul otherwise in that timeframe, "Smokin' In The Boys Room"'s slash-and-thrash blues heat took no prisoners and put the lie forever to the idea that the punk spirit was as dead as the Standells, even if it took a few more years for the punk spirit and even sound to earn its position as a worthy graft for a mainstream which otherwise shunned them.

Neither does Brownsville Station get the credit they deserve for helping to seed the late 1970s-early 1980s blues revival. What were George Thorogood and the Destroyers (who actually did kick that revival off, in hand with Muddy Waters's great "comeback" period, with Johnny Winter producing him the new old fashioned way for Blue Sky Records; Stevie Ray Vaughan merely confirmed its legitimacy), if not Brownsville Station minus the punk prance and wearing more blues roots on their sleeves? If you heard Thorogood and didn't hear as much of "Smokin' In The Boys Room" as you did "Dust My Broom," you probably weren't listening closely enough.

The rest of this anthology pretty much sums their short but sharp career up in a neat package. They weren't exactly gunning for game much bigger than "Boys' Room"; their randy cover of Gary Glitter's "I'm The Leader of the Gang" pretty much sums up the extent of any progressiveness they might have had. At heart a rocking blues - or bluesy rocking, if you prefer - band who sounded like they went right from high school to the bars without dropping a backbeat or leaving school entirely behind, Brownsville Station probably deserved better. Here's hoping this collection gives it to them.

Brownsville Station was one of several bands that I enjoyed listening to throughout my teenage years, and are still one of my favorite bands today. When I saw this CD, I wasted no time picking it up. This is a band that deserved more credit and recognition than they recieved. All the tracks on the disc are true classics and and truly well worth the money. I'm a diehard Brownsville Station fan and always will be. Of course "Smokin' In The Boys'Room" is one of my most faves to listen to because I can relate to the lyrics. It's a "Kick A** song, a true party song. In fact, it's just a "Kick A**" CD.. Like I said, BVS is a true unsung legend of rock, and perhaps it's time for that long overdue credit..

This CD gets my vote for must-have status alone for its inclusion of the shoulda-been-bigger single "Lady (Put the Light on Me)" from what I consider their absolute best album, 1977's "Brownsville Station" on the Private Stock label (so far unavailable on CD)...if they'd included a couple more titlaes from that album and at least "Never Say Die" from their "Air Special" album, their last one released on Epic in '79 as Brownsville...this would be perfect! Overall, a great introduction to one of Detroit's coolest and most flat-out rock & roll bands in the 70s. And yes, I agree with the concensus...
their version of "Smokin' in the Boys Room" puts Motley Crue's version to shame from the very first note. There was so much more to this band than that tune, and you can bet Cub Koda is rockin' them right down to their shoes up in rock & roll heaven.

It's scary how ragged this affair sounds, and in its minimal blues and fast shuffles, these three men were punks before the term was pasted on every bratty band to come down the pike. Heck, they even had a great album called "School Punks" in '74, before the Ramones had even adopted their brudderly last names! They made a glorious sweaty fast paced racket guaranteed to leave a bar room of drunken revelers screaming for more and a stack of blown amps in their wake.

"Smoking In The Boys' Room" may have put them on the map, but it is barely the tip of the sneakerlace. They had a great sense of rock and roll humor (witness such early nonsense like "Do The Bosco") that dovetailed neatly into a sense of adventure (tackling a reggae song - "Let Your Yeah be Yeah" - a year before Clapton put "I Shot The Sheriff" on the charts). To call Brownsville Station ahead of their time is an understatement. They could Motor City almost anything, from "Jailhouse Rock" to the outrageous "Martian Boogie" and still have it make perfect fun loving rock and roll sense. In fact, "The Martian Boogie" may just be one of the greatest live recordings ever made, complete with crazy sci-fi sounds and a rap worthy of Peter Wolf at his most madcap. In double point of fact, the late Cub Koda may be one of Rock's deepestly under appreciated front men; part rock and roll madman, part carny barker, he led the band through such recorded hysteria like "Kings of The Party" without ever sounding tired of the shtick.

If you can find them on vinyl and don't want to start blubbering like a drooling rock and roll treasure hunting slob, find "Motor City Connection," "School Punks" and Brownsville's final bow on Private Stock records. They will make you look cool when those Goldmine digging pseudo rock historians want to dig into your old LP's, and these 3 pieces of wax will also make you leap about the room like an amped up adolescent.