Given the sound of their records, there's no reason Alice Cooper wouldn't love the Crash Streets Kids. He even let them spend a week in his rehearsal space before their first big show at Venue of Scottsdale, working out the kinks, or "making sure that Nigel doesn't get stuck in the pod," as Adams puts it, referencing one of the funnier scenes in This Is Spinal Tap.
The band's first runthrough at the Cooper space was, fittingly, a nightmare. "I'll never forget it," McKay says. "We're running up and down these ramps. We do three songs and take a break so they can tweak the PA. So we go back to the dressing room and we're just looking at each other, like, 'What are we doing here? This Crash Street Kids shit, this is hard.'"
Giulio Sciorio
Crash Street Kids
Giulio Sciorio
Details
Scheduled to perform on Saturday, February 24
The Sets in Tempe
Related Content
More About
They got their act together by the time they got to Scottsdale, though, and all that hard work paid off. "People really, really dug it," McKay says. "And what was interesting to us was how the younger kids responded to it. At our shows now, there's a very large, young, 14- through 16-year-old contingent. And it's interesting that they'd be into it, although I guess they hadn't really seen a spectacle like this. And then, of course, we'll get the 50-year-old dude who's, like, 'Man, I saw Mott the Hoople in '74, and I just love you guys."
When it came time to work on the music for Chemical Dogs, the band approached it from the same, "Hey, we'll try anything as long as it seems fun" perspective that had made recording that first album such a blast.
"My favorite [example of that]," McKay says, "is 'Mandy and the Leapers.' A.D. said, 'You know what this song needs? A tap-dance solo.' We actually got a chick to come down here and tap dance."
Then there's "Sweet Sexsation," their Al Jolson moment, inspired by Adams' initial reaction to a suggestion that they come up with a segue song such as Alice Cooper's "Mary Ann."
"I go, 'I'm thinking Al Jolson. Ha ha ha,'" Adams says. "Ryan comes in next rehearsal with fucking Al Jolson. So we listened to two hours' worth of old Al Jolson music and got really high."
And then they spent a good 10 minutes writing "Sweet Sexsation," a ragtime-flavored novelty that perfectly captures the mood they were after. It sounds as if they threw on a 78 and made a beer run, complete with the sound of a needle touching vinyl.
There are no bad ideas, Adams says, "until we try it and go, 'Oooh, that was a bad idea.' Every idea, as insane as it is, it at least gets addressed. And then, it either gets the thumbs-up and howls of laughter or thumbs-down and howls of laughter. Either way, it's all right. We'll do anything. We're like giggling schoolgirls, listening to vinyl and someone saying, 'Wouldn't it be funny if . . .' And if the general reaction is, 'That'd be nuts,' that's usually a go."
Though Chemical Dogs is the Crash Street Kids' second concept album in a two-part series, McKay says they were careful not to let the music take a back seat to the story. "The concept was in place," he says. "But what we tried to do was make each song kind of stand on its own. So it's conceptual, but it's not overtly conceptual."
As to why it's so much darker than the first one, Adams says they had to make it darker because that's what happens when you make it big. You head straight for the dark side and start acting like an asshole. But McKay is right when he points out that it can only get so dark with these guys on the case. "When we say it's our dark record, it's not like it's a super morose, Jeff Buckley, woe-is-me, look-how-shitty-my-life-is kind of record. It's still a Crash Street Kids record."
There's been talk of killing off The Kid the next time out, but really, it's too soon to tell.
Whatever happens, though, it's bound to be another concept album.
"If you can thread a story line from song to song to song," Adams says, "isn't that what an album was supposed to be? It's like a photo album. You don't have one picture of your trip to the Grand Canyon next to a picture of Christmas at grandma's. There's 20 pictures of Christmas at grandma's. To me, that's what an album is. Not just a collection of randomness. It quite often can be — and the way we look at it, maybe should be — one grand story you can subdivide into a million different situations and relate to them."
