Steve Smith - Mylanta and Coke

Hear The Track Here

Me deja vu sense informed me from the get go that it wouldn't be easy this time. For a start, the plotline had an awfully familiar ring to it. Had I been here before, or was it a similar experience? Rock Instrumental is what it says on the label but the comment about 'a theme from a non-existent 1975 TV Police drama' was ringing bells before you could say Quasifekkinmodo. Surely, I thought, I've reviewed this? I wandered through the dusty shelves of the Gilmore Grotto and finally unearthed a review I did of a track called Protect Then Shoot (January 2006) and the connection was made. Protect The Shoot was a little pipsqueak of a tune at :30 seconds and was billed as a 'quasi-soundtrack for a fictional '70's cop show' Mmmm, sound familiar?? Could this, then be PTS's big brother? All grown up into a real tune? It weighs in at 2:05 so it certainly counts...

I'll drop all this private dick talk now before I make a public dick of myself...

There is no doubting that when Steve goes for a specific thing, he usually nails it right on the money and what I can remember of Protect Then Shoot was that it did sound convincing enough, if a bit of a prick tease. Again on that score, I can't fault Steve's dedication to the period detail, you can almost see the pilot episode by listening to the track. It's full of cute little 70-isms, the use of strings as leads, wah wah working up a head of steam and a kick drum that sounds as sharp and clear in your ears as you would expect from the genre. The weird thing is that I normally don't like this kind of material and I certainly couldn't abide it when it was first happening, but I guess everything mellows with time.

For a short track, it doesn't seem like a two minute experience. Steve packs so much into those two minutes you spend the first few plays just gawping at the sounds whipping by. Stylistically this is pretty much perfect and I'm not sure what Mr Smith has been up to in his basement but this seems to sound much better, fatter in production terms than anything I have heard so far. Usually when someone does these 'remember this...' tricks, it only really appeals to other musicians - most 'normal' people would just go 'oh' and get on with mugging their neighbours. There's a freshness and bounce to this track that is inescapable though that gets it above the 'retro' parapet enough so that even Joe Schmoe would probably get a charge out of. An interesting and viable musical challenge sure enough - as Steve will testify - but it's so much more satisfying that it should interest anybody.

Smell the fumes!!! See the Afros!!! Beat people up and then kill them!!!

All human life is there...