Stevie and the Sleaze- You Didn’t Tell Me ‘Bout the Jones
The track “You Didn’t Tell Me ‘Bout the Jones” comes from the bands new self titled album. Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona and boasting ex members from The Raincoats, US Bombs, Mighty Sphincter, and Puppy and the Hand Jobs. When most think of the punk music scene in the late 70’s, they think about its origins in NYC with the sounds coming out of the raucous CBGB’s whose initial intention was to “feature its namesake musical styles but became a forum for American punk and new wave bands” like The Ramones, Blondie, Misfits, and Television and becoming a “cultural phenomenon” in late 1976 UK with The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. By late ‘77, the influence of punk music and it’s co-existing sub culture, had spread across the globe.
By 1978, Phoenix was home to a growing and very much “ferocious” punk scene pioneered by the band The Consumers; whose first show was only par for the course and had punk musicians like Ron Rexless, singer of the Might Sphincter and “one of the godfathers of punk in Phoenix” feeling “beat up on a routine basis…but I loved it.” The less then 2 minute song packs a serious punch and a major nod to the American punk sounds of the late 70’s. Stevie and the Sleaze bring their own voice to the Phoenix punk music scene; the journey, the messages and lifestyle of anything “anti-authoritarian”. The track “You Didn’t Tell Me ‘Bout the Jones”, brings us into the world of not giving a fuck, the reality in the harshness of copping with smack- “you didn’t tell me ‘bout the ache in my bones…” The layered vocals between Stevie Davis, bacpac and Jaime Paul Lamb, during the second half of the song, brings a musical conversation to the stage and highlights not just the true relationship one can have with their drug of choice, but the voice behind what punk music brings to the forefront of its genre.
As the song comes to a close, the instruments abruptly end with the lone vocals cooling saying, “I need another hit” leaving the listener admittedly wanting more as well.
