Out & About

I never got the third album from San Antonio’s Sons of Hercules, 1999’s Get Lost, but I’ve no doubt it sounds like its two predecessors: 1994’s eponymous debut and 1996’s Hits for the Misses…and, for that matter, the Stooges’ Fun House and the MC5’s Back in the USA and every other homegrown, made-in-the-garage-punk record recorded but never actually released between 1969 and 197, oh, 4. And those aren’t fighting words, not even pushing-and-shoving words: The Sons may be trapped in amber, but at least theirs is a museum exhibit more kicks than pricks; that crashbangsmash you hear is the sound of shattering glass hitting the museum’s floor, an escape in progress. It’s quite the accomplishment to make such vestigial music–rock, before it was called punk, before it was reduced to three chords and rendered stoopid and inconsequential by kids too lazy to learn a fourth chord–sound, if not brand-new, then at least (at most) alive. It’s even more of an accomplishment when the frontman, Frank Pugliese, looks like he belongs in a retirement home for nightclub vets who turn to dust when the lights come up. I didn’t even know there was a third record until last week; figured the band must have either broken up or would show up in a pauper’s grave beneath the Riverwalk. But the Sons still, ahem, rise.

Like metal men too stubborn to retire the guitar choreography and stripper hair and leather ballhuggers, the Sons exist as if to spite scholars who long ago retired their brand of raw-power crunch to the footnotes of rock’s history texts. When they take the stage–storm it, actually, like it’s Normandy–they eradicate 30 years’ worth of accrued history (which isn’t all bad, especially if you consider the last decade), but knocking them as nostalgia rapists is like condemning Ronnie Dawson for being the last of the great rockabillies. Pugliese, sounding like Mick and Iggy and Joey without sacrificing his own name brand, has been plying his trade since his audience was tooling around on Big Wheels; when he insists he has “Nothin’ to Prove” or laments that he’s living on “Borrowed Time” or gripes that he “Used to Be Cool,” it’s with the swaggering wariness of the cagey vet who knows his time’s yet to come. Hearing them live may be like taking a step into the Way-Back Machine, but it’s also a bit of the way out too; Pugliese may not be Iggy, but he’s no stooge either.