Hip Displeasure: Hip-D PodBlast » Sixer

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Hip-D PodBlast » Sixer » Treat Her Right

Before making his name with the critically-acclaimed Morphine, Mark Sandman played stand-up bass and shared lead vocal duties with a down and dirty Boston dive bar outfit known as Treat Her Right, no doubt named after the classic Roy Head hit song. When you listen to this band, you can practically smell the endless ounces of stale Falstaff spilled on the floor and see the Pall Mall smoke from a dozen desperate barflies wafting through the speakers. This ain't no happy music, but it's not mopey in the least, either. There's a primal power at work here, which makes the listener just want to go smash a longneck over some guy's head and start a barroom brawl that would rival one of Philo Beddoe's legendary backlot bare-knuckle boxing matches.

Tragically, Sandman's untimely onstage death pretty much guarantees there shall never be a Treat Her Right reunion, but few bands ever packed more of a wallop into a mere three albums. Most folks continue to point to his work with Morphine or his subsequent solo recordings as being the cornerstone of his legacy, but as far as I'm concerned, Treat Her Right was every bit as good as anything else he ever did. And speaking from personal experience as recent as the compiling of this Sixer, this is about the best music around for drowning your misery. It's certainly a lot less likely to land me in jail than flying up to South Bend and bashing a longneck over Brady Quinn's head, which is what I was fully intent on doing before hunkering down to get some content posted to Hip-D for the first time since The Carter Administration.

"An Honest Job" (from 1986's Treat Her Right)

"Big Medicine" (from 1989's Tied to the Tracks)

"I'm Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail" (from 1991's What's Good For You)

"I Think She Likes Me" (from 1986's Treat Her Right)

"Hank" (from 1989's Tied to the Tracks)

"Standing By Your Window" (from 1991's What's Good For You)

1 Comments:

shmoo said...: I always liked their song "Marie".; 5:24 PM