Juwxbuh Beh, Juicebox Beh

Lyrics eh? troublesome little buggers at times, no matter how carefully you listen, some popular music artistes simply do not enunciate properly and you miss them; thereby doing all of us a grave disservice.  Take Moon Duo and their 2018 tour EP Jukebox Babe.

The A-side cover of the Alan Vega track ‘Jukebox babe’ is what I’m on about.  I love the way this tune is Moon Duo at their slinky, pulsing best – when they play this smooth I know you could just skim their sound over a pond and they wouldn’t break the surface.  Ripley’s guitar is a thing of understated beauty, gentle tendrils of sound and then a gorgeous glistening unfurling of notes later, all over Sanae Yamada’s subtly pulsating beats and keys.

All great, but what about the words? All I get is ‘Juwxbuh beh, juicebox beh’, followed by some gentle Elvising ‘Uh-huh’s,  There’s something about, I think a ‘Cadillac king’ in there too but that’s it.  I know what you’re thinking ‘To the internet, sir! Some brave soul will have saved us all the trouble‘, well no, they haven’t.  Every site that purports to list Alan Vega’s ‘Jukebox Babe’ instead carries the lyrics to Perry Como’s ‘Jukebox Baby’ instead. Dolts!

So, I think, let us apply cold logic to the situation Watson.  Unable to decipher the lyrics to the cover, or reply upon the internetarati, let us instead journey backwards in time to Alan Vega’s 1981 original.  I love Suicide but had never ventured into either Vega or Rev’s solo output yet.  Man! Brace yourselves 1981 was, obviously a very strange place indeed.

This was taken in 1981 supporting the Cars and captures the audience booing, a lady in tight pants who dances like me (hypnotically) and Vega in all his over-the-hill-psycho-Elvis-drug-fucka glory exhorting the crowd to ‘C’mon move your asses, fuckfaces!’ (at 3:18).  Rock ‘n’ roll pushed to total absurdity, proper art.  At the end where he says ‘goodbye’ whilst giving them both fingers and threatening to hurl the mic stand into the crowd, is even more superb.

But I am still no nearer the actual words – apart from one bit where he sings, I think, ‘blind trumpet player, seeking fame’ and a later part about buying yourself a gun? Ah well, so it goes.

The B-side cover of ‘No Fun’ is not one I rated much at all when I first bought the EP/heard it live but it has grown on me.  It has a certain detached and resigned quality to it, that fits how I feel at the moment.  It sounds like a long drawn out sigh, an unclenching.

Having passed on the chance to pick Jukebox Babe/No Fun up on the 2018 tour it was released for, I bought it in Probe a day or two later for not very much.  It’s a lovely white vinyl, limited to 1000 copies.  Aesthetically though, the best thing about it are the seedy leather mice on the cover.  Love them.

Anyway, c’mon and move your asses, fuckfaces!

988 Down (with the leather mice).

PS:  Here, because we could all do with an unclenching.