Sea Hags- S/T (Chrysalis, 1989)
Current Gemm price: $5.75-$45.50
Price I paid: $ 4.99 at Disc Diggers, Somerville
Price Pepsi Paid: Dunno. Neither does he.
Worth: $10.00
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The Sea Hags cleared the trail for the long string of dark Northwestern bad-trips and burn-outs that followed in the pines and long shadows of Jimi Hendrix. Even before proto-grunge pin-ups like Andy Wood's Malfunkshun and the Screaming Trees were becoming hailed as proof of Seattle rock timber, before Kurt Cobain committed his own flash metal suicide, back when Faster Pussycat's Taime Downe had just left his house of pain for Hollywood's strip-joints, smash alleys, and motels in decay, these troubled bad seeds from downriver were already dancin' with Mister Brownstone and hearin' the salty call of irresistible harpies like the lithesome Nymph's vocalist, Inger Lorre.
 
A bandanna'd buncha black-sheep witchy warlocks, these Seattle natives relocated to San Francisco in hopes of becoming big rock stars in order to help finance their chemically enhanced, underwater world explorations, in 1985. The Sea Hags clearly didn't give a fuck about making many concessions to polite society, "three junkies and an alcoholic", who were mainly interested in pursuing their own indulgent nocturnal fantasies, they sadly, immediately self-destructed after recording their promising debut with Guns N Roses engineer, Mike Clink at the helm.
 
Aging record collectors with misguided guilt about all their cheezy Vain and Two Bit Thief and Salty Dog cassettes gathering dust in that milk-crate up in the attic with all the Ray Zell and Dave Dickson-penned articles torn from the pages of ancient Kerrangs! might have forgotten, that while much of the Sea Hags album was somewhat forgettable- roadhouse-bluesey, barband lyrics and rehashed Aerosmith dinosaur-rock riffs, it did have more songs to reccommend it than the much-beloved junkie-glam anthem, "Halfway Valley". I  still prefer the brooding sleaze of vocalist Ron Yokum defiantly belting out "Miss Fortune" or "Too Much", to say, anything, really, in the L.A. GUNS catalog. They DID write a song called "Too Much T-Bone", though, which probably had something to do with why electric wizard, IAN ASTBURY, reigned on his previous offer to help produce 'em.
  
Hoping to cash-in on the whole decadent sunset-strip lame-train, their record label Chrysalis, then allegedly rushed the Hags into detox, expecting some kinda over-night miracle cure to take in time for them to tour, so at least, their pinky-ringed corporate hands wouldn't look so bloody, when and if these clearly troubled, unapologetic heathens, prone to constant relapse, did manage to sink like pirate's gold. In retrospect, it's...somethin'... the rhinestone highway is the worst place possible for "recovering" boozers and dope fiends crippled by their own impulses, and they predictably went out on the road and fucked it all up royally. Succumbing tragically to obvious temptations, they imploded acrimoniously after fuckin' off a bunch of scheduled concert-dates in Europe in a fit of artistic melodramas and bloated egos and bassist Chris Schlosshardt, the one who dated Inger Lorre, died of a drug overdose. Drummer Adam Maples was "almost" drafted to replace Steven Adler in Guns N Roses, but "almost" doesn't count in rocknroll. I was "almost" the singer of Pearl Jam.

Guitarist Frankie Wilsey (ne' Wilcox) went on to join spandexed Stephen Pearcy's embarrassing post-Ratt farce, Arcade, and I hope that singer Ron Yokom's sitting in a candle-lit room somewhere's listening to some kind of spooky middle-eastern music, like Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Joujouka or something, and writing some new bottom of the sea chantys in preparation for his big, trashy-poetic rocknroll comeback album to be released by Perris records in the fall. Really, I have no idea where he is, but Ron, if you're out there, we'd love to hear more from you. The Sea Hags might not have written the book on the whole Icarus like rocknroll arc, but they done it better than some. I'd say this record stands proudly next to Rock City Angels or the Four Horsemen, but that's just me, I'm old fashioned....I dig the flawed and dirty sound of sub-par eighties sleaze. I sprained my index finger the other night, so this relatively lengthy rant was all typed using one middle-finger, which kinda makes sense if you knew me, or my pathetic relationship to all these once exalted, half-forgotten rock bands like the Sea Hags. 

Further: Nope, nothing more to see here, sir.

-Pepsi Sheen
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