This is what you call playing to your audience. To wit, rocking one’s way through a mom and pop record store, rifling through the vinyl and making goo-goo eyes at the cute clerk.
In the case of the brand new video from Ben Katzman’s DeGreaser, “Record Store Babe,” that means name checking a few of the band’s favorite bands, Kiss prominent among them, as they try to get the eye of the suitably bored clerk, hidden deeply behind her shades.
Band members bring up a number of choice titles to the counter, from Van Halen, to the Ghostbusters soundtrack to Iron Maiden. “I want to know what your top 10 is,” Katzman says from behind his own shades and wearing his trademark porn ‘stache. He also inquires: “Do you like Kiss? Madonna too?” (She does not reply in Andrew GIbson’s video).
It’s a blink of an anthem—less than a minute and a half total—but they get the riffs out and make a few purchases as well. Shot at Fort Lauderdale’s Radio-Active Records, it name checks a store closer to their home, Feeding Tube Records in Florence, Mass.
In DeGreaser, Katzman has already adapted the shredding he had in his earlier Boston band Acidosis and mixed it with dirtier crunching chords and a bit of guitar interplay on “Record Store Babe” which hails from the band’s upcoming Venus in Pisces, due out October 20 on BUFU Records, a set that Katzman describes as “Van Halen meets Pinkerton.”
They’re playing lots of it this month on a tour schedule that, as usual, has a day specifically designated to “chill, hard.” And maybe use it to throw in some record shopping.
