Album: Scream, Dracula, Scream!
Year: 1995
. . .
In the 1990s, the San Diego band Rocket From The Crypt made a small alt-rock splash by asking a relatively simple question: what if Punk Rock, but with a horn section?
Obviously, it wasn’t a new question: there were horns all over London Calling and the later Jam singles, but usually those horns weren’t sitting on top of their garage-punk ravers. Before Rocket From The Crypt broke up — to the extent that anybody breaks up these days — they made a few albums in this vein, though I only ever came across 1995’s Scream, Dracula, Scream! and 1998’s RFTC.
Out of those two, I prefer Scream, Dracula, Scream, though RFTC has a cleaner sound — not necessarily a plus in this kind of music — because Scream, Dracula, Scream has utterly hooky ravers like “Ball Lightning,” “Young Lovers” and the utterly ferocious “On a Rope.”
Starting off with a dirty grungy riff already expressing the title, lead singer Speedo chants like a young Stiv Bators.
Saw right through me
Staying started to unglue me
And I knew that I couldn’t win
I wanna steal your love, stop holdin’ the dove
Just to pull my good luck in
And with very little warning, they skid into the first part of a completely epic chorus, with the guitar glowing in the background the entire band — Speedo, ND, Petey X, Apollo 9, JC 2000 and Atom — sing against each other:
(So we run)
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
(We run)
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
(We run)
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
(We run)
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
(Oh yeah)
And then, as the guitars switch back to scuzz mode, they all sing together.
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
On a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on a rope
And it is all just fucking fantastic. For the rest of the song, there are squealing guitars, breakdowns, build ups, begging and pleading vocals, horn explosions, but it always comes down “on a rope, on a rope, got me hanging on rope.”
I don’t remember ever hearing “On a Rope” on Live 105 back in the day — a quarter-century ago, how did that happen? — but according to wikipedia, it was an actual big hit single in the U.K., making it all the way to #12 on the British charts.
“On a Rope”
“On A Rope” live in Glastonbury
“On a Rope” live in 2005
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Great song! And great band. I got into RFTC in a big way in the late 90’s (around the time RFTC was released). Circa: Now! and Group Sounds are also great albums. Alas, I never got to see them live.
Any time that I feel that the music of the later ’90s wasn’t that great and visions of Limp Bizkit float through my head, I put on some Rocket From The Crypt to remind me that there was indeed great music back then.