With plans for a new album and North American tour in 2019, its once again safe to talk about the Stray Cats in the present and future tense, which is great news for Stray Cats members Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom, whose bank accounts must have been getting tired of watching Brian Setzer cavort around Southern California for the past 20 years with his big band, knowing that what the public really wanted was Setzer's little band that became big, the Stray Cats.
In the meantime, Rocker kept his upright bass chops intact while releasing thirteen solo albums to a cult audience of die-hard rockabilly purists while Slim Jim Phantom performed in the Dead Men Walking and The Head Cat while also maintaining ownership of the Cat Club, a.k.a. "the coolest empty bar on the Sunset Strip" until its closure in 2011.
One has to believe that when Setzer finally reached out to his ex-bandmates, Rocker and Phantom answered on the first ring.
Seeing as how Setzer, Rocker and Phantom are all well into their fifties, my favorite Stray Cat song, "How Long You Wanna Live Anyway?", proves to be timelier than ever.
Too bad there's not a chance in Hell of the band playing it live when their tour hits the Windy City next year.
The song, which appeared on the band's 1983 album Rant N Rave With The Stray Cats, sounded like a sure-fire single that perfectly captured that Eddie Cochran swagger. The album itself arrived just as the rockabilly fad was hitting its apex and, by third single, "Look At That Cadillac", was witnessing the public backlash to rockabilly first-hand.
Reading the writing on the wall, the band called it quits in late 1984 and, for a time, Rant N Rave was out-of-print and completely unavailable in digital format. Thankfully, EMI seemed to release a new Stray Cats compilation every year or so, leading this fan to believe that "How Long You Wanna Live, Anyway?" - one of the Stray Cats' best tunes - would be readily available on one or more of these compilations.
Sadly, I would be proven wrong time and time again.
That's right, to this day, there is not one single domestic Stray Cats compilation that includes this song.
In fact, of the 41 compilations that have seen release around the world, only two managed to include this song. I dunno about you, but that leads this writer to believe that somebody in the band doesn't like this song.
Thankfully, Rant N' Rave and the rest of the band's EMI catalog have been re-issued recently, giving yours truly easy access once again to this unheralded rockabilly masterpiece.
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rockabilly lives