GALACTIC COWBOYS
Space In Your Face
Geffen
1993
This CD is one of my guilty little pleasures. It puts me in a good mood, for it’s progressive metal with that touch of wackiness that makes ‘Space In Your Face’ one of my frequent listens.
Close your eyes and visualize with me for a moment: Think if System Of A Down decided to utilize Beatle harmonies (and get rid of that nasty four letter-based language of theirs), this is what Galactic Cowboys would be like. Only GC have been around much longer than SOAD has, so another way to say it is, think King’s X after consuming double espresso mochas for a couple of hours, and there you go. That’s as close as I can get to describing the Galactic Cowboys experience for you.
‘Space In Your Face’, their second album, was released in 1993 to…a very bad response. Chalk it up to fickle record execs not following through on their promises (No! That never happens!). Y’see, they were on Geffen records originally, and their self-titled debut was supposed to be released in 1987, but that was bumped up to 1989 when another Geffen band called Guns N’ Roses released their debut in ’87. Then, ‘Space In Your Face’ was supposed to be out in 1991, but then Geffen decided to bump that up to ’93 because of, you guessed it, Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ release in ’91. Sheesh. Both albums didn’t receive any advertisements, and they quickly faded into bargain bin obscurity, with only a few fans actually snarking them up. I’m here to tell you, faithful reader, that if you happen across ‘Space In Your Face’, PICK IT UP! You won’t be sorry. Why? Let me tell you…
THE MUSIC: Besides the metal, there’s jazz guitar influences along with the vocals that are used as almost an instrument unto itself, going from one guy to a Beatle-esq group harmony on a dime (and giving back nine cents in change). Fer instance, the song “I Do What I Do” goes from a metallic riff to a decent acoustic base, then on the bridge goes back to the metal, to a cool jazz guitar solo, acoustic again, then metal- in a way that makes the whole hodge-podge work. “Blind” and “All About Mrs.. Leslie” is almost psychedelic in its execution, whereas “If I Were A Killer” and “Circles In The Fields” are straight-on hard metal. Just creative cool.
THE LYRICS: It seems the Cowboys have a knack for singing about regular subjects and putting a very poetic twist to it, like on “I Do What I Do”, which muses on the public (especially critics) scrutinizing everything (perhaps a Galactic Cowboys album)- “Under the scope, they read ever word / Defining what’s good, what’s absurd”, but instead of sounding like they’re moaning about the whole thing, they go on to say “Used to be that the world was intimidating / That was light years ago, just a passing fancy / Got to look forward, leave that all behind…” “If I Were A Killer”, one of my personal favorites, is about abortion, told from a point of view that may seem at first like someone fantasizing about killing people, but is really a commentary of society’s acceptance of the industry (“If I were a killer, I’d look just like the boy next door / If I were a killer, I’d say I do it for the poor / If I were a killer, I’d hide behind crescendos door / If I were a killer, I’d scrape you off my office floor…”).
THE HUMOR: Their subtle, yet howlingly funny sense of humor is apparent on the first cut, “Space In Your Face”. It’s a short, hard metal riff with the guys shouting “Space in your face!” for no apparent reason, and at the ending crescendo has a helium-induced voice (possibly to ape E.T.) shouting “…space!”, just always gets me no matter how often I hear it. “Circles In The Field”, while the lyrics finding the band pondering as to what makes them mysterious crop circles, has a sound effect of some guy using a lawn mower in the background during the entire song. And the last official song, “Where Are You Now” seems at the offset to be a somber, heartbreaking remembrance of a past romantic relationship gone bad, then at the end the singer, Monty Colvin, starts calling up past girlfriends in high school (the first one remembers him, but brushes him off because he wasn’t in a country western band, then the second one doesn’t remember him at all…poor guy).
Okay, I’ve rattled on long enough. This is a CD way before its time. So, all I have to say from here on out is, those who dig the older Faith No More and want something a bit more edgier than Kings X, you should give this hidden gem a shot…
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