Royal Crescent Mob: Body Heat
It’s Funky Friday! Continuing my focus on artists I have seen live, I knew immediately who to select for today’s funk track. When I was in college, there were only a handful of bands who I made sure to see every time they played live in my area. One of them was Royal Crescent Mob. I first saw the RC Mob at a tiny club when they toured as the opening act for Dead Milkmen in 1986/87. All I remember about the Dead Milkmen performance was that at one point in the middle of the show, someone threw a beer bottle that hit their guitarist about ten feet in front of me, and the singer threatened to stop the show if it happened again. I’m sure they played songs like “Bitchin’ Camaro” and the unfortunately titled “Takin’ Retards to the Zoo,” but I really don’t recall. What I do remember is seeing Royal Crescent Mob and being amazed. This was a very tiny club – the kind with no stage where you could stand 5 feet from the band and be blown away by the intensity of the amperage. I was still a teenager, and I had never seen anyone like them before. They were a rock band who could destroy the crowd with songs like “Get on the Bus” and also a funk band who could tear the roof off with songs like James Brown’s “Big Payback” and Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster.” I bought their debut album Omerta at the venue after the show and still own it. I got to interview them a year later as a college deejay. I was a true fan, but there are very few people who remember the RC Mob anymore, unless they were there to see them almost 40 years ago. I saw them multiple times a year for as long as I could, in several different cities, and every show was packed with pogo-jumping fans who knew the lyrics to every song. The fact that they failed in the 1990s as a Major Label artist after having built up a fanbase of hundreds of thousands of people is due more to the failures of the label than the talent of the band, and I have always regretted that I didn’t get to continue seeing them play live in the 1990s in those great small clubs. Instead they were made to open for much larger acts in much larger venues before finally fading away like so many great indie 80s bands. I truly loved this band, and would relish the ability to get in a time machine and go back to 1987 to see them play live one more time.
I’ve selected the song “Body Heat” from their album SNOB (Something New Old Borrowed). It was a live concert staple and a great representation of their funk abilities.
To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.
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