Cub Koda and The Points

Have you ever looked for a record for 30 years?  I have.  Sure, you can order anything you want on the internet.  But you always could just pick up the phone and call a few dealers in Goldmine and get anything you wanted.  Especially if you’re me and you’re really not looking for some gonzo rarity that’s gonna set you back a few hundred bucks.  Well anyway, one of those records I’ve been looking for since high school showed up at some pathetic excuse for a record store in Medina, Ohio the other day.  These dipshits actually have their records displayed to browse the way people store them in their homes.  I mean, you can’t flip through them, you have to try and read the spines like books because they put them on shelves, and they’re packed so tight, there’s no flipping whatsoever.  Assholes.

Anyway, I was waiting on a part and a customer for work, so I had a few minutes to kill and this was right around the corner.  I looked for like ten minutes and then was just going to leave when I noticed a very small section marked “Specialty Records.”  That used to be the euphemism for bootlegs, but these guys considered albums with all their inserts and booklets specialties, as well as colored vinyl.  So there were only about thirty records to sift through and I was already on the floor, so I figured I’d look.  One of the last records I saw was Cub Koda and The Points.

I about pissed my pants!  I heard his version of Cadillac Walk back in 1980 (I was still in school) and I never could find that record.  I don’t keep a real list, but I have a few things in my brain that I just always look for, and this was right there on my list.  I wanted a pink one, if possible (I think it’s the original, there seem to be lots of red ones on the internets), but I’d have bought the first decent one I came across.  Which was this pink one, with a cut corner just like the picture I found.

Anyway, you might think that I would be utterly disappointed that the record I wanted for 30 + years wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be, but you’d be wrong.  The amount of ass Cub kicks on this album looks like a Chuck Norris movie body count.  If you like your Rock N’ Roll straight with no chaser, this is the shit.  Cub doesn’t make any mistakes here.  There’s one ballad, Crazy People and it’s completely okay and holds its own against some killer Rock N’ Roll.  Welcome to My Job kills it.  The cover of Moon Martin’s Cadillac Walk stomps the original (which is killer).

Everything here is fantastic.  I know this is the kind of record I’ve built up in my head over these thirty years so it couldn’t possibly measure up, but this is absolutely the Rock N’ Roll record I knew Cub could make.  I mean, Brownsville Station brought the Rock in spades, but Cub’s enthusiasm and his mainline into the soul of Rock itself is what made them good.  If you find this, you should buy it.

The record itself is pink, midweight and flat as a republican’s head.  Sound quality is perfectly acceptable, but you won’t lose your shit over it.  It’s a Rock N’ Roll record, and that’s what it sounds like.  Mine has some weirdness to it.  There’s a small staple in the upper left hand corner.  There’s the cut corner on the right, and there’s some writing on the back that says WABX

next to Pound It Out and Jail Bait.  Did this copy come from WABX in Detroit?  I don’t know.  It has a Record Revolution sticker on it ($1.99 – are you kidding?  None of you bought this for that?  You’re crazy), and a weird gouge that looks like they were gonna cut the bottom right corner instead of the top.  I don’t care about the cover condition.  It obviously has a history, but I may be the only one that ever tossed it onto a turntable.  Which is cool by me.