Dec 14

Fur Album

Under Appreciated

FUR
 
 

But the bandmembers in Fur would not.  Most of the music on the Fur CD is in 3rd or 4th gear; in fact, on “Sex Drive”, the song moves from 3rd gear to 4th gear when the tape speeds up in a way.  However, on one track, “James Brown” – still another legend that I don’t have room for here – the band slows down to a respectful pace; Holly Ramos even counts down before starting to sing her lyrics: 

 

“I met you once by chance like some lucky people do – I said I wasn’t wearing any underwear, & you smiled and you said, me too.”  I assume that must be a true story of Holly Ramos’s meeting James Brown, because who could make up something like that?  Ramos continues:  “I know you wrote the book ’cause I see you got the scars – & all the other boys are trying hard but no one’s coming close to being how you are.” 

 

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Holly Ramos asked Jesse Malin to produce Fur’s music, and they worked together on their first single, “Sex Drive”.  This single in its original form appears as the closing track on the band’s CD, Fur. 

 

As mentioned, “Sex Drive” is the single that was produced by Jesse Malin.  The rest of the Fur CD was produced by Phil Caivano, who has been a member of the stoner rock band Monster Magnet since about 2000. 

  

Holly Ramos wrote all but one of the songs for the Fur CD.  The exception is “X Offender”, a track from Blondie’s first album, Blondie that was written by Gary Valentine and Deborah Harry.  

 

The title of “X Offender” is a double entendre; the reference is not to an ordinary ex-offender but to a sex offender.  Fur’s version of the song is rougher and has somewhat lower production values, though I prefer it to the original.  “X Offender” fits like a glove into the Holly Ramos songs that make up the remainder of the album, so I suppose you could say that Fur sounds like a punkier Blondie in their original incarnation. 

 

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Lyrics are one of the real strengths of Fur, and that is pretty rare among punk rock bands.  Full lyric sheets are provided in the CD insert, which is unusual as well.  Like the quotation that I have already given for “James Brown”, Holly Ramos’s lyrics are mostly conversational in nature, like something you might hear at a nightclub.  Some of my favorites are just short lines, like “You’re great, baby, like a [Andy] Warhol star, that’s what you are”; “I’m tired of all the other stars I’ve f--ked”; “I wear your clothes baby everywhere”; “they say you’re a prostitute, you’re feelin’ bad, but you’re looking cute”; “you’re not an ocelot, so don’t try being something you’re not”; and “you’re divine baby, what’s your sign?”  Some are riffs on her own lyrics, my favorite being:  “Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth, baby, tell the ta-ru-u-u-uth”. 

 

There are verses and choruses that are worthy of quoting in full, such as (in apparent reference to Angels in America):  “I got no angels looking over me, no superhero’s gonna save me, I’m so amused with how I am, just like a devil to the lamb”; and “I got a fuel injection kiss, I wanna ride your rocket ship, I wanna see your heavenly body, ride on a trip & visit planet Holly”. 

 

“James Brown” is full of pull quotes:  “Get down to the sound”; “you talk about America & your God & your race”; and “But you give it all when you sing & baby I just wanna, gotta, hafta let you know that you saved my life with your stunning attack”.  Honestly, it was all I could do to not give the full lyrics for “James Brown”. 

 

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One of the disadvantages of having a large record collection is that even favorite albums are inevitably pushed aside for years at a time.  Until I started putting this post together, I had forgotten how great the Fur album really is.  The fuzz-laden guitar work by Holly Ramos is first-rate, and she is backed by the rock-solid rhythm section of Danuta Gozdziewicz on bass and Michael McDermott on drums.  As one reviewer noted, it is amazing what a big sound Fur creates with just three bandmembers. 

 

There are other cool aspects of the CD; the opening track, “Beautiful Wreck” starts with Holly Ramos saying a single word – “sing” – and ends with car-crash sounds.  Ramos begins “Ocelot” – a species of wild cat that is also known as the dwarf leopard – with a series of “meow’s”, probably as a counterpoint to the closing line:  “Don’t try being something that you’re not.”  The word is spelled “oceolot” twice on the CD insert; that might be an alternate spelling, but in any case, “oceolot” gets 122,000 hits on Google.   

 

There is not a wasted note on the entire album, no dead sections where I am waiting for a favorite song to come on.  It has never occurred to me even once in the 50 or more times that I have played this album to think, well, I’ll just skip over such-and-such song this time.  I wish I had another 5 CD’s by this band. 

 

(June 2013/2)

 

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I knew that Holly Ramos had worked in film as well as music in my research for the post on her punk rock band Fur more than five years ago.  In silent testimony to her acumen in the acting field, Holly appears in four different photographs on the cover and in the booklet and also on the Fur CD itself.  By looking closely, you can tell that it is Holly in all four pictures, but her look is startlingly different in each of them. 
 
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Fur was a relatively early CD purchase by me many years before I described it in my Under Appreciated Rock Band post.  As a matter of fact, in my mind Fur was always one of the example bands of the kind that I wanted to talk about in this series of posts:  unknown or little known bands creating music that is not like anyone else’s.  I would not be at all surprised if I had not owned this CD 12 or 15 years before I finally wrote about in June 2013; the release date on the CD is 1995. 
 
I have expounded on this band extensively on the UARB post that is now shown in my website.  Fur is a roughcut masterpiece that wears its seams proudly; and someone who knows a lot more about it than I do could probably tell when a particular button or slide was struck on the sound mixing board when the CD was being compiled. 
 
I have probably played the Fur CD 50 times at least.  I could probably play the CD another 50 times, and never even begin to tire of hearing it. 
 
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But I have it now, and much as was true of the Fur CD, I fell in love with the album on its first spin.  The above quote is a perfect description of Racehorse.  The same conversational tone that is present on the Fur album is here as well, along with charming vocal flourishes that will be familiar to Fur fans.  I have little doubt that I will rack up dozens of spins on this album as well – I’ve probably logged my first dozen plays already. 
 
As with Fur, there is one cover on the Racehorse album, a Ray Davies song that I was not previously familiar with called “Art Lover”, taken from the 1981 album by the Kinks, Give the People What They Want.  The lines in this song if sung by a man would be more than a little unsettling, but the way Holly Ramos performs them (with no gender changes), they are merely quizzical:  “Jogging in the park is my excuse / To look at all the little girls / I’m not a flasher in a rain coat / I’m not a dirty old man / I’m not gonna snatch you from your mother / I’m an art lover / Come to daddy.” 
 
(Year 9 Review)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021