Capital City Rockets

Music critic Joe Viglione has this to say in regards to the photograph that appears on the back cover of the Capital City Rockets’ self-titled debut: “The band is literally so ugly looking that the label opted to put a colorful yellow, pink, green, and orange on black album cover together with a rocket and stars bursting out of the lettering.” Martin Popoff, in his The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal, Volume I: The Seventies, avoids commenting on the band’s less than savory facial features, but describes the record itself as an “abomination.” Ouch. This sounds like a job for The “I-Own-Every-Record-You’d-Never-Buy” CD Consumer’s Guide. First released in 1973 on Elektra Records, Capital City Rockets is a generic slab of guitar-driven hard rock. The album is poorly recorded, the playing mediocre and the lyrics downright sleazy—“Ten hole dollars for an hour of your time” is only slightly less offensive than “If you spend all my money on a new fur coat/You might find an orange tie wrapped around your throat”—but it’s a record not without merit. “Little Bit O’Fun” is, er, a little bit of fun, and both “Grab Your Honey” and “Breakfast in Bed” are irritatingly catchy. Despite the bad press and negative reviews, Capital City Rockets did serve as a springboard for at least one of the group’s members. Bassist Eric Moore ended up in a band called The Godz, who recorded two albums for the Millennium/Casablanca label in the late ‘70s.

Notes: Here is an audio-only YouTube clip of a song called “Still Kicking” by the Capital City Rockets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHMUbMN8JPA. Also, here is a link to a picture of that somewhat infamous back cover photograph (and, no, I can’t explain the roller derby outfits): http://www.thegodz.net/history1.htm.