Sheephead - Shooter

With nothing to do on a Friday night, Dathan and I headed out to Koo's Cafe (back when it was still in Santa Ana). I think Litmus Green was playing one of their ubiquitous Orange County shows, and like I said, we didn't have that much else to do. I was leaning up against the pinball machine in the back corner when five young men in matching suits, devilocks or pompadours took to the stage. (It was really just a section of floor designated as "the stage.") According to the liner notes of their split seven-inch with Multi Facet, ”Sheephead always wears fine suits. It's a statement; they're just well dressed. They're also usually well-mannered young lads...”

My jaw dropped as Sheephead unleashed an unabashedly poppy but loud and angry and dark onslaught of raw rock and roll. Imagine The Misfits obsession with horror and gore replaced with a gritty, personal portrayal of life in a place with the worst of both the rural small town and the urban big city: Antioch.

“Shooter” describes the relationship with an estranged father that teeters on the edge of melodrama. But the beat remains so danceable and the melody so hauntingly sincere, that when the chorus hits, "And if I'm crying it's just because I'm happy / Not because you remind of me my dad," you can't believe that they make it work so well. By the final chorus, Sheephead has you singing along to the melancholic lyrics of betrayal... but somehow there's a tone of acceptance, recovery or closure. I think the final lyrics sum it up best, "And everything he ever said never meant a goddamn thing anyway." And curiously enough, that snippet at the end, is the catchiest part of the song.

Sheephead still has copies of the split seven-inch this song comes from, (East Bay Explosion No.1, on Zafio Records), as well as a full length CD. They also have four songs on their MySpace page available for streaming. (“March of the Flying Squirrels” appears on this split seven-inch as well)

Sheephead's MySpace also features this photograph: