Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

When the two satellite radio entities, XM and Sirius, merged, that meant that I as an XM subscriber got to listen to Little Steven's Underground Garage, a station sprung from the entrepreneurship and free time of Steven Van Zandt, E-Street Band guitarist and rock and roll historian. Now it's practically the only station I listen to, as it's one of the few (and maybe the only) station on the line-up that plays music from all different periods, from the fifties to today.

The Underground Garage promotes new artists, and I was taken with a song by a Norwegian band called Cocktail Slippers. The song is called Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and it was played extensively on the station. I bought the album a few weeks ago, and I learned something a little disturbing: Cocktail Slippers are on Wicked Cool Records, which is Van Zandt's record label. What's more, he produced the album, and wrote the title track.

I'm not sure there's anything inherently wrong with this, as it's on such a small scale, but there's something about it that makes me queasy. It's kind of like when the studios that made movies also owned the theaters (and they were forced to divest about sixty years ago). I suppose it's a small price to pay for commercial-free radio.

I'm also willing to forgive because the song is so friggin' good. It's classic power pop, with a great hook and some terrific lyrics: "Well it's New Year's Eve and you say that you love me, but who'll be the last lover standing on Saint Valentine's Day?" Van Zandt also wrote the last and second-best track, Heard You Got a Thing For Me.

The band consists of five Oslo girls, and they've been packaged, given names that sound either like a Saturday morning cartoon or porno: Rocket Queen, Squirrel, Modesty Blaze, Sugar Cane, and Bella Donna. Being an all-girl band, there are some unavoidable comparisons to The Go-Gos or The Bangles, but Cocktail Slippers have a grittier edge, possibly courtesy of Van Zandt. The songs are all about young love, and if you weren't sure that they are an attempt to be retro, consider the second track, You Do Run, contains a sampling of The Crystals Da Doo Run Run.

This is a fun record, nothing Earth-shattering, and since Van Zandt is always talking about rock and roll being authentic, the fictitious names of the girls is a little too typical of cynical music business branding. But since it's all about the music, I give it all a pass.