King Flux have uncaged Man With The X-Ray Eyes, a new single from the Lower East Side band fronted by ex-Plasmatics guitarist Richie Stotts. It is out now on digital platforms, ahead of a self-titled album streaming on 20 November.
The album is the record King Flux never got to make. Archived for 40 years, and unheard in any form since the band’s shows at New York’s Cat Club and similar city venues, the vault tapes finally get a proper release. Cleopatra Records is putting out 16 tracks on CD and ten of them on white vinyl.
Standing with Stotts on the record are fellow Plasmatics Chris Romanelli and Jean Beauvoir, Ramones drummer Marky Bell (Marky Ramone), Albert Bouchard of Blue Öyster Cult, Andy Hilfiger, Billy Hilfiger and Tony Petri of Twisted Sister. It is a proper New York rock cast, drawn from the same circle that made King Flux a cult live act in the mid 1980s.
Man With The X-Ray Eyes is available now. The album follows on 20 November, with the CD, white vinyl LP and digital edition all listed through Cleopatra.
The new single opens the record. Stotts says it came out of a very strange night on the Lower East Side.
“New York’s Lower East Side in the ’80s was a place where you could lose your truck, get shaken down at Burger King, and come home with a song,” he says.
Back then he wrote the music and left the lyrics to other people. Then one night his pickup vanished. Hours later a stranger called with an unusual proposition. Some guys wanted him to buy his own truck back.
They met at the neighbourhood Burger King. Stotts found a man clinging to the back of the truck, high as a kite, weaving about and explaining he needed to pay off some guys nearby who supposedly had the keys.
“I told him I was taking my truck and he wasn’t getting a dime. He cried. I drove him home. Back at my apartment, I wrote ‘Man with the X-Ray Eyes’ in one take, lyrics and vocal melody included. First time I’d done the whole thing myself.”
“Turns out, getting your truck stolen can have its creative benefits!”
The single follows Reign of the Insane, released earlier this year as a taster while the full album was still a few months off. King Flux formed after Stotts left the Plasmatics, with an early line-up that included Andy and Billy Hilfiger and Marky Ramone on drums. They also played under the name Hill-Fire.
The Cat Club, a two level bar on East 13th Street with its own cage dancers, was home. No label was pushing them, and no manager was demanding a hit. Stotts has called it a mom and pop organisation. Offers did turn up. He turned them down, later joking that they were not big enough.
Until this campaign, almost none of it had been heard outside those rooms. A 1992 7 inch, Man with the X-Ray Eyes backed with 1944, was the only vinyl from the original era. Stotts produced it, with Romanelli on bass and Bouchard on drums.
The new album track listing is:
- Man with the X-Ray Eyes
- Reign of the Insane
- Blessed Be
- No Time for Dreams
- Noise is King
- 1944
- Big Mistake
- What You Don’t Know (Doesn’t Hurt You)
- Kingdom Come
- C’mon Everybody
- Livin’ For Today (CD only)
- Recovery (CD only)
- 909 (CD only)
- Want You Don’t Know Doesn’t Hurt You (CD only)
- Big Mistake (CD only)
- She’s a Killer (CD only)
The white vinyl stops at C’mon Everybody. Side A is Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Reign of the Insane, Blessed Be, No Time for Dreams and Noise is King. Side B is 1944, Big Mistake, What You Don’t Know (Doesn’t Hurt You), Kingdom Come and C’mon Everybody.
Cleopatra are pitching it as a time capsule, and as a reminder that hard riffing, street level rock does not go out of date. It just waits until someone is ready to hear it.
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