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Tom Snyder: Where did the name The Sex Pistols come from? Who thought that name up?
John Lyndon: Some animal, I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It’s history.
ATHENS, Ga. - According to lead vocalist and guitarist Roy Coughlin, last night’s Some Animal show at Tasty World was the group’s final performance.
Coughlin was accompanied by guitarist Gabe Vodicka (Long Legged Woman, Sugar Dicks), bassist Fritz Gibson and drummer James McGaw.
The show was dynamic with the full ensemble, as Vodicka correctly forecasted. In the past, Coughlin frequently performed solo or as a duo with Dan Nettles of Kenosha Kid.
Coughlin and Vodicka.
The One Thing you really need to know about Some Animal is that Coughlin has a goddamn voice on him. He’s a charming jokester offstage, and an impassioned and self-deprecating frontman on, typically turning the joke on himself.
“We didn’t write this song, but we’re going to goddamn play it,” he said, prefacing a cover of something* about a girl, and Kansas City, and baby, baby, baby. I should have recognized it but failed to.
Coughlin didn’t play his guitar — he ferociously beat its already well-abused strings, one of which reasonably broke. It made a person wonder what or who provoked the intensity, which seemed to stem from a solid something in addition to the moment.
And then the song finished. I wiped my brow.
“Are you crying?” a friend I stood with asked.
“No, I’m sweating.” But why not? I felt whatever it was that Coughlin directed at his instrument. I’ll cry about it another time.
He closed the set with a solo performance of the song “Some Good,” which dates back to Some Animal’s earliest single-member incarnation.
Less-considerate crowd members talked amongst themselves and a chump in a track suit and matching Bluetooth headset complained loudly that the other bands hadn’t gone on yet.
Coughlin played on, maintaining his focus and roughing up his guitar good and well. Finishing his last song ever as Some Animal, he smirked for a second to himself before letting the expression quickly fall. It looked like a final “Well, goddamn.”
Coughlin assures me that he and Vodicka aren’t finished, that they’ll be up to something ‘noisy’ soon. Fine by me, so long as he yelps and belts it and pushes that voice and guitar in the same way Some Animal called for.
*”Kansas City” by Okkervil River.
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Thanks Valentina!
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