What happens if you take a Finnish goth, bassist and drummer from the legendary bands of the 70s-80s and Danny B. Harvey in the role of Danny B. Harvey? Anything, really, but in our reality it gave us the most gothic rock and roll reinterpretations of our favorite songs. Ladies and gentlemen, this is The 69 Cats supergroup!
Do you remember how in the noughties everyone was dragged along by the flattened Scandinavian Gothic? There were clips on MTV, and Villa Vallo taught everyone how to wear hats and inscribe hearts into pentagrams, turning the latter into a devilish Mickey Mouse. One of the bands replicated at that time was The 69 Eyes. As it is not difficult to guess, The 69 Cats are a side project of one of the musicians of this particular ensemble: Yurki 69 (this is the nominative case). In general, there was already enough love for traditional rock and roll in the Eyes, and the Helsinki Ghoul himself was happy to imitate Elvis, mixing and stirring references to the 50s with glam and Gothic. Although the Eyes of an ordinary inexperienced listener might seem like a hastily put together production project, in order to make money on HIM and other Rasmus who were hyping at that time, this is a completely original band that has been playing since the late 80s.
Yurka must have had an idea that is well known to all music lovers: to sing and play her favorite songs to everyone so that she could join her favorites. In any case, this is the motivation I see most plausible for creating a cat project. But unlike HotRod Frankie, the companions were not other big-eyed Scandinavian Goths, but real stars. Here they are, from left to right: Danny B. Harvey, who has played everywhere (Rockats, 13 Cats, Headcat with Lemmy and Slim Jim, or take at least a family history with Linda Lewis), drummer Clem Burke from Blondie, Jyrki 69 and bass guitarist Scott “Chopper” Franklin from The Cramps.
Download or listen to The 69 Cats discography online (222 MB, mp3)
Bad Things (2013)
In 2013, the quartet released their first album, Bad Things, containing three tracks.
The first track is the eponymous Bad Things by Jace Everett. Who just did not encroach on this soundtrack of the series about depraved bloodsuckers! But if the cyborg guys usually make him more aggressive, then the Cats have added more dark eroticism.
In order to take root in these hornie vibes, Black No. 1 was chosen as the next track, a piece from the repertoire of the Green Goblins of Lustful Gothic: Type O Negative. By discarding the grunge dryness of the original, making the track juicier and adding a few mystical keys, the Cats turn this song into an ultimatum spell to seduce altushki.
The album ends with something more curious: Elvis Presley’s country song Flaming Star, written for the film of the same name. The cover perfectly captures the spirit of the original and fits seamlessly into this crazy dark vaudeville. However, Glenn Danzig, Yurka’s respected colleague in heavy music, of whom he is a fan, has also always had Elvis in his repertoire and even released the LP Danzig Sings Elvis.
Transylvanian Tapes (2014)
A year later, the quartet releases the full-length album Transylvanian Tapes, continuing to develop the same ideas and striking with a significant variety. What’s not there!
Dorzovskaya’s People Are Strange opens the record with a soporific guitar bust. After such a performance, this song is simply bound to enter the pack of standards of any local rockabilly bands.
Sunglasses After Dark is an elegant rock’n’roll reinterpretation of the old experimental stuff The Cramps, shackling the madness of the original with familiar rock’n’roll forms.
Next up is the amazing vocal duet of Jyrka (it’s still the nominative case!) and… Wanda Jackson! What will they do? Something from Wanda’s repertoire? But it’s not. It’s an Elvis song called She’s Not You, which turned out really well with a more distinct shuffle and vocal backing tracks.
Ranuway, come on! Do you remember such a local meme? It is possible that he gained popularity precisely because of this version of the immortal Runaway. It is notable mainly for the curious transfer of the keyboard solo to Danny’s guitar, as well as how the sepulchral vocals of our chukhonets cope with high notes.
It’s time for the musical! The legendary “Rocky Horror Show”, from which this wonderful song Sweet Transvestite (From Transsexual Transylvania), originally performed by Tim Curry. Yes, the one who is an actor. A very interesting version and very suitable for this ensemble.
And again we return to the King. The song Edge of Reality, along with A Little Less Conversation, is the soundtrack to the 1968 film A Little Life, A Little Love. Here, despite the loss of symphonic instruments in the arrangement, it does not lose its powerful anthemic pathos.
After the melancholic Necromance for Guitar, the listener will enjoy a moderately unbridled version of You‘re My Baby.
The next composition pushes the boundaries of the variety of sources once again. Werewolves of London was originally written and performed by Warren Zevon in 1978. Here, the keys have traditionally been replaced by Danny’s shiny guitar.
This is followed by a darkening rockabilly song by Black Cadillac, ideally suited to the atmosphere of the quartet.
It’s time to be surprised again, because the next cover of Duran Duran (!) Girls on Film is powerfully transformed in a Feline performance, preserving the rhythm of the original, but adding a depth of sound that was not in the original version.
The surf song 69 Guitars smoothly turns into a cover of the epochal song Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus, which is an epochal song for all fans of black makeup. By adding a powerful rock rhythm section and a sea of guitar melisms to its version, the song shines with new colors in shades of black.
With this album, 69 Cats reinterpreted gotabilly, in the sense that they perfectly combined both cultural traditions. How popular this record was ten years ago!
Seven Year Itch (2021)
And what about the team’s future work? Well, the Seals began to show signs of life only in the two thousand twenties. First, a couple of singles were released, and in 2021, a full-fledged Seven Year Itch lp appeared. They say the guys couldn’t calm down for seven years, everything itched.It itched so much that half of the line-up changed.
Kim Necromancer from The Necromantix is now in the rhythm section as a double bass player, while Chris Millar, known by his team The Damned and his nickname Rat Skabis, took the drum throne. All this has greatly changed the sound of the project. It became much heavier, as if the aforementioned Type O Negatives had tried to play cycobilly. Even Danny B.’s guitar is almost heavy metal.
Cats have become different, more underground. The scale that was felt in the last decade has been replaced by subcultural prowess. No, they still have a lot of originality! What’s the idea of making Post Malone’s Hollywood is Bleeding song into a gotabilly? And the blues-rock Graveyard Blues? No, this is not a John Lee Hooker rehash, but quite an author’s thing. There are also overtly punk approaches, like Hey World with the recording of the late Sky Saxon’s vocals, as well as a reinterpretation of classical music in Hell of The Mountain King. Original song type material (You’re) The Kind Of Girl I Need, Good Time To Die, I’m Evil, and (Let’s Go) Psycho were written by Danny and Jyrki, who brought the latter to Austin in early 2020 and recorded vocals there, and Danny finished mixing in the summer of the same year.
We will continue to follow the work of this project, especially since they recently released a new single with a cover of Johnny Cash Don’t Take Your Guns To Town. We are waiting for the new full-format and see what amazing Cats will cook this time.
The main value of The 69 Cats project is a kind of cultural exchange. He can introduce traditional rock and roll to many hardcore fans of heavy and not very gloomy music. And hard-core fans of root music will be able to show that some of these gloomy guys deserve attention on their own.
