Stone Cold Jam #10: The Animal Speaks (The Numbers Band)

The Band: The Numbers Band

The Album: Jimmy Bell is back in town (1976)

Chrisse Hynde's older brother Terry Hynde played sax in an Akron bar band called "15 60 75" or simply, The Numbers Band.

This was a weird time in American music, a good time actually. No one really knew what punk was. So there were all these band that popped that sounded like they had attempted to reverse engineer punk from a few photographs and smuggled magazines. It usually failed, but sometimes great weirdness happened when a big theatrical band, like the Tubes, or J.Geils, got the wild hair.

The Numbers Band is one of those bands. They were a really tight bar band, with R'n'B licks played by white men from Ohio on trucker pills, with lyrics by Tom Verlaine-ish lyrics. Nice!

Tell me this doesn't read like a Television song:

Out across these night skylights,
Down to the doorway, wide eyed blues alive
Loveless, obsessed, immersed in the lewd perfume
Feel... is some woman in the room?
Maybe somewhere in the room

Scene, watching where you feel the way you walk that down
Knowing about turning heads
But, pretending not to know what it's all about.

But it's about how you move me,
And how I'd like to make you feel,
(But in your mind charades)

Know what I am, know what I am
Alone, afraid, and living as fast as I can
And no one will save me if cannot save myself
It's in my mind sometimes at night
And I wait, for daylight, for you

Eye to eye, the feeling rushes inside
My eyes go wide then look away,
They already feel whats left to say
Is straight to you

Does the desperation show?
Up in my mind sometimes at night
when I wait for the daylight
But nothing is said.
My mind is wound to0 tight
Strangers been talking, pretending to know me.
Do you believe every lie they say?

Like I think all these women really want me
And all these people, they're running around
Ripping it up and tearing it down.

It's all about how you move me
And how I'd like to make you feel
It's in my mind sometimes at night, while I wait for daylight
And I'm waiting eye to eye.


Gets you right in the keeshkies, doesn't it? Remember The Numbers Band. Good music for speed freak white people from Ohio who like their horns clean.

Stone Cold Jam? Achieved.