1975

The Zoo Crew has got Biters cranked up for the Zoo Freaks, and the cut spinning is "1975," off the Atlanta band's 2015 debut album Electric Blood. This one sits right near the front of the record, a three-minute-and-twenty-second blast that sounds like somebody left a stack of Sweet, Thin Lizzy, and New York Dolls records in a hot car and came back to find them melted into one loud idea. Lead singer and guitarist Tuk Smith, with bassist Philip Anthony, wrote the thing, and the whole album got tracked with producer Dan Dixon for Earache Records, the same label that put the record out on August 7, 2015, on CD and on a handful of colored vinyl pressings. If you were hunting a dashboard anthem for a Camaro that never quite made it out of the garage, this is the one the Crew keeps reaching for.

The words are plain enough to shout along with and sharp enough to stick. Smith sings that he wants to lose his mind and rock and roll all night like it is 1975, back when all the kids were cool and breaking all the rules. He wants the Ziggy Stardust makeup on his face, he is tired of the nine-to-five, and he keeps coming back to the same line: he was not meant for this place. Fast times get him high. He wants a million dollars and the power of an electric guitar, and he wants somebody to take him back in time. A Stomp and Stammer feature that ran right around the album's release called the song telling for exactly that reason. The writer figured a cut like the album opener "Restless Hearts" would have been blasting from every Camaro in America on a Saturday night in 1975, and then pointed at "1975" itself as Tuk longing for the clear-cut culture, freedoms, and values of that stretch, "when all the kids were cool."

That is not nostalgia for its own sake. Biters were a gang of Atlanta players who built a whole band out of the records they wished were still on the radio. Cheap Trick, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, the Dolls, Thin Lizzy, the Dead Boys, Slade, Sweet, the Boys, the Scruffs. Classic Rock magazine called them a bite-sized slice of retro rock and roll debauchery, and Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue gave them a public nod, which did not hurt when they were trying to get a full album out the door. Reviews of Electric Blood split the usual way. Some writers heard bubblegum and power-pop sitting next to the nasty riffage on "Heart Fulla Rock 'n' Roll" and "Loose From the Noose," and heard an early Tom Petty heartland push in "Dreams Don't Die." Others figured the band was dressing up like a Ramones sleeve and a Thin Lizzy cover act and not quite landing it. The Zoo Crew does not take a vote on that. We just play the song, because the chorus does the job the way a good bar band chorus is supposed to.

The road to that chorus was a mess, and Tuk has talked about it more than once. He grew up in Griffin, a small town south of Atlanta, the kind of place he later described as hopeless, where a lot of kids ended up in jail or on meth in trailer parks. His dad brought Marine recruiters to the house and told him he was headed for trouble if he did not straighten out. Punk rock got there first. He heard the Circle Jerks, traced that back through the Sex Pistols and the Clash, found the Boys, then the New York Dolls, then the glitter bands and the American hard rock that was running at the same time. Aerosmith on one side, Rose Tattoo on the other. That whole decade became the map.

Before Biters he was the guitar player in the Heart Attacks, a trashy glam-punk outfit that got a label deal and then behaved like fools on the road while the bands around them were trying to build careers. He quit. He and Heart Attacks bassist Mikey Portwood started Poison Arrows, and that one choked on the same excess. A friend died after a post-show party in Cincinnati from the same mix of pills and alcohol that put the drummer in intensive care. A guitarist went to rehab on a big MusiCares bill and got thrown out for using again. Tuk has said that was the official demise of Poison Arrows. He did not want to be around it anymore. Biters, formed in late 2009, was the fresh start. Drummer Joey O'Brien came in as a founding member and stayed to the end. Guitarist Matt Gabs arrived from Baltimore when another player bailed during the first EP sessions. Tuk's brother Travis held down bass for a long stretch, and Philip Anthony, also billed as Philip Kross, took over later.

They cut four EPs between 2010 and 2012, on Underrated Recordings and then Pipeline, with titles like It's Ok to Like Biters, All Chewed Up, and Last of a Dying Breed. They toured hard, including runs with Ace Frehley and Social Distortion. Then a mismanaged European trip nearly finished them. A promoter promised a stack of shows, worked them thirteen and fourteen in a row on three hours of sleep, and the band came home in debt and ready to quit. Tuk has said he was fighting, miserable, and ready to bartend at Atlanta's Star Bar, hang out with his dogs, and write songs on the couch. He likes his dogs more than he likes people, he told one interviewer, and that was not a joke. The band went on hiatus, came back hungrier, and still almost did not get a debut album out. Smith has said that when they were finishing Electric Blood he was writing the last four songs with the idea that this might be their final EP, because he could not see a future for a straight rock and roll band in a business that had stopped building an infrastructure for that kind of music. Earache showed up, signed them, and the record came out. In a Rushonrock interview during the first UK headline run, he said they just did not slow down in the studio. They just played. They were proud of their own identity.

Around that same stretch he dyed his hair slate after catching a Bowie documentary, decided maroon was not his color, and told a writer he felt like a Smurf and also like he had been reborn. The band put out one more album, The Future Ain't What It Used to Be, in 2017, kept touring, and then called an indefinite hiatus on October 21, 2018. Joey was the last founding member left beside Tuk. The records are still out there, and "1975" still does what it was built to do.

You can chase the old posts and the hiatus note over on the band's Facebook page and on X, where the account still carries the old "Rock n Roll Lives" line in the bio. The Crew will keep spinning the deep cuts for the Zoo Freaks over on THE ZOO, commercial-free, the way a rock and roll station is supposed to work. Crank "1975," roll the windows down, and try not to check the clock.