Cream Abdul Babar "Temple of Doom"

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Cream Abdul Babar
The Backwater of Masculine Ethics
CD
(Albert Ayler's Jukebox Records/What's Wrong with Your Eye? Records, 1997)

Southern Voice was the main LGBT paper in the Atlanta area when I moved here. Music coverage was usually relegated to the latest from Madonna, or dance music, or lesbians with acoustic guitars. Nothing against any of those things, but none of them are all that interesting to me, for the most part. I happened to read an article right around the turn of the century, however, about a band from Florida with an openly gay member, noisician Tradd Sanderson, called Cream Abdul Babar. They were playing at The Echo Lounge that week (hence the article), so I decided to give them a shot, music as-yet unheard. As it turned out, they were a juggernaut of pretty monstrous proportions: heavy, noisy, metallic, and punk as <expletive deleted>. They were not, however, a ska punk band. I say this because I have seen them referred to as such on at least one occasion. See, there's a guy who plays trombone, and they have a silly pun for a name, so they must be ska punk, right?

Gahhhhhh . . .

Today's song is from their first full-length album, The Backwater of Masculine Ethics. It's been out of print for many years, but was reissued (less one track) as the first disc of the collection Excavation: 1993-1998, released by Public Guilt in 2004. The missing track was a cover of John Cage's 4:33, minus about 15 seconds and renamed 22:07.

Sadly, they split up several years ago. The last time I saw them was just shy of five years ago, when they played at The Masquerade with one of my favorite local combos, now also sadly disbanded, Light Pupil Dilate.