The Vaselines were a sadly very short lived Scottish band whose combined catalog ended up issued stateside on a single album on Sub-Pop in 1992. The album “Way of the Vaselines” features male-female duets not done with such humorous aplomb since the days of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra making them a cool Pop-Lounge-Punk-DIY novelty act, of sorts, that has gained them a devout cult status. Titles like “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam”, “Rory Rides Me Raw”, “Sex Sux (Amen)” and “You Think You’re A Man” are delivered with a sweet and innocent delivery ingeniously masking the inferred rated PG-13 content – A conceit that would make Lee and Nancy proud.
Some years later they came into prominence due to Nirvana (and former Sub-Pop label mates) covering three Vaseline songs for MTV Unplugged which, of course, turned out to be among Kurt Cobain’s final recordings.
Sub-Pop evidently convinced The Vaselines to resurface to perform for the 20th Anniversary Sub-Pop Festival. En route, they played two sold-out and very well received shows in NYC, one of which I was very fortunate to catch.
[audio: http://thesoundofindie.com/archive/2008/20080729/TheVasalines-YouThinkYoureAMan.mp3|titles=You Think You’re A Man (Live)|artists=The Vasalines]
Download: The Vasalines – You Think You’re A Man (Live)
Very nice. Cheers!