The Serpentine song RIFF came about very early when we living in a flat on the harbour at RoseBay. We were writing everything on acoustic, everything started sounding the same. We were in the hallway full of echo. Jeff says " we'll never be able to write anything bluesy like ZZTOP & I said Bullshit, you want bluesy ??? I'll give you fuckin bluesy, how bout this riff " ! pulling it out of the sky like magic. Jeff immediately got what came out of my mouth onto guitar then down on tape and the rest is our rock n roll history. Even Billy Gibbons from ZZTOP loves this riff ! The anger & frustration in which it was written had made it so tough !!! Thats it...........
SERPENTINE - "Don't go near the water, the water can only kill. Some say she's the devil's daughter, if the swamp don't get ya, then the serpentine will". OUCH , youv'e got to give it 5 stars for sheer imagination. The Kings of the Sun bit of voodoo magic that captured hearts everywhere. This clip was way down deep in the misty South Louisanna Delta. Check out the 68 Roadrunner band car with foxtail. Now jump 20yrs ahead, late 1998, outside the seedy bar, with all kinds of broken dreams inside, bikers, drunks, risque women, Jack Daniels and Rock N Roll. Being no strangers to any of above, remember KOTS cut their teeth on the wild streets and bars of KINGS CROSS, Sydney, Australia. This band can bring any venue to life!!! and a very live performance indeed.
With an Eddie Kramer recording and a Dave Thoener of Van Halen fame mixing this one at the record plant in a very swampy no thrills approach. Love it. love it, I never get sick of watching this clip or hearing the song. Billy Gibbons from ZZTOP loves this tune. Thankyou Billy.
Our first album KINGS OF THE SUN was recorded in up state New York with Eddie Kramer at the wheel, he was full of life, seen at that time to be old hat. Jeff and I wanted that classic rock sound from the late 60's early 70's . This was done in Beartracks and Bearsville Studio's owned by Jannis Joplin and Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman up in Woodstock. So the album is full of that Woodstock magic, that fills the surrounding hills. Eddie Kramer would try and talk us into buying Ferraris if the album went gold. It was a stand in joke in between takes, the session was full of ping pong, chinese food, plenty of laughter and Eddie's obsession with the album going GOLD, it by rights , should of. Thanks everyone for buying the album and loving it!
Snare drum sounds are a tricky business - Especially with the 80's soundscapes Many a potentially good song were slaughtered by over innovative 80's sound engineers... Luckily, that wasn't the case with any of our 3 KOTS albums - They're timeless feelgood machines! and what a fight it was to keep em like that. With the big brass and producers telling us in the 80's, that if we didn't bump up our sound we would sound old fashioned, which is what we wanted to sound, classic analogue valve recordings. Natural sound. It certainly was worth the fight!
KOTS FANS, thanks for your wonderful words, its great to know that people are still out there playing our music. The web has been a godsend for people to hear music that they unjustly couldn't get to. Now thanks to you guy's & gals, its all out there to be enjoyed, discovered and shared. Our music is world class, it will just take a while for people to catch up. Great music lives forever, it doesn't go away. KINGS OF THE SUN FOREVER , Cliff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyEwj4ErNhI
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