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Classic Album Review: Cato Salsa Experience | A Good Tip for a Good Time

The Norwegian garage-rockers give The Hives, MC5 & JSBX a run for their money.

This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


It’s a long way from the Detroit rawk of The MC5 and the New York blooze-choogle of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to the icy fjords of Norway.

But it’s a cultural gap that Oslo’s garage-rock kings Cato Salsa Experience close convincingly — and raucously — on their booty-shaking, neck-snapping, funky-as-all-get-out debut A Good Tip For A Good Time. The slam-bam crash ’n’ bash tom-toms, the groovy go-go beats, the fuzztone basslines, the chunky guitar chords, the chicken-scratch wah-wah licks, the roller-rink keyboards and sheets of organ, the cowbells and tambourines and congas, the ooh-ooh backup vocals, the singalong party-rock tracks like So, the Circus is Back in Town, High Heeled Leather Boots and Time To Freak Out! — it’s all enough to make you put away your Hives and Mooney Suzuki CDs and gorge yourself on some Salsa. Mmmmm.

 

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