Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Byline: Joe Sokohl
Date: 05-22-1987
What happens when you take four veteran blues-influenced Washington musicians, warp their brains, and send them out into the club scene?
You end up with Lips Lackowitz and Tough Luck, an out-of-control blues and rockabilly band, which played last night at New Horizon Cafe.
Fronted by Lips Lackowitz (who gets his name from his uncannily rubber lips), the band plays very respectable versions of Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me" and Nick Lowe's "Crawling from the Wreckage." With smoking riffs on the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over" and "Slow Down," these musicians proved they can certainly play their share of good time music.
Steve Jacobs, formerly of the legendary Boston area band Powerhouse, fingerpicked stunning guitar licks on Freddie King's "Ah Soul." His evocative blues solo in "Help Me" talked the blues to a crying point.
Former Nighthawks bassist Jan Zukowski proved why his musical peers have respected his intricate playing for years. And Mark Worthington kept a rock-steady beat on the drums, whether he played a rockabilly shuffle on "Blow Your House In" or a proto-New Wave drive on "Crawling from the Wreckage."
Yet the main focus of the band is Lackowitz himself. Looking like the Ernie Kovacs of the blues in his blue parrot-covered Hawaiian shirt, he jumped around and off the stage, crooning thinly veiled lewd lyrics to the listeners. On John Fogerty's "Run Through the Jungle," Lackowitz sounded asgris-gris as Dr. John himself. His growling vocals sounded like Screaming Jay Hawkins after eating a bucketful of gravel. Though he played well-toned harmonica in the style of Little Walter Jacobs, Lackowitz featured his eyebrow expressions and frantic antics.
"Dragnet," a take-off on both the television show and tabloid journalism, poked jibes at sensational headlines. The fifteen people in the audience well appreciated this band's humor.
The band could be classified as playing "deconstruction rock": It has found the point at which rock music fails and has exploited it.