BURIED TREASURE
Young Man Blues
This month’s dug-up screamer: as grunge waned, a North Carolina power trio channel Live At Leeds.
Front loaded: Motocaster (from left) Bo Taylor, Brian Sliwa and Jon Heames having a blast in the early ’90s.
Motocaster
Stay Loaded
INTERSCOPE, 1994
“OH BOY,” Motocaster guitar and singer Bo Taylor tells MOJO. “I love a loud guitar.” The sole full Courtesy Bo Taylor album of the North Carolina three-piece he was a part of in the 1990s continues to attest to that fact. Named Stay Loaded after a slogan on a trucker’s mud flap, its fearsome riffage, overflowing drumming and overheating amps could indeed soundtrack a steamrolling big rig, midnight riding on the highway to hell and primed to explode into space.
Taylor and bassist Brian Sliwa had previously played in Raleigh’s harmonising power-poppers Eight Or Nine Feet: ex-Let’s Active bassist Jon Heames later replaced the latter. When Eight Or Nine Feet expired, in spring 1992, Taylor suggested Heames switch to drums and join him and Sliwa in the group initially known as Motorolla.