Lock Up: Something Bitchin’ This Way Comes

Ok, my musical tastes in 1989 were admittedly a little sus. I would buy anything even vaguely funk rock. Funk metal. Glam funk metal. After years of Fishbone and the Chili Peppers, I just needed that slap bass in my life. Add in Living Colour, 24-7 Spyz and any number of other that weird genre and I was in. But even I was a pioneer in buying this Lock Up tape. They were not as classy as their Northern Cali brethren, Faith No More and Primus, who blossomed from the same bud, but they seemed pretty edge-case. Just another LA band that felt like a glam band from the Sunset Strip rolled around in the gutter a little bit. But also like they could totally shift into a pretty sweet wedding band doing their rendition of “Brick House” if the price was right.

I’m pretty sure I’m one of three people who bought this record. Because the number of white kids in West LA with a little Humphrey Yogart summer cash looking to buy an album filled with competent funk rock dudes riffing like a Morris Day cover band numbers right around one. The other two sales were definitely some kid who confused this with the Criminal Element Orchestra album Locked Up (and album from 1989 that I also own) and Tom Morello’s 66-year-old mom (at the time), Mary. Because, yes, Morello of Rage Against the Machine is the guitarist in Lock Up. A fact I only learned years later. Because he wasn’t a thing back then. And, honestly, his guitar playing changed quite a bit between Lock Up and Rage — though the funk is the funk.

But, yeah, like a lot of records of this type, the music oscillates between woke-world stuff and partying. But mostly it feels a bit like white guys cosplaying as a funk band. Morello being the exception. The lead singer is a white dude talking about being locked up and cops and social justice and stuff. It’s not quite as cringey hearing it, but the visuals are out-and-out embarrassing. It was a time where — because there was so little black representation in rock music — that white guys thought they could speak for minority populations and their experience. And the lyrics are, well, just not great. Nothing that felt authentic or, in retrospect, okay. After all, we did have Bad Brains. We did have a Living Colour. We did have hip-hop. Though don’t tell the dudes from Lock Up. This band, made up of dudes who look suspiciously like Steve Guttenberg or Peter Greene’s bad guy from The Mask with receding mullets and some seriously 80s outfits, making music that spoke to nobody. As if having the word “bitchin'” in your album title wasn’t enough of a clue this wouldn’t age well.

Ultimately, this record is an interesting footnote in the development of a music genre that could — if you squint — be the grandparent of the nü-metal movement and all the white-guy metal / hip-hop hyrbrid stuff that was to come. Thanks, Lock Up. Though I only have myself to blame, I guess, purchasing their music and all. Shit, am I responsible for Staind? For Limp Bizkit? I’m sorry, America. I truly am. My bad.