Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team
National Champions
Doublenaught Records
By Al Kaufman
Everyone needs a good ass-kicking once in a while. Rock music has needed one for a good long time now. Terry Anderson, who often teams up with former Georgia Satellite Dan Baird to make up the Yayhoos, is just the guy to do it.
Like Phil Collins, Anderson is combination drummer/lead singer. Similarities between the two end there. First off, it's safe to say Anderson could drink the Cabbage Patch Doll look-alike under the table. His humor is raunchier, and he also knows his way around a guitar riff. He prefers power chords, which run rampant through National Champions.
Opening track "Goin' or Comin'" is strikingly similar to Foghat's "Slowride," but better. "Willie Mays" is actually a diatribe against the obscenely large-headed Barry Bonds, of whom Anderson sings, "While everyone in the Bay / Is drinking from your Kool-Aid / You still ain't half as cool as Willie Mays." It's a song every beer-drinking baseball fan wishes he had written, but it's something Anderson seems to do effortlessly.
His borderline misogynistic humor shines through on "You Had Me at Get Lost." In front of big, fuzzy guitars, he sings of how his girlfriend's neglect and abuse turn him on. "That restraining order really got me hot," he quips. It's all just good clean American fun.
That's what Anderson is. He's a good ol' boy, albeit one with a slightly higher IQ, who likes to rock. And he does it well. He's half Nick Lowe, half Eddie Van Halen. Check out the roadhouse rockabilly of "Missing You," or the tongue-in-cheek blue-eyed soul of "Wrong For That." But for every one of those there is a straight ahead rocker that makes you wanna hold your Pabst Blue Ribbon high as your head bops up and down. This man deserves a gold medal.
