The "Lubricants" LP is a "100% Crude Records" private press release just like the previously-uploaded Sheik Vaselino double A-side 45, "B-Actor with an A-Bomb." But instead of fashioning an illustrated 100% Crude logo around an iconic San Francisco piss spot -- a brick wall overlooking the TransAmerica Pyramid -- we get the restrained elegance of the metallic silver label with blue script. Nowadays, record manufacturing plants have a seemingly infinite pallet of colored vinyl to work with but would be hard-pressed to replicate this kinda understated metallic sheen on the center label. In the Sheik's case, we can probably assume it was one of the more ubiquitous and economical options. The jacket is entirely something else to behold.
This song continues the aggressive mood established by the album's instrumental opener, "Intro of Alien." If a song could be a movie, "In the Streets" would be a Roger Corman post-atomic exploiter playing at the local punk-infested "Dead End Drive-In" of the Reagan eighties. Sheik Vaselino, quasi-sovereign of of "Monte Hollywood Studio" in Monte Rio, CA and supreme creative being on all Vaselinos records, is racing around the shattered, atom-saturated city grid after the nuke war. He's "searchin' here and searchin' there," trying to avoid giant man-eating spiders. His friends are doing him dirty ensuring that there is no safety anywhere, except that for the small measure of immunity from the narcs who glow in the dark. (Makes sense, they probably were too pro-Reagan to have some Potassium Iodide on hand when shit went down.) There is no resolution at song's end, just documentary reportage amidst a background of racing desperation. The spiders are still lurking, just off-screen.
As many of you directly lived, we Gen-X kids grew up expecting to be vaporized in a massive, reciprocal thermonuclear war. It seemed inevitable, really, particularly if one chose to reflect deeply on the matter and happened to study history, human psychology, or world geopolitics in the slightest. But even if one didn't, the angst and fatality seeped in. Post-atomic nightmares like this song came on like a comic book, offering brain-dead defeatist escape to the traumatized nerds living though the intense militarism characterizing the latter years of the Cold War. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was realistic about the facts on the ground as a kid, and remain so. In other words, I didn't think I'd survive a nuclear war only to have to battle giant spiders. But: cool story, bro.
"Out in the streets it ain't too neat
Tryin' to avoid giant spider feet
They're just lookin' for the red of meat
Pull off the arms, throw away the feet.
Searchin' here and searchin' there
Messed up hair and starting to stare
All my friends won't tell me where
Treat me badly, they don't seem to care.
It's a shame and a downright pity
For the folks in atomic city
Don't have to worry about the narcs
They all seem to glow in the dark.
(Repeat first verse.)"