The Missiles

They toured with the Beat Farmers. They opened for Jason and the Scorchers. Low Scale Mattress Fire was one of the great Houston album titles of all time. That alone makes a Missiles reunion something to write home about. But it goes deeper than that. Like Herschel Berry, Tab Jones, Horseshoe and a handful of other bands that never made it much further than gigs at Fitzgerald's, the Fabulous Satellite or Rudz, the Missiles were a white-boy suburban geek band that never pretended to be anything else. While suicidally refusing to allow the '80s to end gracefully, they also managed to put a Houston twist to that brief creative moment between new wave and punk and country that would eventually be labeled "alternative country." They didn't plan to do it, probably didn't even know they were doing it. They were too busy staging prankster battles with their press nemesis, Public News, and making Sam Kinison-ish bad taste their signature trait. With songs like "My Oriental Girl Friend," they pissed off as many people as they wowed. The Missile repertoire was full of drug references and alcoholic debauchery -- the dream material of the '80s suburban middle-class white boy. Their second reunion (the first was at the Fabulous Satellite in 1998) has the potential to resemble a verse from their hilarious ode to LSD use and jail, "Cabbage Head." Can't wait.