Lucky

Published Oct 28 2005, 03:23 PM by webteam

Portrait of a lucky girl.

1. "Hi, I'm Louise Post of Veruca Salt. You know, any day could be my lucky day. That's why I play Lotto from the Illinois Lottery."

LISTEN: Louise Post, "I'm Lucky (Ad for Illinois Lottery)" (mp3)

2. So Louise is still milking the name. What's "Veruca Salt" sound like these days? A little teensy bit like end-of-the-century Veruca Salt, but mostly like bad suburban metal. Evidence? See the recent demo below. (Warning! Terrible lyric alert: "I'd rather hang out on the Strip with the coke-head queers/than be a traitor to my gender, I'm outta here.")

LISTEN: Veruca Salt, "Smoke & Mirrors" (mp3)

3. Louise's ex-foil Nina Gordon is now well known (at least by internerds) for doing acoustic NWA covers. Before that, though, her and Louise tried a Screwed version of their biggest hit. OK, maybe not Screwed, just definitely fucked -- i.e., slowed down and stripped of melody.

LISTEN: Veruca Salt, "Seether (Alternate Version)" (mp3)

4. If you've read this deep into a post about Veruca Salt in 2005, you probably already have the following classic tracks, but we're putting them up anyway. Mostly because we can't believe Warner Bros is giving these away for free on Nina Gordon's site. Like, they have to be doing it out of spite, right? Anyway, "Volcano Girls" is what 1997 was really good for:

LISTEN: Veruca Salt, "Seether (Album version)" (mp3)
LISTEN: Veruca Salt, "Volcano Girls" (mp3)

5. Speaking of which, whatever happened to make those ladies hate each other so much? At the time, the rumor was they fell out over a boy they hired to play drums named Stacy Jones. Then fresh out of Letters to Cleo, with American Hi-Fi not yet on the horizon, Stacy told the Phoenix about his stint as Veruca Salt's rhythm-management specialist: “I knew the situation was volatile. Even when I joined, their management told me, ‘This band is a time bomb.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know, but I really want to play with them.’ All I’ll say is that Nina and Louise are both really strong women, and they were going in different musical directions. Mix that with a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and you’ve got a VH-1 special waiting to happen.”