And so it was that in 1972, four affable dudes from Milwaukee started playing together as Creme Soda. They were inspired by “the sky, the clouds, the mountains, and the depth of beauty,” and also a love of West Coast psych-pop of the late 1960s. Two years later, they relocated to the sleepy town of Sturgeon Bay and recorded enough material for two 45s, which were released in quick succession on Trinity Records, a vanity enterprise devoted solely to releasing records by Creme Soda. Trinity had a cool eye-inside-a-triangle logo, and the next year, the label put out its third and final disc, a long player entitled Tricky Zingers. After that, Creme Soda disappeared off the face of this earth, never to be heard from again.
All of the tunes are good, especially “(I’m) Chewin’ Gum,” a wigged-out wad of bratty, rockabilly-copping proto-punk. But best of all is “Keep It Heavy,” with its spooky harmonies, colloquial mantra, and passively mindblowing lead break. Its got a time-warp quality to it, opening up some kind of eternal dudescape frequency that exists everywhere at once, and can be tuned in at will with the right mix of Old Milwaukee and Sturgeon Bay skunk. Creme Soda may be gone, but their imperative reaches through the ages, urging us to keep it heavy no matter the cost, and it’s nice to imagine that the world is a slightly heavier place for it.
