I’ve always been a sucker for pop references, at least pop references I was fluent in. Throughout college, I had a strong band of friends, many of whom regularly seasoned conversation with lines of movie dialogue or quoted song lyrics. We built metaphors around obscure television characters and routinely proclaimed one another “like school on a Saturday” in tribute to Fat Albert. Since this was my daily language, I was always very pleased when I would discover a kindred approach to such communication somewhere within the music I built into my playlists at 90FM, some band namechecking Alan Moore or even lamenting Lou Reed’s surprising corporate paycheck. Anything I got that might inspire another person’s desire for a footnote was pleasing. This was, it’s worth noting, before a little artful Googling unveiled even the most mysterious song meaning.

So I was extremely fond of the title cut to Trotsky Icepick’s third album, El Kabong. Any doubt that the name is drawn from the swashbuckling alter ego of Hanna Barbera gunslinger Quick Draw McGraw is dispelled once the lyrics equate the head-spinning influence of a beautiful woman to sensation accompanied by having a guitar swung forcibly into the back of your head, the preferred method of battle of the heroic El Kabong. While I now prefer my Quick Draw McGraw cartoons a little more nihilistic, I had the lingering tingle of appreciation over the original shorts at the time, well-cultivated by WGN afternoons. It was especially gratifying to have a band–a band cool enough to be signed by SST, no less–signal similar appreciation.

That fact that I immediately knew exactly what “El Kabong” referred to, but was in the dark about the derivation of the band’s name really tells you everything you need to know about the collegiate version of me.

Trotsky Icepick, “El Kabong”

(Disclaimer: El Kabong sure looks out of print–probably wayyyyy out of print–to me. The song is presented in this space, in this format, with the understanding that it is not available for purchase through any means that would provide hard-earned dollars to the musicians that created it. If anyone with due authority asks me to remove the file fro the Interwebs, I will gladly comply.)