Charles Brown Superstar was a short lived band in the 1990s of Bobby Hecksher (The Magic Pacer, The Warlocks) and Benett Rogers. The only releases are double LP Days of Our Drive/Sweet Piece of Ass and the EP Summertime, which has 4 songs from the double LP, and “Solid Gold”, which was compiled on The Poop Alley Tapes (a compilation that is probably most famous for having an early Beck acoustic ballad before “Loser” and Odelay).
Days of Our Drive/Sweet Piece of Ass is a double album played like a few kids who found the Velvet Underground’s early albums and wanted to record their own version on a tape player in their bedroom. The album is comprised on infantile dual basses loaded with as much fuzz as possible, overloading every other second. The charm is in the naïveté of the “cool” bass lines and Benett’s vocals displayed best in “Blockhead” and “Slut Rock”. The other gem on the album is the quirky pop-rock of the 13 minute “Beestung (Backwards/Forwards)”, which is as cute as Benett’s voice.
Everything on Days of Our Drive/Sweet Piece of Ass is small in the sense of the Velvet Underground’s proto-punk as if played by high school kids, as is the case with the titles of some songs being “Belly Dancers Are Cool” and “Keyboards Are Cool”, which are both as deep as the titles suggest. Depth is not the point; the infantile cool of playing a bunch of simple bass lines always searching for a simple rhythm or feedback like their heroes.
The immature cool bedroom rock that made Charles Brown Superstar obscure in the 1990s would have made them stars in the 2000s. Alas, they disbanded, the album was short produced and the record label went out of business in 1999, before they could have hoped to capitalize on the type of artists they published. Charles Brown Superstar made thing smaller when bands were getting famous for making things bigger/louder with post-rock, rap, and hard rock. The single “Solid Gold” was the closest they got to sounding like the Velvet Underground.
Benett would record two more albums, So You’re Not Coming Over (WIN, 1996) and Welcome to the Jungle (2001), which were overlooked pop albums out of place just like Charles Brown Superstar that never made her a pop star or a regularly recording musician.
The closest Hecksher ever got to Days of Our Drive/Sweet Piece of Ass was the second Magic Pacer album, Dig This Dig That. After the Magic Pacer disbanded, Hecksher started The Warlocks which was an ode to the Velvet Underground via a highly professional rock band with high production values, Rise and Fall (2001) and The Phoenix Album in particular, which is the antithesis of the Velvet Underground’s aesthetic, like Lou Reed’s solo career.
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