DAN HICKS
                  Full-moon singer makes it snappy


	Dan Hicks was unplugged two decades before the term beacame an
MTV trademark. The post-rock string-swing folk-jazz that Hicks pioneered
with his Hot Licks between 1968 and 1974 was as trippy in its own way
as any acid drenched electric guitar solo out of post "Summer OF Love"
San Francisco. Legendary albums, such as "Original Recordings (Legacy,
ne Epic), "Where's The Money?", "Strikin' It Rich" and "Last Train to
Hicksville"(all MCA, ne Blue Thumb), incuded such indelibly wry and
sardonic tunes as "How Can I Miss You (If You Wont Go Away)", "Canned
Music", "I Scare Myself" and "Walkin' One and Only".

	Unfortunately, 10 years after Hicks ditched drummin in S.F.
psychedelic band the Charlatans to be a rhythm acoustic guitar-playing
frontman (backed by stand-up bass, fiddle, and Boswell Sisiters'like
harmonizing female voices), he got dropped after one album (It happened
One Bite, Warner Bros, 1978).

	In the interim, Hicks, whose songs have been covered by Thomas
Dolby, Asleep At The Wheel and Bette Midler, lent his bent perspective
to commercial jingles for Levi's, Ball Park Franks, Bic, Mc Donald's and
the California Lottery. He wrote songs for filmes, appeared on albums by
Maryann Price and Michael Franks and plied the coffeehouse circuit.

	The facile wordsmith and sly tongue-twister returns on disc with
"Shootin' Straight", the first new release on Private Music's new "On
The Spot" live-music imprint. Hicks' band, the Acoustic Warriors (fisrt
formed in 1986), features mandolin and accordian, plus masculine
intonations where Maryann Price and Naomi Eisenberg once sang. But the
tunes - from "Up! Up! Up!" and "Hell, I'd Go!" (about alien abductions)
through "Willie", "A Magician" and "The Rounder" -- are classic Hicks,
with the leader's droll Mose Allison-on-speed vocals buoyed by Django
Reinhardt-meets-Bob Wills instrumentals. "We had a gig scheduled in L.A.
at the end of January [at McCabe's Guitar Shop, where the album was
recorded] so we went and did it. I'm usually pretty prepared; I've got
the tunes, I've got the guys rehearsed, and I don't need a lot of
layering and stuff to get sound."

	Hicks admits he got disillusioned withe the music industry.
"Although I can go and play and a bunch of people show up, you get to
this place where you don'r feel very current," he explains.

	"Sometimes you just want to say fuck that -- I'm as good as
Bonnie Raitt or anybody else who's doing their thing, why not me? What's
the deal? I can sing as good as Frank Sinatra, I could do that. So why
am I driving along in my car penniless?"

	Hicks recently illustrated this frustration by dropping his
trousers on an Oregon stage. "I've had trouble with audiences heckling
or being loud and it just got to me," Hicks says. "It was an isoloated
incident and I don't really think about it, but it happened and I regret
it. It just seems like some other guy did it. When I get up on stage, I
at least want, if not respect, a little attention. I'm not a bar-band
kind of thing, so I don't want to just get up there and sing through a
lot of noise. It invalidates what you're doing. They're saying 'We don't
give a shit.' It can make you hate people." 

-- Derek Richardson