Review: Oingo Boingo - Dark at the End of the Tunnel (1990)

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Review: Ween - Chocolate and Cheese (1994)

So how about that! Elektra didn't drop Ween even after the 55-minute tender jerk-off session that was Pure Guava! Good for them, I like to think that Ween made Chocolate and Cheese as an apology for Pure Guava and that they promised to start playing nice.

Chocolate and Cheese is Ween's rock and roll album. And that succinct description, my friends, is something I'm not happy with, but it'll have to do. Ween's fourth record is absolutely impossible to nail down in two or three words; for the most part, it's a maturely-crafted collection of sixteen fleshed out tracks of music spanning equally as many styles, tones, and genres. Unlike the first three albums, or even at least the next three albums, there is no overarching theme, no overarching feeling, and no two songs are the same. It doesn't even do it justice to describe Chocolate and Cheese in words, really, but I'll try anyway.

First of all, Ween decided to finally use a real studio for their recording purposes so Chocolate and Cheese will prove to be their first highly-polished and professional-sounding offering ever! It's amazing what kind of magic they're able to perform with just a guitar and drum machine. Reasons for the decision to use a studio are unclear, since they had access when they signed onto Elektra a year earlier for Pure Guava, but you can't complain about the results. Cheap recording equipment worked ok before, but I believe that these songs would not be as powerful as they are if they were muddied in lo-fi recording artifacts. Case in point is the opener "Take Me Away", which would completely lose its charm if it sounded like a bedroom recording, but I'm ahead of myself already. Better production = big win!

Second of all, starting with Chocolate and Cheese the already-fuzzy lines become even blurrier when it comes to trying to understand Ween's songwriting intentions. Before, their sense of humor and their antics were pretty much laid out on the table. Now it's harder to tell a lot of the time, and I believe, without a fraction of doubt, that this is also the result of the increased production values. You'll start to ask yourself questions like: Are they being serious or are they being funny? Are they paying tribute earnestly or are they poking fun? Do they actually like the music they're playing or are they just being derisive? Are they putting a lot of effort into this or did they barely try? Are they geniuses or are they getting lucky? The answer to all these questions is: Yes! Case in point is the opener "Take Me Away" which would come across as completely insincere if it sounded like a bedroom recording, but I'm ahead of myself yet again! Better production = mysterious intent! And as a dyed-in-the-wool asshole Ween fan I adore this aspect of the band, because no other band in the world meshes together so seamlessly the jokey, sarcastic, satirical shit with the heartfelt, genuine, musically competent shit. This particular album is where the band really starts to become something special. This particular album is where Ween finally carved out their lasting identity.

Enough of that, though, let me finally talk about "Take Me Away"! This song sounds exactly like some Elvis or Tom Jones-style Vegas act. The lyrics are carefully crafted to lack profoundness ("She took my love away/She took it to another man/Now I gotta get away from that girl/Before I go craaaaaaaazy!"), the singing is carefully delivered to sound like some washed-up, soulless Las Vegas stage veteran giving it all he's got, and the studio track is even punctuated with fake smatterings of polite applause and Gener saying "thank you!" between verses. Had this been recorded using their shitty 4-track cassette these additional touches wouldn't have at all made a difference; it wouldn't have sounded authentic, plain and simple.

To me, that's where the real charm of Chocolate and Cheese comes from. All these authentically-recorded tracks make the record sound like a grab-bag compilation disc of the best singles from 16 different artists. You get all the chocolate AND all the cheese! "Freedom of '76" is a Philly soul track which honors Philadelphia and showcases Gener's incredible un-altered high-pitched vocal range, "A Tear For Eddie" pays tribute to P-Funk guitar hero Eddie Hazel with some of Deaner's own emotional guitarwork, "Baby Bitch" continues the saga of Gener's breakup (see "Birthday Boy" off of GodWeenSatan: The Oneness) with a beautiful melody and bitter, somber lyrics ("Fuck you you stinkin-ass ho"), "Joppa Road" has a hazy, indie folk-style serenity with some tasty-ass bass! And these are just four tracks of emotionally-sincere music.

Other highlights include the creepy, psych-pop fever dream of "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" complete with backwards guitar licks and distorted dying-child vocals ("Sticky vaseline, mommy!"), the snake-y, hypnotic Middle Eastern-tinged "I Can't Put My Finger On It" with its trippy, dreamy beach sounds between verses, and the seven-minute murder ballad epic spaghetti-western saga of "Buenas Tardes Amigo", which has zero progression over its duration (except for the dramatic and kickass showdown-at-the-O.K.-Corral instrumental bridge) but is all the better for it! There's also the super slick, over-produced pop-happy "Roses are Free" and the mesmerizing "Voodoo Lady", both are my personal picks for the two best tracks.

Honestly, I can't just sit here and name all of it. Every single song on here has something to offer except for a couple of minor gripes. "Candi" is largely superfluous, and it feels like a polished-up cutting room floor version of the type of antics you'd expect on The Pod or Pure Guava (a plinky, stagnant melody with monotone delivery of lyrics like "Candi.../Custard and berry.../Candi.../Peaches and cream...", ho-hum, been there done that). "The HIV Song" is immaturely cute, but more of the same (a plinky, stagnant melody with monotone delivery of "HIV" and "AIDS" in the dead air between the instrumental phrases. The song is catchy! Get it?!?!). Other than that, it's all very enjoyable! The melodies are all extremely simple, but the strength is phenomenal. Most of these songs could get stuck in your head for years.

Future releases would be more cohesive with themes, but Chocolate and Cheese is probably the best album out there of its kind. You've got your David Bowies and your Frank Zappas and your They Might Be Giantseseses, of course, but find me an album by any of them, or anyone else, as simultaneously consistent and diverse as this one! You can't! ......hey, did someone out there say The White Album by the Beatles?? GRRRR! FUCK YOU! I like this one better anyway. It's weirder and funnier.

Plus this one's got titties on the cover.

VERY GOOD

Review: Nomeansno - Mama (1982)

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE! Now that I've got your attention...rape! Hahaha! Now that I've REALLY got your attention, rape is not funny. But Nomeansno is a band named after rape, so that certainly got MY attention. Hold on, let's start over...

Nomeansno is a serious musical band with serious musical ambitions, and they're named after rape which isn't funny. The band is Canadian though, which is funny! It started out as just two brothers, Rob Wright and John Wright: the Wright Brothers! Rob and John didn't invent the airplane, oh no sir, but they did basically pioneer a very specific style of punk rock that I may or may not talk about eventually. That part's not important right now! What's important are the peculiar beginnings: Rob played bass and John played drums and that was it. That was the band. No guitars. What is this, Lightning Bolt? What is this, Morphine? What is this, a third thing? Ben Folds Five? I dunno.

Anyway, reading about the early Nomeansno days it was certainly clear that the brothers saw the guitar as a crutch that they wanted to avoid. This obviously didn't last, but their self-released debut Mama is about as bare-bones as you're going to get from them with respect to both instrumentation and production. Bass and percussion, vocals, and an occasional guitar or keyboard overdub, it very much replicated the live sound from their early gigging days as a dynamic duo! Of course, this live sound replication has its pros and cons. One can't help but feel that the album suffers a bit from its thin sound. But more on that later.

FOR THE DEFENSE, having no lead guitar means having to make up for it with more interesting bass and drums, correct? Yes! Rob and John are very accomplished players of their respective instruments. Rob treats the bass guitar like it's SUPPOSED TO BE played lead, just like my other favorite domineering bassist Les Claypool, and (just like Claypool) he has a virtuositic fast-fretting technique to keep those bass notes a-movin'. John holds his drumsticks like a dang ol' military man and can rattle through complicated, head-spinning syncopated rhythms with robotic accuracy. Both brothers take their cues from jazz greats such as bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Art Blakey, and, as such, incorporate into their sound a whole hell of a lot of jazzy rhythms and textures. Being a punk band first and foremost, this approach leads to some seriously original and satisfying results. No one should be talking about "progressive punk" without name-dropping Nomeansno since they pretty much created the whole idea of "progressive punk" and everything, never mind the fact that the term is one of the largest oxymorons in music. I guess I did end up talking about all this after all! Nomeansno basically pioneered "math punk". And fuck them forever for it.

FOR THE ANTI-DEFENSE, and I'm going to jump right into talking about Mama here, if punk was the whole point then this record, in that respect, fails. That's probably a little harsh, but honestly, the essence of punk comes from fast, hard-edged aggression. It comes from a complete subversion of rock music's excesses. It comes from being a big fat Fuck You to society. Here's the old saying: "Punk is what you play until you learn to play the guitar". So these guys are great at playing their instruments and they're incorporating artsy riffs and nuanced drum fills and interesting progressions and off-the-wall vocal deliveries, that sounds like wimpy art school "punk" to me. That's Talking Heads and Television and The Clash and shit. That's what this record is to me, it's a weak art school punk record. It's mostly cerebral and unassuming, and the parts that AREN'T cerebral and unassuming (the stuff that is actually punky) is undercut by the thin production and the scrawny bass n' drums instrumentation, so it's hard to take seriously. Basically, compared to their later stuff, there's not nearly enough ass-kicking going on throughout Mama. A lot of the ideas are good, in fact a lot of them are REALLY good; the potential is there, but the execution is underwhelming. And when it comes to both punk and art punk alike, the execution is everything.

A good example of everything I'm talking about so far is the track "Red Devil". It's not even a punk song in the first place, the intro is a very Black Sabbath-y mood-setting eerie drone that leads into a repeating tribal bass/drum cadence. On top of that, Rob's goofy voice sets the tone further with his creepy spoken-word lyrics ("Red Devil bites your neck/Your tongue's stick out, your cock's erect"). As the song progresses, his voice becomes more desperate bouncing between high-pitched Satanic prayers and ghoulish, gutteral mutterings. Punctuated throughout are superimposed background yelps and shrieks. It has all the trappings of a great creep-o fuckin' early industrial or noise rock song, kind of like a less mechanized version of Swans or Suicide, but...I don't know, the components don't add up nicely. The creepiness is cheesy and there's not enough MONSTER FUCKING RIFFAGE to elevate it. The production sounds like Rob's snarling through the verses in his childhood bedroom. Any profound effect that the song attempts is ruined by the amateurish execution. And lot of the album feels this way. And it's a shame.

So what's good? With Mama it's more enjoyable if you revel more in the technical effort and less in the presentation. "Living is Free", the album opener, displays a lot of the type of technical effort to look forward to: complicated bass arpeggio workouts, crisp and clean drumming, pretty keyboard overdubs, and singing and songwriting that's brimming with personality. However, the actual chorus is an awkward speed bump; suddenly the song shifts on dime and Rob's electronically warped, barely-intelligible voice declares, with barely much of enthusiasm that immediately preceded it, "Living is free/Free and at ease/Living is free/Free and at ease...". Bah! Stuff like "My Roommate is Turning into a Monster" and "Mama's Little Boy" are similar slow-build jazz numbers, with groovy, sinister and snakey bass lines and more cool, unsettling vocals. However, both songs meander, they chug along endlessly on one or two chords, there's too much tension without much release. Especially "Mama's Little Boy", at nearly six minutes, doesn't deserve to go on this way for that long.

But the good stuff among it all is really good, honest! Like "Rich Guns", full of hooky stops and starts and punky, politically-charged lyrics! Or "We Are the Chopped", which has a neat, desperate atmosphere to it that actually works in this case to pair up with the minimalist emptiness (like with the echoed "We are the chopped - the chopped!" lines). I even like "Living in Détente", which has no pretense whatsoever of a punk song. It's a piano-driven lounge jazz number! And it works will as a surprise, straightly-played pleasant proper album closer, still sinister in the lyrics but barely betrayed by the music. These guys are smart and, thankfully, it already shows this early on.

Tacked onto the end of the 1992 CD reissue are the four tracks from their 1981 Betrayal, Fear, Anger, Hatred EP. Noticeable here is the guitar on the forefront, especially with hard-rockin' "Try Not To Stutter" and "I'm All Wet". "Approaching Zero" sounds like the precursor to "Living in Détente": lead piano, bubbly lounge jazz, depressing lyrics! "Forget Your Life" is gothy and drone-y and even lower-fi than the lowest-fi parts of the album proper. They did this song better later. If you didn't know that these last four tracks were part of an earlier EP you wouldn't even really tell the difference, the band's growth isn't stark enough yet.

The end product is an atypical offering in the Nomeansno canon. Look to literally everything that they released after Mama for a better experience. Adding Andy Kerr on guitar added a much-needed layer of sound that--good for the Wright brothers for trying something different--ended up making the band way more interesting. Rob's voice gets deeper as time goes on too, which helps tremendously to add texture to his already-charismatic singing. All the talent was already there, it just needed a little more time to thrive. This was my first Nomeansno record, and it didn't scare me away, so all these years later I'd still recommend it to anybody who likes, you know, wimpy-ass art punk. Just listen to some of the other albums first.

JUST OK

Review: "Weird Al" Yankovic - In 3-D (1984)

Less than a year later, Mr. Yankovic dished out to the masses his second collection of oddball tunes and split-yer-sides song parodies! Guess what? It's more of the same! Guess what else? There's a lot of growth here to be appreciated!

In 3-D displays two very major departures from Al's debut: the frameworks of the parodies are more faithful to their original versions, and the accordion has been cut back substantially. These new permanent changes are what, quite literally, separates the debut from the rest of the catalog in spirit. This was obviously a wise decision, since the faithfulness of the parody numbers would widen the appeal to those who would otherwise not give much of a shit about song parodies since a) a more faithful parody actually sounds more impressive, and b) a more faithful parody is, as it turns out, funnier than a less faithful parody. I don't think I'll have to go into detail of the wisdom of cutting back on the accordion. Needless to say, In 3-D helped elevate Al into the upper echelon of music parody kings! Obviously, barely anyone else was, or is, in that echelon anyway, BUT it was proven that Weird Al was all everybody really needed to fill this role in their lives that nobody asked for. The rest is history.

Al's second effort consists of 11 tracks: 5 parodies, 5 originals, and 1 polka medley! Here's another major change: every album from here on out (except for Even Worse) will contain a polka medley somewhere in the tracklist. These medleys are usually comprised of contemporary hit songs, mostly anything the average Joe has been hearing on their local radio stations in the last year or so, reinterpreted as full-fledged balls-to-the-wall over-the-top happy-go-lucky polka music! We're talking an onslaught of frantic accordion, bouncy tuba, annoying clarinet, and flamboyant percussion! The polka-medley du jour on In 3-D is called "Polkas on 45" which is, apparently, a play on something called "Stars on 45", a Dutch novelty group from the '80s that mashed up popular songs over a generic drum beat. That sounds like the pits! On paper, so do these polka medleys, but really they are actually quite jolly good fun! For example, "Polkas on 45" contains lyrical snippets from Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", The Doors' "L.A. Woman", The Police's "Every Breath You Take", The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", among many others. SO, over polka music, Al sings in his nasally Weird Al voice "Every breath you take/Every move you make/Every bond you break, every step you take/I'll be watching you" and then moves right into "Darling you gotta let me know/Should I stay or should I go?...". GET THE PICTURE?! We always have a good time in Weird Al's house.

The five parody songs are as follows: "Eat It" ("Beat It" by Michael Jackson), "The Brady Bunch" ("The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats), "I Lost on Jeopardy" ("Jeopardy" by The Greg Kihn Band), "King of Suede" ("King of Pain" by The Police), and "Theme from Rocky XIII" ("Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor). Of these five the only one with zero lasting power was "Jeopardy", so kudos once again to Al for choosing his parody targets somewhat wisely. "Eat It" and "Theme from Rocky XIII" are both about food, helping ensnare his morbidly obese target demographic nicely! Al even cracked the Top 40 with "Eat It", which largely clinched his status as a household name from this album forward. The only miss here is "The Brady Bunch", which, halfway through, becomes just the lyrics of The Brady Bunch theme! Come on Al, now's not the time in your career to make lazy songwriting decisions! It's kind of funny hearing these early Weird Al parodies lacking the more impressive lyrical mastery from later-career parodies, not to mention that they're all only kind of funny. He really does get better at this as time goes on.

Now the originals, this is where the real meat is at! Sort of! You'll be able to tell that I like the originals better than the parodies by how much more I'll talk about them! "Midnight Star" is all about a shitty Weekly World News-type tabloid newspaper and the song sounds like Born to Run-era Bruce Springsteen. "Mr. Popeil" is all about inventor Ron Popeil's infomercials and the song sounds like the B-52s. "Nature Trail to Hell" is all about an advertisement for a new cheesy slasher film hitting the theaters and the song sounds kinda like elements of Black Sabbath, and uh, I don't know, Nick Cave maybe, with some operatic female backing vocals thrown in for good measure. These three songs are phenomenal, showcasing Al's ability to cobble together some loose influences and craft a supremely catchy tune without straying too far into rip-off territory. "Nature Trail to Hell", the closer, is an especially standout track, considering it doesn't sound like much like any real song I can think of. It starts out with a cool, eerie, atmospheric tapestry of spoooOoOoOoOooooky hell noises, leading to an organ-laden musical intro and some of Al's take on Vincent Price-styled vocals in the opening verse. In the middle is the keenest, neatest little clarinet solo you ever did done hear on, like, any album ever! It's so sinister and jaunty that you can just picture a fat little fucking imp cavorting around playing his little Hell-fife.

Not all the originals are that good, though. "That Boy Could Dance" is an extremely forgettable old-school Americana rock song, bringing to mind the Doobie Brothers or the Eagles or some other generic roots rock dinosaurs of yore. "Buy Me a Condo" is even more dreadful, displaying a mocking pastiche of Bob Marley-era reggae that borders on racist with lyrics like "Gonna buy me a condo/Never have to mow me lawn/I get a funny little t-shirt/Wit' de alligator on". Yuck. Although picturing Bob Marley selling Amway products while wearing LaCoste polo shirts is pretty amusing. He's fucking dead though, you asshole, so stop laughing.

What? Oh yeah. Anyway, In 3-D is a significant improvement over his self-titled debut and this level of quality will remain consistent, more or less, as he keeps pumping out albums. This particular record is the blueprint for the rest of Al's career, so even if you're a snooty, snobby fan of only lo-fi '90s Estonian depressive black metal EPs this is still the best album to listen to in order to sharpen your historical knowledge of the quintessential pop-savvy parody expert. No self-respecting nerd in 2020 is allowed to pretend he/she/xe is too cool for Weird Al anymore.

GOOD

Review: Ween - Pure Guava (1992)

Following the release of The Pod, the young and fresh-faced Ween boys set out on their first major United States tour, a modest U.K. tour, and signed onto a major record label. Things were finally starting to really look up for these doofuses!

Pure Guava is Ween's silly psychedelic pop record. Now, being signed onto Elektra Records means a conscious change in production values. Compared to The Pod this album sounds like an audiophile's wet dream, so that's a plus. Also, being the complete assholes that they were, being signed onto a major label probably also meant doing everything they could to deliberately straddle the invisible line between commericality and total fuck-you inaccessibility. In other words, Pure Guava is a lot more of the same old shit.

This album, like its predecessor, was recorded crudely on a four-track cassette outside of a professional studio, this time with a little more care to make (almost) everything very listenable. Besides the fact that the songs don't sound like they were funneled through a sewer drain, almost every single track on Ween's third album sounds like an outtake from The Pod. While the shitty production paired with the sick and stoned backstory added a extra layer of thematic continuity on The Pod, here the slicker production just makes these 19 tracks sound even more blatantly like a hodge-podge of cobbled-together cuts. There's still distortion, and electronic hooligan antics, and mumbled, addled "singing", and repetitive loops, but most of it is directionless and unexciting.

Against all odds, Pure Guava yielded Ween's highest-ever charting single "Push th' Little Daisies", which also got the MTV music video treatment (and then some publicity on Beavis & Butthead). It's one of the better tracks, for sure, where Gener's vocals are warped into a demented, squealing Eric Cartman-like voice as he sings "PUUUUSH THE LITTLE DAISIES AND MAKE 'EM COME UP!" At first thought it seems like the song might be about death, right? Other interpretations say it's about titties and nipples, which is more in-line with what one would expect from these dorks! At any rate, the melody is rather inventive, poppy and pretty for stupid song about boobs. The music video is pretty funny too, you should Youtube it right now.

Only a few other choice cuts remain, but nothing here reaches the heights of the best material on The Pod. I like "Big Jilm" a lot, it's a big, dumb, hilarious truckin' anthem that inexplicably borrows some lyrics from "I Gots a Weasel" off of the debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness. It's rolls back and forth on a couple of chords, it's got some jaunty "doo-doo-doo"s, it's got Gene and Dean yelling "BIG JILM!" and "THE BIGGEST THING YOU EVER DID DONE SEE BIG JILM!" in their best hick voices. Legend has it the song was supposed to be called "Big Jim" but Deaner's handwriting was terrible, and the rest is history! I also probably like "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo" more than I should because I find the pretentious, artsy-fartsy Bohemian caricature portrayals extremely authentic and amusing, complete with subtle little condescending snorts as they sneer effeminately through lines like "Scrape for a dollar/You'll die smiling/Learning the same lessons once again" and getting each other's approval ("Isn't that right, Gener?" / "So right, tell me again once more"). My last major soft spot is for "Reggaejunkiejew", a song that is possibly about a white-guy-with-dreadlocks poseur that one of the Ween guys knows personally. The song runs through some abrasive electronic loops under some menacingly aggressive shit-talk. "Take a permanent vacation/Get the fuck out of town/Go see Jamaica, motherfucker/Let your dreadlocks down". Oh yeah, and the repeated "Matzofarian Reggaejunkiejew, fuck you!" makes me laugh every time!

"Little Birdy", "Tender Situation", "Springtheme" and "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)" are the other passable tunes, making this album incredibly front-loaded. The rest of the album, as far as I'm concerned, is total filler. By my count, that's 11 more tracks. Most of the back half of the album is terribly uninteresting and flat, with particular special attention to "Mourning Glory" which I consider to be the very first truly awful Ween track released on an official LP. It's one big five-minute earache consisting of Gener screaming into the microphone like a Tony Soprano dumb guy over very loud guitar feedback about pumpkins and the woods and god knows what else. It's very hard to understand and it goes on way too long. I also strongly dislike "I Play It Off Legit" because I feel like Ween literally did this (whatever this is) better two tracks ago on "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo". That one was funny! This one isn't! This one has a less interesting looping background vamp and it doesn't have funny voices! Everything else doesn't get too bad, but nothing at all is added to the table. Songs like "Flies on My Dick" and "Touch My Tooter" are silly and dumb and devoid of enough musical progression to keep it interesting for longer than a minute. Songs like "Loving U thru It All" and the previously mentioned "I Play It Off Legit" employ the repetitive call-and-response schtick that Ween did WAY better earlier on "Blackjack" (GodWeenSatan: The Oneness) or "Molly" (The Pod). Songs like "I Saw Gener Cryin' In His Sleep" and "Pumpin' 4 the Man" are forgettable throwaway vignettes.

I guess the bottom line here is that even though The Pod was gross and murky and intentionally difficult to enjoy, the high points on that album really were pretty high. The melodies were imaginative, the tone was sludgy and atmospheric, it all came together pretty well, and a few more repeated listens brought something new to the ear. Pure Guava's high points aren't that high, the melodies are almost entirely unimaginative, and the tone is...I don't know, there is no tone. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel wading through this record...I guess I feel like the effort just wasn't put into this and it shows. That was probably the point. I like irony as much as the next guy, but it doesn't enhance my own life to pretend to like Pure Guava more than I actually do. Repeated listens certainly didn't help me, either. To each his own though, plenty of reviews of this album are favorable and many people consider this one to be the pinnacle, but I think that's absolutely nuts! Congrats to Ween on their major label debut, but place this one firmly at the bottom of my list and let's just move on.

KINDA BAD

Review: Ween - The Pod (1991)

It's 1990. Imagine buying Ween's debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, their aggressive and trashy post-hardcore record scattered with occasional strange gospel, folk, psychedelic, funk, and pop tunes. Imagine becoming completely enraptured by its quirky goodness; imagine being hooked by its charming immaturity. Imagine looking forward to what else Ween has to offer. It's now 1991. Imagine scouring the shelves at your local Sam Goody (ha!) and coming across Ween's newest album, The Pod! More of the same right? Oh boy!

The Pod is Ween's murky, druggy album. The tone of their second album is such a radical departure from the first that you'll be scratching your head wondering why they didn't just continue with the winning formula they had established on their debut. Of course, no one, possibly not even Gene Ween and Dean Wean themselves, had prescient knowledge of Ween's trajectory at the time. No one yet knew that EVERY album would be such a radical departure. But, again, place yourself in 1991. Ween's second album is out to the public in all its glory, and all you have is the first album to compare it to. So, how does it compare?

In my quest to absorb and appreciate every album by every artist on the planet, and hopefully become an immortal being along the way that can continue this quest indefinitely (oh please God please make it happen), I try not to compare a band's work to their other work as a basis for judgment. Try as I might, though, I consider Ween's first three albums to be a loosely cohesive package deal due to their similar base artistic ambitions and recurring themes, and I'm not as enamored with The Pod as I am with GodWeenSatan: The Oneness. People either love or hate The Pod with not much room for fence-straddlers, but I'm absolutely straddling that fucking fence. Bite me!

The first bone I have to pick with this album is the dreary production. The lore states that the Ween boys recorded this on a four-track cassette recorder in their apartment (nicknamed "The Pod", aha!) while both were stricken with mono and constantly high on, of all substances, Scotchgard! Only the part about the four-track recorder is actually confirmed, but the sick and stoned aspect of the backstory certainly adds to the experience. These 23 tracks are like one big uncomfortable fever trip. An hour and fifteen minutes of gloomy, plodding tunes. Some sllllloooooooowwww and joyless, some fast and upbeat, some even precious and pleasant. Almost all of them completely sludgy, distorted, and disconcerting. The production, while deliberate and appropriate, is tough to take for such an incredible length of time all in one sitting. The sameness can be claustrophobic.

As for the songs themselves, the filler here is way more obvious. I feel like the debut had something to offer on every single one of its 29 tracks, but The Pod has a fair share of total throwaways. Most of it's on the album's back half, with "Don't Sweat It", "Laura", "Boing", "Alone", "Moving Away", and "She Fucks Me" being my picks for immediately tossing in the goddamn garbage without an ounce of regret. All of them are slow and repetitive as shit without enough melody, or even humor, to salvage them. Other filler tunes on the front half are semi-amusing enough, such as the stoned-out "Pollo Asado" where the Ween boys fumble their way through Mexican restaurant take-out order over some pleasantly plinky background music ("Ok, that'll be $16.07...Out of $20?...Ok, $16.07's your change."), or the tone-setting sleepy opener "Strap on That Jammypac" which, I think, is all about that makeshift Scotchgard bong shown on the album cover. Hey, speaking of which, if you're a Leonard Cohen fan then that cover should look familiar! They lifted it from Cohen's The Best of Leonard Cohen greatest hits compilation and slapped picture of a guy wearing a bong-mask right over Cohen's mug! Now that's funny!

That's enough for the negatives, at any rate. For the defense, I'm still a big appreciator of Ween's relatable brand of stupid humor which is all over this record. It's just this dumb, teenage, inside-jokey, sneery asshole-type humor that, while I can't speak for anyone else, I can certainly connect with. I like that they have the balls to just put it out there, too. The over-the-top voices/accents, the constant mentions of "pork roll, egg and cheese", the snickering that they left in everywhere. The nonsense call-backs from the first album, such as Eddie Dingle or the established brotherly love between the two Ween boys. I love the beginning of "Pollo Asado" where Deaner asks over the romantic muzak "Come on, it's a beautiful night for a walk on the beach, wouldn't you say?" and then Gener responds in his best racist faux-Hispanic male stoner Pedro-From-Napoleon-Dynamite voice "YES, I WOULD SAY THAT...I WOULD SAY THAT" before launching right into ordering Mexican food. I love the absurdly off-time percussion stops and starts in "Molly" while the Weens grumble through their "Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly" choruses. I love the completely indulgent '70s hard rock send-ups of "Dr. Rock" and "Sketches of Winkle" played straight amidst all terrible distortion. That shit is hilarious!

Not to mention that there quite a few very good melodies hidden in the sludge. The aforementioned high-energy "Dr. Rock" and "Sketches of Winkle" have some very tasty guitar licks, while songs like "Captain Fantasy" have snarky falsetto passages that can get stuck in your head for days. "Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World" is a slow, fanciful proggy tune that has a beautifully simple...I want to say it's an organ...melody linking together the verses. "Mononucleosis" is the haunting, feverish, possibly autobiographical account of one of the Ween boys (Deaner?) falling ill with mono and the grief that the other one (Gener?) is going through. Once the song is over you're gonna think you just got mono yourself. "The Stallion (Pt. 1)" is completely, unnecessarily in-your-face with an onslaught of aggression and industrial noise, while Gener spits lines in a haughty medieval-type voice stuff like "YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH/YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT" and "I'M THE STALLION, MANG". And don't sleep on the more restrained reprise, "The Stallion (Pt. 2)", at the end of the album. It's just as uproariously stupid! "Deaner! Deaner!/Dude, where can you be?/Come hither!/Who are you?/The stallion!..."

So there you go, the good is really good and the bad is really bad. That's about right. Whether you do love it, or hate it, or are a loathsome fence-straddler like me, the agreed consensus on The Pod is that it's 1) Ween's most inaccessible album, and 2) Ween's most quintessentially "Ween"-like album. In other words, this album mustn't be overlooked and only serious attempts to break through the barrier must be taken. In the end, the opinion you form should be your own. The Boognish himself wouldn't accept anything less from his prospective disciples.

JUST OK

Review: Frank Zappa - Just Another Band from L.A. (1972)

Jesus Christ, more Flo and Eddie?? For all the background you could ever need on these two losers, see my reviews for Zappa's previous three albums Chunga's Revenge, Fillmore East - June 1971, and 200 Motels. I'm tired of talking about them.

Guys like Zappa, I know their discographies like the back of my ugly, deformed hand. Even so, I try to make a point to re-listen to an extremely familiar album at least once more before finalizing one of these reviews. I couldn't bring myself to do it for Just Another Band from L.A.; I really hate the album that much. The whole Flo and Eddie era feels like one big weird wart in the Zappa catalog, and thank fucking Christ that around this time some lunatic had the good sense to push Frank off stage and cripple him for six months, temporarily rendering him unable to tour and forcing stupid Flo and stupid Eddie to fuck off and pursue their own stupid, unsuccessful endeavors! But I'd rather talk about that incident during the Waka/Jawaka album review when I'm in a better goddamn mood.

So Just Another Band from L.A. is another album of live material taken from a single show in 1971, two months after the set of concerts that made up the Fillmore East - June 1971 album. Once again, Flo & Eddie are at the forefront. Once again, the material puts a heavy focus on jokey goofin' antics and spoken word nonsense while the music itself is secondary. ONCE AGAIN, it blows chunks.

I'll start with a positive: "Billy the Mountain", as a concept, is among the most innovative and ballsy ideas Zappa ever had, and he had a lot of them. This live track, clocking in at nearly 25 minutes, tells the story of a mountain--a mountain named Billy--and the wacky hijinks as he travels--yes, travels--across the country with his wife Ethell--a tree growing out of Billy's shoulder. It sounds extremely stupid, because it is, and it's not the plot itself that I'm lauding here, because I'm absolutely not. What I can appreciate is the effort, especially since it's the effort itself that separates this album from its sister album Fillmore East - June 1971. I can appreciate the craft of the story, the twisted "Peter and the Wolf"-style fairy tale that it is. I can appreciate the guts to turn it into a stage show, and the decision to finally actually use Flo and Eddie in a way that makes sense. I can appreciate the flexibility of the story itself, which feels like a bare-bones framework with which to insert some musical and vocal improvisations at-will. This particular cut is taken from a single show, performed at UCLA, and the story is filled to the brim with local references that add a special touch. I mean, being from the midwest, all these local references fly right over my head (Rosamond, Gorman, Downey, the Jack-In-The-Box on Glenoaks, etc. etc. etc.), but it's clear to me that as the band was on tour they adjusted the song to pepper in local references whether they were in Los Angeles, or Dallas, or wherever. Effort. I like that.

BUT, this doesn't mean I enjoy "Billy the Mountain" on a gut level. I find the track to be exhausting, overlong, drab, and annoying. The hard-to-follow plot meanders quite a bit, and it's not obvious even after a few listens that the story itself is, like, a real story. One with a beginning, middle, and end. Hmmm, where's that effort that I was just singing all my praises about? Yeah yeah, OK, again, the story itself isn't the point, right? It's just a vehicle for the stage antics, fine, but...I don't know, if you're going to make a 25-minute stage show centered around an actual tale, I want a little more than just "the mountain gets royalty checks from posing for postcards, uses the money to travel the country, leaves a trail of destruction in its wake, and dodges the draft! This infuriates the military, who sends a guy named Studebacher Hoch to defeat the mountain! Hoch slathers syrup on himself to attract flies, the flies allow him to fly up to the mountain, Hoch tries to reason with the mountain, it doesn't work, and Hoch falls to his death! The moral of the story: 'A mountain is something you don't want to fuck with'. The end!" I wish I was exaggerating here, even a little. Because this track goes on for almost 25 minutes it's very difficult to not check your watch as it plods along, occasionally teasing you with interesting instrumental garnishes (descending arpeggios as Studebaker Hoch falls off Billy the Mountain) and musical allusions (snippets of the Tonight Show theme with Johnny Carson, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "Judy Blue Eyes", among others) before quickly returning to Flo and Eddie's tuneless frat boy fuckery.

It's too bad, too, that nothing is salvaged on Side 2 of the record either. The remaining four tracks are a spiritual continuation of exactly what one gets on Fillmore East - June 1971 with the added bonus of EVEN MORE local Los Angeles references that no one outside of Orange County or born after 1956 will even understand. "Call Any Vegetable" is a dismal live version of the song (originally from Absolutely Free) which is pretty standard until THE FLO & EDDIE COMEDY TROUPE butts in with some dumb shit halfway through that sucks. AND FRANK ALLOWS IT. This, to me, is the most heinous disgrace. "Eddie, Are You Kidding?" is, supposedly, all about a local discount men's clothing store and the owner's constant television advertisements. Yeah, ok, that's a cool song for Fred from Warsaw, Indiana to listen to and appreciate. "Magdalena" is the SECOND SONG in the Zappa catalog that's about daughter-fuckin'. Fred from Warsaw, IN perked up a bit here! The album concludes with a sad rendition of Uncle Meat's "Dog Breath".

For a guy who spent so much of his energy working and creating, Just Another Band from L.A. and, really, any of the other Flo & Eddie material couldn't possibly have been something Frank was particularly proud of. All this stuff is oddly deprived of real music, it just feels empty and cold and unnecessary. Again, some guy basically crippled Frank a few months after this show and forced him to completely alter the trajectory of his career. I shudder to think how much longer the Flo & Eddie era could have really continued if this didn't happen. We could have gotten another 35 albums of this shit! We'll never know their sophisticated opinions on the 1979 gas crisis or the launch of MTV or the Iran-Contra Affair! Oh no!

Fuck Flo. Fuck Eddie. Fuck this completely inessential album.

SUCKS

Review: Oingo Boingo - Boi-Ngo (1987)

By now the nail was most certainly in the coffin for any hopes that Oingo Boingo would return to their manic and quirky early ska punk days. If the cover of their sixth album Boi-Ngo is any indication of the band's steadfast ascension to maturity, then feast your weary eyes! The full band is on display for the first (and only) time! And what a band of sophisticates it is! Widow's Peak, Poofy Hair, Beardy, Shifty, they're all here! I see a guy with a fucking beret on his head. At least Danny Elfman himself has the good sense to stay coy, obviously concealing a goofy shit-eating grin, and reassuring us that the band hasn't entirely lost its humorous edge.

But, yeah, to say that Boi-Ngo is a return to form after the tepidity of Dead Man's Party is like saying that 9/11/02 was a better 9/11 than the previous 9/11. The production has improved drastically...so drastically, in fact, that this is likely their best sounding album ever. Crisp contrast and wide dynamic range here really make those fuckin' horns POP without sounding too slick and cheesy, so congrats Oingo Boingo for narrowly avoiding making your 1987 album sound like it came out in, god-forbid, 1990. Ha! Along with the improved production, the energy is back too. It's not as frantic as the days of old for the band, but Boi-Ngo recaptured the sorely lacking urgency of Dead Man's Party while tempering the edges with more, let's say, enlightened melodies and strong structures. That is to say, take the energy from the early albums and strip away all the weirdness and you've got Boi-Ngo. Take what you can get.

I like this album a lot, but only after accepting the fact that the band's usual charming strangeness was gone now. Without the charming strangeness it all feels very pointless at first, like why would I even bother listening to this when I could listen to literally anything else? This was a tough hurdle to get over, and unfortunately this is what likely hurts Boi-Ngo the most: the shattered hope. BUT, aha, this is yet another perfect opportunity to drive home my philosophy of learning to enjoy an album on its own merits instead of trying to compare it to the band's earlier, or "best", or most quintessential, efforts. Listen to it in a vacuum and what do you get? Let's break it down.

The album kicks off with "Home Again", which sets the vibe immediately. Gone are the high-energy, rockin', paranoid openers of yore. This one is high-energy, rockin'...not paranoid, though. Optimistic? Hopeful? Even a little sappy? Dig into the lyrics a little and you'll learn that this is one of those stories as old as time about losing one's way, losing innocence, never being able to go back and unsee what's been seen ("He's got charisma/But when he's all alone/He curls up in a ball/And wishes that he was home again.../Home again..."). The familiar Boingo theme of introverted despair! I knew the band hadn't changed much! Just a little bit of lyrical dissonance, but hey, what a strong and lively melody right out the gate huh? And Boi-Ngo more or less continues in this fashion, with track after track of lively, upbeat earworms offering nothing more profound than an enjoyable listening experience (even if Elfman thinks he's being more profound than reality proves). "Where Do All My Friends Go" weaves in sneaky, slithering funk throughout the call-and-response lyrical phrasing ("I'll follow you until I die/Tell me where my friends go/With outstretched arms into the sky/Tell me where my friends go"), chugging along on unrelenting momentum. "Elevator Man" is nothing more than a four-and-a-half minute cunnilingus joke ("Who's goin' down/Who's comin' with me?") and it'll make you feel oh-so-sleazy for enjoying the shit out of it! These first three songs are an incredibly solid one-two-three punch of boisterous, rollicking, catchy goodness for your earholes.

Then in comes Elfman's preachy side with "New Generation". I always like it better when Danny waxes poetic about inner turmoil, and I can tolerate the occasional social commentary as long as the tongue is lodged firmly in the cheek (which it almost always was), but "New Generation" lacks the irony or absurd humor that I'm used to with Oingo Boingo political statements. To me, this just comes across as one of those "Wake Up, Sheeple! The media is controlling your opinions!"-type tirades that was done much more subtly on Good For Your Soul's "Who Do You Want To Be" and much more effectively later on Boingo's "Insanity". It's an interestingly structured song, and I like cool echoed horns during the choruses, but this is the longest track on the album and it essentially plods along on a couple of chords and a monotone delivery. AND THEN, there's an even more monotone bridge where Elfman does his best to rattle off a diatribe using his lowest available quasi-guttural register. I consider this the album's only real misstep.

The energy on the second half doesn't reach the same heights that the first three songs achieved, but it's respectable all the same. No stinkers! "We Close Our Eyes" is a stinker on the surface, though! It's all ballad-y and shit, but oh my god is it a contender for the most beautiful melody ever cooked up by these nerds. And it's actually uplifting too, no lyrical dissonance this time. It's the kind of song you'd find at the end of a John Hughes movie if John Hughes movies were about death and dying and old people falling in love, like, right before they die. Plus, I'm a sucker for the dang ol' accordion all over the place. "Not My Slave" continues the sentimental sappiness; it's about love and commitment again, as are a lot of songs out there in the world. But are you hearing that melody? Jumping Jesus, where was all this songwriting talent on Dead Man's Party? On "My Life" we're once again back to personal mental anguish, but we're not going to stoop to manic ska are we? Oh no no no, it's all slow funk, baby! "Outrageous" nearly reaches the energy level of the earlier tracks, likely the catchiest number on Boi-Ngo, and for my money, with all the synthy New Wave flourishes, it's the closest thing to classic Oingo Boingo that we'll ever hear again in our lives! Also, consider this one a good subtle social commentary example with the word "outrageous" itself being a prominent overwrought buzzword of its time, and Danny basically saying "fuck you, nothing is outrageous". I love it! This is how it's done, stupid!

What if I wrapped this review up without even mentioning the final song "Pain"? Grrr! Whoops! "Pain" combines all the good elements of Boi-Ngo thus far and distills it into a fun, pompous, rhythmically infectious, hook-laden closer. And if that weren't enough, surprise violin accompaniment pops up between the choruses. It'll make ya wanna press play on the album all over again!

All right, am I singing the praises too highly? Could be, I don't know. It's hard to make a case against the solid songwriting, production, musical ideas, and sequencing. Lyrics, of course, tend to plow headfirst through the cheese, but with melodies this strong it just all fits very well anyway. I'm not cringing just yet. Enjoy this underrated and largely unrecognized Oingo Boingo stepping stone before we all get completely soured on what is still yet to come, my friends. If you think this is cheese, then you will NOT be prepared for what's going to hit you next! Oh man, you have no idea! Get ready!

GOOD

Review: "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Weird Al" Yankovic (1983)

Ha! You know, for the longest time I wanted to write about Weird Al but I could never bring myself to do it. I write about guys like Zappa and They Might Be Giants and I attempt to make cases against the "novelty music" label that plagues these off-the-wall acts and everyone else like them, but what do you do when you think about a guy like Weird Al -- a modern day honest-to-God unapologetic novelty act? How is it fair to take him seriously, give critical thought to his albums full of comedy music, and lump him in with actual musicians who make careers out of real, genuine artistry and talent?

Easy. Because, in my opinion, we can and should legitimize Weird Al as a real musician, plain and simple. You might know him only as the annoying accordion-wielding parody guy (influenced and elevated into mainstream success by the annoying Dr. Demento) who turns chart-topping hits like Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" into goofy songs about food and television. And, for the most part, this is all the casual observer needs to know. Digging deeper reveals a steady and successful career spanning four, almost five, decades; a career just as active now as it was when it started. Albums contain about a 50/50 distribution of full-on parody songs and original material, so it's not all writing fart jokes over Nirvana songs. His loyal and talented backing band has basically remained unchanged since the beginning (Jim West on guitar, Steve Jay on bass, Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz on drums, adding Ruben Valtierra on keyboards in 1991), and all together they put on one hell of a live show. And, if you're stubborn in your stance that he's just one big gag and have nothing else positive to say about him, at least you have to admit he is consistent. And that's saying quite a lot about an individual who just turned 60 years old this past October and therefore, more than most people in his business, needs to keep his finger on the pulse of pop culture in order to survive. And he's really good at it, too. Adequacy!

Weird Al appeals to all ages, but the best time of your life to be steeped in his irreverent, nerdy offerings that deconstruct music just as much as embrace it would probably be the pre-teen through teenage years. After that, I doubt newcomers would get much of a religious experience from it, but oldcomers will never ever grow out of it. Living proof right here! *points to self, the smirking loathsome bastard* ... still skeptical? OK, fine. How about this approach then: treat Weird Al as a gateway artist. His albums display a generous diversity of musical styles, often but not always coinciding with the times, and at best young enthusiasts may find themselves interested in checking out artists and bands that Weird Al saw fit to pay homage to over the years. Chances are good that if you like a Weird Al album from 2014 you're also going to like a Weird Al album from 1985 regardless of outdated pop decisions. Longevity!

So let's get right into "Weird Al" Yankovic, his bright-eyed and bushy-haired self-titled debut! Weird Al's origin story is as close as you'd get to the early-'80s equivalent of sudden Youtube fame: Dr. Demento speaks at Weird Al's high school, Al accosts him with homemade bedroom recordings of his accordion-accompanied solo efforts, Dr. Demento not only listens to the recordings but likes them and plays them on his own radio show, invites Al as a guest a few times over the years, Al tours with Dr. Demento's stage show, Al gets noticed by nightclub managers and various outliers in the music industry that use their connections to get Al some recording studio time. OK, so not "sudden" Youtube fame. This is all over the span of roughly seven years, and in the meantime Al finishes school and goes to college and never really considers a full-fledged music career until it becomes an accidental reality. This whole slow burn to humble fame translates perfectly to his humble debut, a collection of earnestly crafted material that only a humble dork in his early 20s from moderately religious/conservative middle-class, suburban Los Angeles can earnestly craft. 30 minutes of enjoyable and wholesome, albeit amateur and shallow, comedy pop songs.

Out of ten tracks, exactly half are direct parody songs: "Ricky" ("Mickey" by one-hit wonder Toni Basil), "I Love Rocky Road" (Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll"), "Stop Draggin' My Car Around" (Stevie Nicks'/Tom Petty's "Stop Dragging My Heart Around"), "My Bologna" (The Knack's "My Sharona") and "Another One Rides the Bus" (Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust"). Bonus points to Weird Al for unintentional song-selection longevity, since four of those five are still extremely well-known 25 years later and one of them is kinda sorta well-known enough I guess maybe but probably not. I'll let you, the humble reader, decide which are which.

The other half of the tracks are bona-fide Yankovic originals! Now, as time goes on Al will tend to frame his originals around the sound of other existing artists, so they're pastiches instead of direct parodies (which have been termed in the canon as "style parodies"). So, for example, "Dog Eat Dog" off of the fourth Weird Al album Polka Party! is a clear Talking Heads style parody that, while maintaining a fully original melody and lyrical foundation, incorporates heavy elements of "Once in a Lifetime" and "And She Was" while aping and exaggerating David Byrne's desperate, yelping vocal style. Bottom line: come for the direct parodies and stay for the style parodies, I always say! Those are far and above the best parts of the Weird Al catalogue! But alas and oh no! Where are all the style parodies on "Weird Al" Yankovic?! According to the internet, "Happy Birthday" is a Tonio K style parody! But who the fuck is Tonio K?! BOOOOOOOOO! Not impressed! However, "Happy Birthday" is the best song on this album so perhaps that adds credence to my bold "style parodies are always the best songs" claim anyway. The other originals are "Gotta Boogie" (thin post-disco built around a single, weak joke), "Buckingham Blues" (generic harmonica blues about the royal family, inspired by John Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane"), "The Check's in the Mail" (the first of many of Yankovic's jabs at relatable white-collar corporate career shenanigans, something I doubt he can actually even marginally relate to), "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" (catchy and surprisingly sincere song about Al's feelings at the time regarding the early '80s yuppie lifestyle), and "Such a Groovy Guy" (one big, classy, public knock at his then-girlfriend's ex). None of these are typical style parodies. Further still, none of these are a polka medley! Polka medleys are a Weird Al staple! Early installment weirdness! Aaaaahhhh!

OK, so is it all funny? Kinda sorta. I suppose the whole point of Weird Al's comedy albums is to get a laugh out of them instead of, you know, dissecting them and appraising them on their musical merits like some basement-dwelling neckbeard. So, hereby and hitherto, all the Weird Al albums will be evaluated based on BOTH the music and the humor. And "Weird Al" Yankovic, the album that started it all...isn't very musically interesting and isn't very funny!

Fact of the matter is, Weird Al got much better at this very quickly. The first album is a mess of immature ideas, mediocre lyrical wordplay, and shoddy production. If the rest of his career followed this trajectory then no one would know who he was today. BUT, I gotta give the guy credit for putting himself out there by being no one else but himself and doing nothing but what he wanted to do. As time goes on he will gain the non-ironic respect of everyone from Kurt Cobain to Lin-Manuel Miranda. For all you know Alfred Matthew Yankovic has gotten laid more than Wilt Chamberlain. But, steer clear of his debut album until you're already a fan, for the love of God.

JUST OK

Review: Frank Zappa - 200 Motels (1971)

My very permanent (as it turns out) decision to get a Zappa tattoo this past summer has given me the itch to write more Zappa reviews! An itch that is both literal and figurative. New tattoos are itchy, man. But that's all in the past! I have the rest of my life now to look back on how I ended the 2010's by paying someone money to eternally disfigure my perfect body while I hyperventilated nerdily.

Despite my personal, fanatical feelings toward Zappa, I want to make it clear that I don't consider him to be a genius. I used to think he was, of course, but I don't anymore. Unless a musician is constantly innovating and inventing, balancing accessibility with challenge, and keeping consistency, I'd be hard pressed to call anybody a genius. Nobody's that good. In Zappa's case, the "genius" label likely comes from his adequate mastery of multiple musical styles, which is inherent in his diverse range of interests. People will be quick to confuse a diverse artist for a genuine savant. No one will call AC/DC geniuses because they mastered one style and released the same record 15 times, but these same people may call David Bowie one (who is not a genius either).

Frank Zappa's modern classical and doo-wop influences weren't typical of his contemporaries, so his approach to anything would be understandably atypical as well. That's why this "soundtrack" album of orchestral pieces mixed with rock music exists. If nothing else, Zappa had some instincts and was never afraid to go with his gut...but don't call him a genius. This album, and the movie that inspired the music, are lauded by some as "genius" level. It's actually not really that good in the first place! That's the kind of problem everyone forgets to mention, and why I find it apt to bring it up now. 200 Motels is a deep cut in the catalog, but most hardcore fans far enough down the rabbit hole to come across this album will usually cite it in their defense for Zappa's "genius" status. Meh. I don't agree. In fact, if I were attempting to advertise Zappa's "genius" I'd steer clear of this album entirely. It's not a good argument for it.

Let's talk about the movie first. Gotta give the music some context, no? Not just for you, but for me as well! I've never fucking seen it and I don't wanna. Wikipedia here I come...ok, 200 Motels (the movie) is a film that "...attempts to portray the craziness of life on the road as a rock musician, and as such consists of a series of unconnected nonsense vignettes interspersed with concert footage of the Mothers of Invention." OK, I'm going to stop right there because it's not going to help clarify anything further. On paper it sounds an awful lot like the Uncle Meat movie, which was a thinly veiled life-on-the-road documentary wrapped with a bizarre sci-fi narrative. I think these young fresh fellows assumed their lives were much more interesting than reality and decided that everyone else wanted to know about it, so Zappa tried once more with 200 Motels and, since history repeats itself, failed again.

Now that's not a huge loss, right? The Uncle Meat movie was supposedly a garbage turd from shit hell and the accompanying album was nearly perfect, right? Surely the same applies in this case??? Ha! No! In its favor, 200 Motels (the album) is not a life-on-the-road documentary. That will come 20 years later as the (sorta shitty) Flo/Eddie-era archival double CD Playground Psychotics. What this actually is, it's about 90 minutes of surprisingly sophisticated orchestral arrangements woven into a mix of rock and comedy music. And what that actually means, it's a tapestry of weak and mildly interesting orchestra music surrounded by low-brow butt rock and juvenile humor. So if you loved the Fillmore East - June 1971 album...you may actually like this even less due to the orchestra music, honestly. There's an awful lot of it.

The orchestra music in of itself isn't bad, but it's certainly not too exciting and within the context of the final 200 Motels product it almost feels like it's in the way of the rest of the music. I can't think of many other albums that intersperse rock and roll tracks with orchestra music, but if this is THE BEST EXAMPLE IN THE WORLD then it falls flat anyway because the orchestral bits suck the life out of the project. Now, mind you, if these bits were as interesting as the odds and ends that made up the Burnt Weeny Sandwich album then I'd be whistling a different tune, but I'd be a filthy fucking liar if I elevated any of this stuff to Burnt Weeny Sandwich levels of output. Sorry.

And the rock songs? Flo and Eddie, of course, means you can knock off 150 points, but a lot of this stuff isn't as overtly bad as the material on Fillmore East - June 1971. "Mystery Roach", "Lonesome Cowboy Burt", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", "What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning" and "Magic Fingers" all sound like solid Chunga's Revenge outtakes, and where some of the subject matter gets revoltingly crass it gets made up for with, like, actual good melodies. The bad stuff is bad though, like "Shove It Right In", which is yet another song about groupie fucking but sung all slow and sophisticated like it's not about groupie fucking. And then there's stuff like "Penis Dimension" and "Dental Hygiene Dilemma" that continues the Flo/Eddie and Co. suck-ass comic routine that goes on for too long, the former being a small dick joke and the latter being one big convoluted in-joke about Zappa's bassist Jeff Simmons complaining about being in the band because Zappa actually did record him complaining about being in the band for real once and then he made Simmons complain about being in the band for his movie, and then Simmons "quits" but he doesn't really. Sounds hilarious, doesn't it? I can't stop laughing.

And then there's the stuff that's less orchestral bits and rock songs and more stage antics translated to audio, which doesn't work quite well as you might imagine. This is mostly segregated to the last half of disc two, starting with "The Lad Searches the Night for His Newts" and ending with "Little Green Scratchy Sweaters & Courduroy Ponce". I'm not even going to pretend I know what the hell is going on with any of it, and I won't waste any further time talking about it!

The finale is a Zappa staple: "Strictly Genteel". It's one of the very few arrangements Zappa ever made with some actual heart, and it would make the rounds here and there at live shows up until Zappa's death. This version, however, is the worst one, as it begins with a monologue by Thoedore Bikel of Fiddler on the Roof fame and then continues on with lyrics that future versions would omit completely ("Lord have mercy on the hippies and the faggots/And the dykes and the weird little children they grow" ....yeah...). After the tune is properly over, though, a blues breakdown occurs with more Flo and Eddie filling your ears with their wiseguy garbage that goes on for five minutes.

A few bonus tracks of radio advertisements for the film are tacked on to the end of the album, followed by a radio edit for "Magic Fingers".

So, yeah, that's it. And this is all coming from me, the guy who thinks Zappa shat gold during his lifetime. Go listen to 200 Motels and try, just try as hard as you can, to make a case for "genius" using this album as your only frame of reference. Luckily for all of us, the Flo and Eddie years are almost over. Just one more shitty album left to go.

KINDA BAD

Review: Major Parkinson - Twilight Cinema (2014)

After "dominating" the rock culture for about two or three good years in the early '70s, progressive rock had rightfully, and for its own good, receded back into the shadows and stayed put. Nearly 45 years later the forgotten genre continues steadily on a rolling boil, maintaining its niche status among the throngs of rock geeks, budding musicians, fantasy/sci-fi fans, and other degenerate outliers of the greater music-listening population. A great compromise if you ask me! Progressive rock is bloated with garbage, but it's the kind of garbage that people who are the target audience for that kind garbage will spend the time seeking out that kind of garbage because they enjoy that kind of garbage. God knows I'm guilty as hell about this. But, aggghhhhh, here's the eternal problem!: once in a while something will be released in this niche-ass genre by a very unknown band from a part of the world known for releasing music in this niche-ass genre, that, tragically, deserves to be hoisted out of the shadows and into the spotlight...but never will just by virtue of its prog association.

Go ahead and read my reviews on the last two Major Parkinson albums in order to catch up on my feelings about the band's unfortunate obscurity. Their third release, Twilight Cinema, is where it begins to start hurting a little. I can tell that the band is nowhere near slowing down as they currently work on their fifth album. Their fourth album was developed entirely upon donations by their loyal fans, of which I'm proud to consider myself a contributor. Very little backstory exists on Twilight Cinema, which I imagine was a similar low-budget fan-funded situation, but clearly this is a band that loves what they're doing and are willing expend the effort to put out product with little monetary return. It makes it all more frustrating that Twilight Cinema, from beginning to end, is an incredible piece of music by anybody's standards. The decade isn't completely over and I will already confidently put it at the very top of my list of the best albums of the 2010s. No major music publications acknowledged it, because why should they? Virtually zero independent or minor music publications acknowledged it, because of the prog genre. As far as I'm concerned, this is Major Parkinson's magnum opus. No one will ever know about this album, and that's a sad fact.

The upside for me is that albums like these can be reviewed entirely from the gut, since no historical context or critical reception surrounding the album exists to impair my judgment! Allow me to begin by explaining why, exactly, this particular album deserves to be elevated above the vast, tepid bog of niche prog rock: 1) it avoids nearly all the worst pitfalls of overwrought prog while maintaining impeccable consistency, originality, and diversity, 2) it's intellectually challenging without sacrificing mental or emotional accessibility, 3) it's not overlong for fuck's sake , and 4) it has a high replayability factor. In my travels it's extremely rare to find modern progressive rock albums that hit all four points, and doggone it I'll excuse it almost every time. Even Steven Wilson, the modern prog messiah himself, falters in nearly every instance (usually with #3, occasionally with #1). But to hit all four points effortlessly, or least with perceived effortlessness, that's something special. No question about it.

The first track of Major Parkinson albums tend to feel like extended intros, and Twilight Cinema is no exception with "Skeleton Sangria". Even at 2:50 it feels like a lead-in to the much more substantial and assertive "Impermanence", especially since it's easy to wave it off completely due to the immense strength of the next seven tracks. Hell, it's my least favorite song here. Good to get it out of the way early. However, I have now been forced into actually, like, sitting down and critically listening to the song and evaluating it on its own merits. And you know what...yeah, ok, it's good. I've come to appreciate the surprise of the happy-go-lucky (synthesized organ?) solo that pops in at the end after the rest of the acoustic and stripped-down cabaret waltz, but many other bands could (and do) base an entire album around this particular sound.

But the real star here is "Impermanence", which actually sets the dark tone of the rest of the album in a way that renders the "Skeleton Sangria" intro POSITIVELY SUPERFLUOUS. Throw away "Skeleton Sangria"! "Impermanence" is an unbelievable display of everything good about progressive rock in four minutes and twenty-six seconds. They channel Porcupine Tree a bit here, to their favor. Atmospheric and skewing towards darkness, but with warmth dragging you down back down to earth thanks to the lush piano punctuating the driving beat. Crescendos and decrescendos are used to excellent effect, bringing tension to a head and providing satisfying release several times (yeah baby). The verse that starts with "Raindrops dripping from a parasol/Making bubbles to collect the blue skies...", the one with several measures awash in low-range piano, the one that chillingly crescendos to the next verse, those are the best consecutive seconds of music in Major Parkinson's entire discography. And it just keeps building, weaving in perfectly-balanced electronic Tangerine Dream-esque krautrock rhythms while Kollbotn gives a mellow, restrained, even beautiful vocal performance...and just when you think the song can't possibly evolve further, the breathtaking coda starts chugging along with bongo-style drumming over acoustic strumming...and just when you think this sudden new melody can't possibly evolve further, the breathtaking male/female vocal climax brings everything to the peak (yeah baby). I guess, in the end, you have to hear it, right? This song was my obsession in 2014 and I haven't heard a track that has grabbed me quite the same way since. Merging talented rock performance with natural pop instincts will always win points in my book. Never the 'twain shall meet for highfalutin prog snobs, but fuck those stuffed shirts. This track will make a believer out of anyone.

And then from this point forward the consistency is maintained. "Black River" is a rollicking, menacingly energetic song about...uh, I don't know. You'll need a thesaurus handy, but the lyrics are so abstract anyway that you might as well just enjoy the music and treat the vocals like another instrument (hmm...déjà vu...). You can pretend that the song is about pirates! It's hard to listen to that chorus melody without picturing Captain Jack Sparrow sauntering up and down the Black Pearl - and see, that's very close to the name of the song! I think the song is actually about a drowned woman, but I gleaned that only from the first two lines and the rest is just muckity muck anyway. "A Cabin in the Sky" is also menacingly energetic and a pure carnival horror show, so me likey! It's a clever juxtaposition of schmaltzy waltzy old-timey three-ring circus music and modern big city...but still old-timey...illustrative lyrics (that I still can't comprehend but the DO mention things like "bright lights on 42nd street" and convertible cars!). This is also Twilight Cinema's most infectious earworm and the in-your-face brashness of the horns during the chorus is fuckin' cathartic. "A Cabin in the Sky" is surely a Top 40 hit in some twisted alternate clown dimension.

"Beaks of Benevola" is gorgeous and I believe that the band should really start employing more of the male / female vocal interplay. Oh wait, they will! On the next album! Excellent! The lush smoothness of the female voice (I can't find any info on the vocalist; probably some Norwegian chick from Stjørdalshalsen!) works remarkably well with Kollbotn raspy, shitty, piece-of-shit, 1930s cabaret child-molestin' voice, resulting in the first truly successful ballad the band has attempted (I love the noodly instrumental ending). The titular track "Twilight Cinema" wraps it up with a goofy and bouncy pop number that harkens back to the band's earlier oddball material ("Epitaphs and pornographic literature!"). The final track also serves to unintentionally showcase just how different the first two albums could have sounded with crisper production. Let's get some remasters going.

So I skipped "Heart Machine", which is my second-favorite track behind "Impermanence", only because it's the most...underwhelming. More than any other song it sails under the radar because it's not TOO weird or TOO different, but with its doom metal riffs and fast blast beat drumming (especially at the end) it's undeniably the heaviest song on the album, at least part of it. The heaviness is tempered by some very pretty, ethereal piano passages and hushed vocals. My favorite bit is the instrumental bridge that starts with a tense, vibrating hum that follows with a piano breakdown into a bendy, echo-y, dreamlike guitar solo. These guys are good at tension-and-release! Yeah baby.

And I skipped "The Wheelbarrow" because, and I'll fess up, it turns out that this album isn't completely perfect. This one is the obligatory 8-minute epic suite right in the middle of the record, and it's the closest they come to falling into the prog wankery trap. Freshness is kept throughout with some catchy melodic phrases and some repeated verses ("She can do anything/She can love everyone/Doing the same routine over and over"), and it wouldn't be Major Parkinson without throwing in some gypsy accordion! But, other than that, being somewhat lengthy and inaccessible and, on the surface, similar to any other cookie-cutter 8-minute prog rock song released since 1969, this would be the most likely turnoff for the prog hater. Since I'm a prog lover I'm just going to end this paragraph with a hearty "fuck you, it's good" and move on! Fuck you, it's good.

Album of the Decade. Not much else to say.

VERY GOOD

Review: They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants (1986)

So, what, the music world didn't already have enough nerds scrambling around by the mid-'80s? Devo, Thomas Dolby, Elvis Costello, Weird Al, the B-52's, fuckin' Rush, did we really need more? Ha! Don't even bother thinking about it. Enter John Linnell and John Flansburgh, unequivocally the two biggest nerds that the music world had even seen up to that point. Subtle, unassuming nerds, of course, but nerds all the same. Nerds who are so nerdy that I doubt they even know, even realize to the fullest extent, how nerdy they truly are. Weird Al's got nothing on the Johns.

I have a personal bias toward They Might Be Giants because I was a big ol' fucking nerd as a teenager, having had their music swirling around the latent areas of my brain for years and years prior, all thanks to that one episode of Tiny Toons where they made music videos out of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man". I finally took the plunge and purchased their third album Flood, the FIRST. EVER. NON-COMEDY. ALBUM. that I had ever purchased for myself! It was a big deal. These guys were like messiahs to me, displaying their full-frontal nerdity without any shame and reliably feeding my ears with the most catchy, odd-ball pop tunes to ever be crafted by a couple of young New York dorks with basically just an accordion and a drum machine. Having been influenced by the aforementioned Devo, Elvis Costello, the B-52's, as well as weirdos like Zappa, the Residents, Captain Beefheart, and even Carl Stalling's hyperactive Bugs Bunny music, Linnell and Flansy have an incredible ability to draw from these influences and pool their talents in order to create some whip-smart and highly original output. None of their songs sound like any of those bands or artists, but no one is going to argue against placing TMBG alongside any of them. Overtime their output becomes less impressive and more derivative, but waving off their first few studio albums as novelty music does a disservice to pop music in general.

That goes double for their self-titled debut, which is likely the most impressive and least derivative collection of songs they would accomplish for the rest of their career. Don't confuse that with consistency, since They Might Be Giants is middle-of-the-road in the consistency department. An album just short of 40 minutes, 19 songs total, with only one cracking the 3-minute mark, the Johns don't have time for consistency! They need to get in, get out, and move on! The impressiveness comes from just how absolutely different one song sounds from the next. What's the opposite of derivative? Integral? The integralness comes from unconventional song structures and, let's face it, the completely nutso, wild ideas. People always listen to albums and go "wow, they must have really had fun making this!". Those albums, any album I don't care take your pick, those all seem like church compared to this one, because the sheer earnestness and uninhibited energy that the Johns display comes through in a way that cannot be mistaken as anything other than unbridled love for the sport. Even a jaded piece of shit like me can be convinced. This flurry of quick ideas also means tons of experimentation and genre-bending, and therefore not everything is going to be a slam dunk. You can bet your shiny metal ass, though, that you will absolutely LOVE at least two or three of these tracks and they likely won't overlap with your listening party buddy's favorites. You will also HATE a few tracks too, but such is the price to pay for the full experience. It's like a big emotional roller coaster of annoying, nasally geek voices and accordion jack-offery! Yeah baby. FOR EXAMPLE, I have a soft spot for "Everything Right is Wrong Again", "Hide Away Folk Family" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog", but you might not! I can't stand "Boat of Car" or "The Day", but you, the idiot moron, may thrive on such banality! It all depends on your personal threshold for general weirdness and off-kilter, uh, "melodies" I guess you could maybe call it? The point is, there's something for everyone!

There's so much to unpack that I'd write 30 pages if I had to go through each track on its own. The Johns are mostly doing it all themselves armed with a small arsenal of instruments and a drum machine for nearly all the drum and bass tracks. Musical styles employed include new wave electronica, synthpop, polka, college rock, American folk, country, hard rock, gothic rock, bluegrass, industrial, post-modernist avant-garde, and everything in between. Many at the same time, usually. Sometimes you can't even tell. Take "She's an Angel": it's one of the more stylistically and lyrically grounded songs, perhaps perceptibly normal only after comparison to the ten weirder tracks before it. TMBG are well known for their cryptic, allusion-filled lyrics, but this one is uncharacteristically straightforward and clearly a love song. Deeper probing reveals strange songwriting decisions anyway. Like, what's with the monotone vocal delivery over minimalist, gothic single-note one-measure bursts between the choruses? What's with all the fluid slide guitar snaking around Linnell's twangy, heartfelt singing during the chorus? How would one even classify this? In the end, why does it really matter? No other song in existence sounds like it. It's beautiful. They nailed it...whatever "it" is, of course. Or how about *closes eyes and points to a random track* ..."Chess Piece Face", with its bold and sneaky synth notes, and Flansburgh singing like some grizzled, rejected medieval bard about God knows what. Sources say that the titular individual, the one with the face like a *checks notes* chess piece, is based on a boss Flansburgh had. But that's all the information available about this bizarre song, and the mystery makes the song more intriguing than it has any right to be, just like the other 18 tracks. In fact, I'm pretty sure I think the vocals sound medieval because I'm associating the music with chess pieces! Got me again! How about one more..."Don't Let's Start" is the one, if any, most people may recognize off their debut. It lays low as far as weirdness goes, but it's easy to miss the fact that this song has at least three distinct and memorable melodies fused together in a seamless display of synthpop wizardry. As awkward and clunky as a verse like "D, world destruction/Over and overture/N, do I need/Apostrophe T, need this torture?" reads in print, the flow is beautiful and the transition into the main chorus is as natural as could be. Try not to sing along after inevitably hitting repeat on the track a few times in a row.

Man, ok, I love "Hide Away Folk Family" so I need to talk about it for a second. Creepy lullaby music, punctuated further by Linnell's naturally off-putting whinging voice of course, but no skimping on infectious melody so it's a perfect recipe of catchiness and uniqueness for this song to stick in your head for days. The Johns still seize opportunities where they can to have fun and experiment as their whims demand, and there's a certain charm to their brazenness. Perplexing choices in this song include an oddly unsettling spoken-word horoscope delivered during the bridge section, and an incredibly fake backmasked vocal ending. So fake, in fact, that it's hilarious!

The "bad" songs are really a matter of personal preference. There's something to offer from every track on here no matter how short, or simple, or offensive to one's personal aesthetics. I think "Boat of Car" sucks because of the plinky 8-bit Atari-style bloops and beeps, but I can see the appeal for those who, say, enjoy a composition cooked up by a Speak & Spell. And, in spite of myself, I find the repeated "Daddy'll sing bass" Johnny Cash sampling amusing. I don't like "The Day" because I don't have much appreciation yet for slow soul-folk, even if satirical. The idea of Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs' marriage, however, is funny, and I can't knock the song too hard. Like a I said before, something for everyone. Scanning through the tracklist I can't find too much more to criticize.

Let's end on a objective high note anyway. How about the closer "Rhythm Section Want Ad": barely-intelligible slurried and oddly-inflected/cadenced vocals at slacker-lightning speed that protest mainstream musical expectations while still throwing in an accordion solo lifted note-for-note from that one ancient Raymond Scott composition they play during factory sequences in Bugs Bunny cartoons (you know the one). Not even taking into account the unassumingly catchy pop rock music and vocal delivery, there's so much more going on in those 2 minutes and 21 seconds: constant references (both overt and subtle) to cartoons in general, self-deprecating remarks masked as clever turns of phrase ("In a world we call our home there's lots of room to roam/Plenty of time to turn mistakes into rhyme"), and goddamned multilayered PUNS ("There's a place for those who love their poetry/It's just across from the sign that says 'Pros Only'").

OK, I have to throw a few more nuggets of lyrical genius. It's not They Might Be Giants without a scattering of puns everywhere you step. After all, it's unequivocally the factor that separates them from every other band of its kind, and they further embrace the shit out of it as time goes on:

"And sadly the cross-eyed bear's been put to sleep behind the stairs"
"A poor man once told me/That he can't afford to speak"
"The words I'm singing now/Mean nothing more than "meow" to an animal"

Nurture the inner geek within and listen to this album. 1986 was arguably the worst year in history for pop music, so spend some time with a record that is not only exceptional for its year but also an underappreciated benchmark for DIY indie pop. Without TMBG, there might not be any Ben Folds, Weezer or Barenaked Ladies...so depending on your feelings about those three I might have just argued against 1986 even further. Sorry.

GOOD