THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “The Legendary Queen of Soul” by Aretha Franklin

by ROUGE! guitarist Johnny Cum-Lately

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely done one of two things: 

1. Resisted the urge to jump to the comments and type YOU ASSHOLE! HOW DARE YOU SAY AN ARETHA FRANKLIN ALBUM SUCKS!! YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS? YOUR MAMA DIDN’T RAISE YOU RIGHT! YOUR MAMA GOT A WOODEN LEG WITH A KICKSTAND!!

Or 

1. Want to type an all-caps screed like the one above, only you’ve decided to read on in the hopes of finding more ammo to indict me in the way that only a comments section on the Internet can do. 

So, if you’re more B than A, that’s good, because context matters, especially in the case of the album The Legendary Queen of Soul.

The album in question is a compilation album released by Columbia Records in 1981, during a curious time in Aretha’s career. She continued to record and release new material throughout the 1970s, but by 1981, she had gone eight years without a top 10 pop single and hadn’t cracked the pop top 30 in five years. She was still cracking the Hot 100 and had some top 5 and number 1 hits on Billboard’s R&B chart, however. 

Her public profile in white America got a boost thanks in large part to her cameo in the 1980 hit movie The Blues Brothers, and her song “Respect” getting lampooned in the movie Airplane!, which hit theaters that same summer. It also didn’t hurt that she was name-dropped in the Steely Dan top ten hit Hey Nineteen, which peaked in early 1981. She was still a few years away from her huge mid-eighties comeback that saw her score hits on her own, dueting with the Eurythmics, and topping the pop charts with George Michael. 

So, what’s notable about this compilation album I’m writing about? Depending on how much of a music nerd you are, you might assume that Aretha debuted with the iconic songs that we all know and love. But it turns out that’s not the case. By the time she released such iconic tunes as “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Loved You)” and “Respect,” she had already been a recording artist for seven years. 

The songs that made Aretha the Queen of Soul were released in the late sixties and early seventies, and all for Atlantic Records. The double album The Legendary Queen of Soul compiles 20 songs from her seven years at Columbia Records. None of them are anthemic, like “Respect.” None of them are iconic, like “Chain of Fools.” None of them soar like “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman.”

Aretha signed to Columbia Records about 1960, when she was still a teenager. She was discovered by legendary talent scout and producer John Hammond, who also worked with Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and Bob Dylan. And based on listening to this compilation of her Columbia years, her tenure there was marked by a throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks mentality. 

Listening to the songs on the album that were produced by Hammond gives the impression that as a producer, John Hammond largely failed Aretha. Three songs produced by him became top 10 hits on the R&B charts, but only one of them “Won’t Be Long,” is included on the compilation. That song comes the closest to a classic Aretha song, both in terms of her performance and the musical arrangement. But too often, the Hammond-produced tracks sound old-fashioned and out-of-date for the early 1960s. Take the song “Blue Holiday.” Listening to it, it seems as if Hammond is trying to make her into another Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith. It is worth noting that Hammond was in his early fifties when he was producing Aretha. 

It’s also worth noting that these songs were recorded in the early 1960s. As an African American woman in that time, she had less power and respect from white America than her male cohorts. She wasn’t allowed to choose her own material, have input on any song’s arrangement, or, in most cases, accompany herself on the piano. She was a voice, a great voice, and she did what she was told. 

An example of this is her cover of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classic “Walk on By.” The song was a top 10 hit for Dionne Warwick, and in covering the song, Aretha is basically doing karaoke. Everything about the song smacks of buying the sheet music, handing it to the studio musicians, and playing it note-for-note while the tape rolls. It’s the total opposite of Issac Hayes’s classic version. There’s literally no reason for Aretha’s cover to exist. It’s a blatant attempt at a cash grab. 

A major label like Columbia catered to a predominately white audience. This was still the era of “race records,” records recorded and released to mostly urban ghettos. Most black artists of the time recorded on independent labels (James Brown on King; Ray Charles on Atlantic; The Impressions on Chess; Motown). It’s really no surprise that Columbia was unable to make Aretha a star, let alone a cultural icon. 

After working with Hammond produced middling results, Columbia then had her recording show tunes, none of which were included on the compilation. Even the album’s liner notes say thank goodness.

Speaking of the liner notes, they don’t exactly give off the impression that you purchased a treasure trove of underappreciated gems. The notes include such phrases as “… the fit isn’t quite right” in describing three blues ballads that are included. The notes also have such inspiring phrases as “Though the material can rarely be inspired …”, “… almost as good …,” and “All the pieces that seemed to explode out of her in those first few Atlantic albums are present.” 

The liner notes are correct. You can hear it several times. Take “Every Little Bit Hurts.” In retrospect it hints at what’s to come, but the song’s arrangement never lets Aretha display her vocal power. In fact, none of the musical arrangements showcased on this record do her any favors. The arrangement on “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” is another good example. 

The fourth and final side highlights her work with producer Clyde Otis, who seemed to be more in tune with the then-current sounds of mid-sixties soul. Songs like “Two Sides of Love” are fine. Indeed, “Cry Like a Baby” (not the Box Tops song) sounds like something that would’ve come out of Motown. 

Does this album stink? Compared to albums like Lady Soul, yes. But in general? No. It’s fine. There isn’t a bad performance by Aretha anywhere on the compilation. It’s as if she was incapable of a bad performance. But this album is not essential. The public seemed to agree. It peaked at 209 on the album chart in 1981. It’s also not available on Apple Music. 

The best way to summarize this album? Have you ever watched American Idol or The Voice and a contestant performs a song, thinks they did a good job, but the contestant gets deflated once the judges tell them that their performance was fine, but that they didn’t think the song was right for them? That’s this entire album. Good performances by Aretha, but none of the material was right for her. I didn’t bother listening to any of the studio albums from her Columbia years – all of which are available on Apple Music – but I feel comfortable in assuming that all that material fits the above description. 

Keep in mind that Aretha had little to no say in anything she recorded with Columbia. It must have been liberating when she signed with Atlantic – a label that specialized in black R&B. Take her signature song, “Respect.” It’s an Otis Redding cover. But unlike “Walk on By,” Aretha not only chose to record the song, but made significant changes to it. She adds in the words for the background singers. She adds in the break where she spells the title. She played piano on the recording. She performs it with more intensity than Otis Redding did. Unlike many of the songs on the compilation, she sounds powerful when singing “Respect,” not meek. By making the song an almost long-distance writing collaboration with Redding, she added to the song and made it, arguably, the greatest and most socially significant cover song in American popular music history. 

What does that have to do with the compilation I’m writing about? When one considers the timing of its release, the liner notes that must’ve made purchasers feel like they got gipped out of $7.95, or whatever a double-album cost in 1981. Combine this with the half-ass cover artwork that looks more 1961 than 1981, this album reeks of a cynical cash grab by Columbia. Sure, it was the first Aretha compilation released by the label since 1972’s In the Beginning: The World of Aretha Franklin 1960-1967 (which only peaked at number 160 on the album chart), but was it necessary? I’m assuming that her Columbia studio albums were either out of print or produced in low numbers. The public made it clear nine years earlier that they weren’t interested in her pre-Atlantic work. It’s easy to imagine a bunch of Columbia executives deciding to put out a compilation of stuff sitting in the company vaults, slap a stock photo and a typewriter font on it, and get a cheap product out to market. It doesn’t help that her biggest pop hit from her Columbia years, “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” (No. 37 in 1961) was excluded from the album, even though it was mentioned in the liner notes. 

Do I regret getting this album? No. Do I regularly play it? Of course not. I have plenty of better options. 

Do you regret skipping to the comments section to tear me a new one? Who I am kidding. Of course, you don’t. And if you haven’t yet, go ahead. Hit those comments, keyboard warrior. Show me some D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T. 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “Throw The ‘R’ Away” by The Proclaimers

(from their album This Is The Story, released in 1987)

(listen to the song here)

Hey, everybody! Sorry about the delays in putting out any new articles or stuff worth reading. It’s been a hectic few months and between ROUGE! doing a handful of shows before going on a brief live hiatus to work on some ideas for a movie, along with getting prepped for our Canada Day and Punk Prom shows I kinda forgot to keep up with the writing portion of the website. Or really just the website in general. Like, did you even know we finally put our first album out?? Yeah. That’s happened in between then and now. But admittedly a lot of it has come down to having a lot of ideas and not knowing where to spend the time tackling them so we’re gonna try something different and see what that does for us. This series is going to cover the opening tracks on albums and discuss not only whether these songs are good or not, but also how they help set the tone for the albums they come from in the form of some short-form articles. Maybe I have a lot to say, maybe I don’t. Okay? Okay.

The song we’re covering is from a band whose most well-known first impression is not this song, but rather a major hit from their breakthrough sophomore album. You may have heard of it.

Before Craig and Charlie Reid would become famous for being the guys who would walk 500 miles and then walk 500 more they were a minimalist two-piece folk punk band that went by the name The Proclaimers and on their debut album the opening track lays out the stakes of their career pretty clearly with an absolute rager of a song called “Throw The ‘R’ Away.”

Do you know what the most distinct part of “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles” was though? It wasn’t the chorus, nor the stomping beat, and it’s not the “haverin'” lyric that throws everybody off, it’s the strong Scottish accents the two brothers sing and harmonize in. Even when they were first getting their start on television people were making note of them being proud of “being one of the few Scottish bands who don’t sing with American accents,” which is certainly a way to stand out. And do you know what those two were probably told all the time when they were first getting their start? “Drop the accents if you want to make it big across the world.” And DO YOU KNOW what those two said (in so many words)? “Fuck you, we’re not changing shit,” and thus kicks off the inspiration for probably one of their more underrated tunes.

It not only opens up their debut album This Is The Story, but was also the band’s debut single, which notably didn’t chart anywhere (it would be the follow-up single “Letter From America” off that same album which would help kick the door down for the brothers going forward, charting at #3 in the UK and hitting a silver certification in Britain). So how does their debut album kick off? The strumming of acoustic guitars slowly picking up speed as Charlie strums through his chords and then comes to a stop for a two-count clap to come in. It’s very punk from two people whom one wouldn’t suspect to be punk at all, but really it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that these two dorky brothers were punk enthusiasts at heart, especially given the interviews where Craig cites their interests in bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols who famously sang in their native English accents. It also helped these two realized they could start their own band and do what they wanted to do even if they weren’t exactly trying to be The Beatles or anything. The two-count clap comes in and the message of the song gets laid out bare in the first two lines.

“I’ve been so sad/since you said my accent was bad”

-The Proclaimers, “Throw The ‘R’ Away” (1987)

Right there you’re hit with what’s going on. Though on the surface it’s just a song about the joys of a thick Scottish accent it’s also about firmly standing up for simply being themselves, and really that’s a message everyone should be able to appreciate; don’t lose a piece of yourself in an attempt to fit in. Elsewhere Craig confronts the people who are claiming to just say it as a joke when he can tell people are clearly not joking about dropping the accent, referring to those people as “Saxon” in a derogatory manner (it is kinda funny though, sorry), and ultimately mocking the notion that they need to change who they are.

Ultimately the most ballsy part of this song is that it’s done with such minimal arrangement, using just an acoustic guitar, hand claps, bongos, and vocals. This is the sort of song I could imagine some Scottish punk band singing full-throat in some sweaty basement wherever Scotland DIY shows happen, so to hear these two having a go at it by themselves is courageous at times. Charlie’s backing vocals are both pitch-perfect and incredibly urgent in how they’re presented, going off on his own little ideas here and there including some fairly breathy yelps before returning to harmonize with Craig when the hook comes around. Craig’s lead vocals are perfectly controlled chaos that only ever come off the rails at the end and while it’s controlled chaos it’s still hard to not feel every ounce of emotion he brings to the words, especially in the bridge.

I think it’s a song that does a lot in its relatively short run time, and yet it feels like it could easily run for double the length it does. Charlie’s backing vocals never remain stagnant, switching from one trick to another before coming back to perfectly harmonize with Craig’s lead, Craig’s vocals are spot-on in their anger with the unnamed you who said his accent was bad, the lyrics absolutely rip, and though the song sounds like it’s not just two people at times, I wouldn’t mind seeing a version of this with a Scottish punk band backing them or something to get the full effect of the song.

How does this work as a first impression for the album? Well, it’s a perfect first impression actually; it’s the band announcing in so many words that they’re going to do things on their terms they way they want to and not the way everyone else wants them to, and they did exactly that. That refusal to step down and bend to trends of the day would ultimately be part of what would lead these brothers to their most well-known hit, and a gem that gets lodged in my head way too often for my own good.

Thank you for staying true to yourselves, Craig and Charlie. Never change.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers!!

Other recommended songs from The Proclaimers:

“Let’s Get Married”
“(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles”
“[I’m Gonna] Burn Your Playhouse Down”
“Sunshine on Leith”
“What Makes You Cry”

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “Pool It!” by The Monkees

*sigh*

Oh this one’s going to hurt to write about.

For those who don’t know, I love The Monkees, and I mean love The Monkees. I was gifted a copy of their first album by an old friend, and before I knew it I was diving deep into their TV show, their movie Head, and just about every Monkees thing imaginable from during their original run as a band from 1966 to 1970. Eventually I even went and got a copy of Good Times, their 2016 reunion effort which brought together the then-surviving members of The Monkees for an album that arguably holds up incredibly well, even among their original albums.

The same can not be said of their other two “reunion” efforts, but only one is truly worthy of an THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US feature, and that’s their 1987 reunion effort Pool It!. So why this particular effort as compared to their 1997 release Justus which featured all four members of the band for the first time in 30ish years but couldn’t really find the tunes to back up the hype? Why not Changes, the final album from their original run which saw The Monkees become a shell of their former selves to finish off a contractual obligation? Hell, why not the soundtrack to Head which would become their lowest-charting album until after Peter Tork left the group?

Well, before I can get into all of that I need to get into who The Monkees even were before they decided to come back 17 years later, and the shenanigans they got into (a little “monkeying around,” you see) in the meantime.

The Monkees didn’t really start off as a band, they started off as the center-points of a TV show that was based around a fictional band with the main cast being Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith. Yes, they did eventually become a real band, but it was only after the success of their TV show and a couple of records had been released, leading to a widespread demand for public concert appearances while simultaneously terrorizing the pop charts. Their first four records hit number 1 on the Billboard charts and not only did this lead to Mike Nesmith getting away with lying to the press in 1967 about The Monkees outselling The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but this lie would go completely unchecked until 2017 when Nesmith told the story in his autobiography about lying to this reporter who printed the lie as fact. This is the sort of impact The Monkees had, and while they had a fair share of success they also got a lot of somewhat-unwarranted flack for a handful of things such as not playing their own instruments on their first two records (an issue that would be remedied on the 1967 effort Headquarters where they played and wrote their own music), and despite both the upfront honesty about how the sausage gets made and later attempts to “become a real band,” their reputation as a manufactured pop group is more-or-less solidified. Never mind that plenty of bands were doing the exact same thing in the 60s with groups like The Wrecking Crew, The Monkees would be the ones taking most of the ire and scorn from press and critics alike from that point on. Eventually the band falls apart piece by piece as Peter Tork leaves the group in 1968, Michael Nesmith leaves in 1970, and the group continues as a duo before putting out one final record, Changes with just Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz. That album is, at best, inessential, but it saw The Monkees go from being a manufactured pop group to fighting tooth and nail to be the real thing before eventually reverting back to the manufactured pop of their early records. It’s a sad career arc from a band who history would end up being particularly kind to and give a long-lasting legacy.

Due in part to TV reruns of The Monkees still giving the group some popularity even in their absence, Dolenz and Jones would eventually team up in 1976 with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, two of the songwriters who wrote most of The Monkees’ early hits including “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone,” “Words,” and “Valleri” to do a reunion album under the name Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart and they would market it as “the guys who wrote ’em and the guys who sang ’em.” This album is also somewhat inessential, and no one really talks about in the way they do with the other records, if only because it lacks the actual Monkees name despite being a de-facto Monkees reunion album. The group would eventually go their own separate ways after the album is released and a subsequent tour follows it.

The year is 1986 when MTV, then in its relative infancy, shows a Monkees marathon over a weekend in February. A few months later Peter, Micky, and Davy announce that they’re going out on the road to do a 20th anniversary tour celebrating The Monkees. Mike Nesmith is unfortunately not able to attend due to previous commitments with his video production company, though he does join the band on stage in 1986 for a two-song encore featuring his number “Listen To The Band.” It’s also worth noting that unlike his fellow band mates, Mike Nesmith isn’t in a financial bind like the others presumably are because when his mother, the inventor of liquid paper, passes away Mike receives a hefty inheritance from her which left him in a more-or-less financially secure place for the rest of his life. So Nez is out, but we still have the other three Monkees here! A month after the band gets back on the road a greatest hits collection is released which includes three new songs recorded by the group; “That Was Then, This Is Now,” “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere,” and a cover of “Kicks,” originally by Paul Revere and The Raiders. They’re all pretty good, but they feel a bit too “80’s” and “synthetic” for my tastes, but that’s just me.

By this time The Monkees are singularly one of the hottest acts of the year going into 1987, and a certain special guest would open up for the group during this time but behind the scenes certain things are starting to unravel; Davy Jones refuses to be on stage when the group would sing any of the new recordings from the greatest hits comp because he wasn’t involved with it, and even outright said he would leave the tour if “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere” would be released as a follow-up single to “That Was Then, This Is Now.” Elsewhere MTV starts to reject any further Monkees material because of what is reported to be a misunderstanding between the group and MTV over appearing on their Super Bowl special as Davy Jones was out of the country at the time. They try to angle it as “oh The Monkees are no longer popular like they were last year” despite the fact that the band had basically been riding a revival of Monkeemania and viewers had been flooding their request lines to see the new music video that acted as the lead-off single to what would be the first official Monkees album in 17 years. Keep in mind, this was back in the days where MTV still played music and had a major say in what was and wasn’t a “hit” so this became something of a slap in the face to a band who had helped build the network up and vice versa.

Alright, so if MTV won’t show the new music video then I will. Here’s the first single and the opening track off of their latest album Pool It! entitled “Heart and Soul.”

The music video is kind of funny, the whole concept of The Monkees having to adapt to the times because of how things changed since the 60s is some… well… some good clean fun. As for the song itself, this is closer to what I was hoping for from a reunion Monkees single; it’s very much the sort of song that fits in Micky’s wheelhouse as a singer, the production isn’t too obnoxious, and the synthesizers aren’t too “in your face,” though I guess my main complaint is that the guitars sound too small and thin for such a big song. I guess you could say that stranger things have happened, but let’s keep moving onward.

This song is called “(I’d Go The) Whole Wide World” and it’s a cover of a Wreckless Eric song from 1977. The original has a very 60s taste to it so it makes sense that The Monkees would want to take a stab at their own version of it, but what even is this? It feels like the arrangement and production are a total mess, the drum machine they’re using isn’t doing the song any favors, and with how much of a mess the production is I can barely hear much of anything outside the guitar, vocals, and drums. I’d think if you’re going to try and sound “vintage” like that then why not just fully commit? What does the band have to gain from trying to do these over-the-top 80’s-styled remakes of other songs?

“Long Way Home” comes after that particularly head-scratching inclusion and this time Davy Jones takes the lead vocal. All I can really say is that honestly I had to listen to this song by itself a handful of times because there’s absolutely nothing notable about it whatsoever, it’s a down-tempo 80’s ballad with that same ugly drum machine, the same synthetic sounds, and Davy’s voice hasn’t aged too much but it has gotten noticeably worse. You can kinda hear how he has to strain himself to hit the higher notes or to move into a different gear, energy-wise.

Up next is “Secret Heart” and the intro to it is kinda questionable, but honestly I think I kinda like this one. Those little funky guitar stabs and the saxophone solo work on this in more of a Hall & Oates way than not. Micky Dolenz’s voice is in top form, way better than the songs that came before it. It’s one of the better songs I’ve heard on here but I still can’t help but wonder why this sounds like The Monkees were more focused on getting play on The Weather Channel instead of on the radio.

Peter Tork writes and sings this next one, it’s called “Gettin’ In.” Peter Tork doing vocals on a Monkees album feels like a relatively novel concept because during the original run of the band he only sang on four songs; the goofy-as-fuck “Your Auntie Grizelda,” a few lines on a verse of “Shades of Gray,” a few lines again on a duet for “Words,” and on the Tork-penned composition “Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again.” On this song, Tork brings his best Wang Chung impression and honestly this one also works way better than I was expecting it to. At first I heard the opening synths and let out a big groan, but then they subside and when the vocals kick in it all comes together. I wouldn’t have suspected that Peter Tork would be the best one to show “The Monkees for a new era” but it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to have happened. (Bonus beats: here’s a live clip of Tork performing the song. This is kind of rad as fuck, if I’m being honest.)

Davy Jones goes next with his own self-penned song “(I’ll) Love You Forever.” This is the sort of thing I was expecting Davy to come swinging out the gates with, honestly. Davy’s strong suits were always on those sweet gentle ballads and the fact that this is one he wrote himself shows that he knew his own strengths just as well as the next person. The synthesizers just work, the gentle nature of the track is on point, and it might be the closest we get to “60’s Monkees” on this album.

Alright, so at this point we’re about halfway through the record. So why are we going off in this direction? Why does the album sound like this exactly? As it turns out, according to the album’s producer Roger Béchirian the band specifically wanted to go in more of a “modern” direction much to his chagrin. You have to understand that Béchirian wasn’t just some Monkees fanboy, this was a man who produced for artists like Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and The Undertones. He was known for working primarily with garage rock bands and producing the sort of albums that would’ve been perfect for a Monkees comeback LP, and sure he did work with Wang Chung on their first album, but The Monkees were more likely to make their own “Cruel To Be Kind” than to make “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” This change in direction along with a lot of the behind-the-scenes issues the group had stem directly towards Davy Jones and what he wanted Pool It! to sound like, so that’s why the album has those syrupy ballads, it’s why Tork doesn’t get much singing time on this record despite his one contribution so far standing out more than everything except “Heart and Soul,” and it’s a major part of why The Monkees were ultimately not built for the 80s. I get that Davy had a lot riding on this album though; he had a career in theater before The Monkees and was even featured doing a number from a then-recent theater gig on a very important episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. Why was it important? You can take a guess as to who else was in that episode. When The Monkees disbanded Davy didn’t really have the success he predicted he would have with a solo career, having only released two regular studio albums between 1970 and 1986, and outside a few appearances in a few movies and TV shows he basically fell off the face of the earth. With that said it wouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to find out that Davy had a lot banking on the Monkees reunion album and was trying to be the band quarterback in lieu of Mike Nesmith in his absence. I don’t normally like to speculate and point fingers in such a way, but make no mistake, all the research I did for this article point directly to Davy Jones as a major issue behind the scenes.

Davy also sounds like a problem on the opener to side b and second single from the album, “Every Step of the Way.” What the hell even is this?? This would’ve worked if they were committed to the 60’s aesthetic but instead we get this weird attempt at 80’s pop metal complete with another saxophone solo thrown in there. I think the saxophone is the only thing that doesn’t sound over-produced to hell and back and it’s the best part of the song. Davy’s vocals on this are also questionable at best, he sounds like he’s trying to force himself to have a little more gruff in his voice and that’s just not Davy Jones. Look, you are who you are guy, and yeah Davy has dipped his toes in the harder, punchier side of rock on previous Monkees tunes but he never had to force himself to sound like something that he clearly wasn’t. It’s a shame because underneath it all there really is something that could’ve been something with this song.

Micky takes the mic back on “Don’t Bring Me Down,” which was written by Mark Clarke and Ian Hunter. I only bring this up because when I checked to see who they were I audibly went, “wait, Ian Hunter is one of the guys from MOTT THE HOOPLE? Now there’s a band I haven’t thought about in a long time.” I digress, but this song is actually pretty good, underrated even, so I’ll give it a thumbs up. The aesthetic of the record as a whole works in this song’s favor and the horn synths that close it out don’t feel as obnoxious as some of the other synths I heard on the earlier tracks. I could’ve seen this working as a possible third single to the album or even as the follow-up to “Heart and Soul,” but I still assume that Davy wanted to have a single for himself instead so here we are.

Dolenz also sings on the next track, “Midnight.” Honestly I kinda like this one, I don’t normally think of “funk” when I think of The Monkees, but goddamn does this kinda rip. It helps that Micky has a knack for being able to blend in with whatever environment a backing track finds him being placed in. Honestly, he could’ve probably been given some lo-fi black metal track and he would absolutely crush it, but that’s the power of Micky Dolenz. A lot of people really like this song, too, at least if YouTube comments are anything to go off of. I guess my only criticism, and it’s nitpicky at that, is that the song goes on for a bit too long; it’s four-and-a-half minutes long but it could easily be half that time length and it would still work. Oh well, you can’t always get what you want I guess.

The next track is probably one of the more bizarre offerings I could show on any THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US article. The Monkees have tried their hands at a lot of genres; pop-rock, funk, soul, country, showtunes, even stuff with Native chanting. On here they’ve tried new-wave, dance pop, 80’s adult contemporary ballads, but “She’s Movin’ In With Rico” takes on another genre previously unexplored; reggae. And god does this thing sound like ass. Davy Jones sounds like he’s trying his hardest to do this vaguely Jamaican accent while he recounts the tale of being dumped and heartbroken by his lover because, as the title suggests, she’s moving in with Rico instead. But we know nothing about this Rico character other than he’s “everybody’s hero.” This might be the worst Monkees track I’ve ever heard, and I’ve sat through all their studio albums. THAT should tell you a lot.

Peter Tork gets his second vocal contribution of the album with “Since You Went Away” and this is also a nice little song for Tork to sing. It’s on-par with the goofier side of the songs he would typically sing with The Monkees, and it shows especially at the end in the fade-out when he commits to being the silliest person in the room. Apparently this is a re-recording of a song he did with his post-Monkees band Peter Tork and The New Monks, and that version kinda kicks serious ass in a way the Pool It! version doesn’t, but that’s still an upgrade from B+ to an A, so congrats for having the highest batting average on this album, Peter, and may you rest in peace.

The album finally closes off with another soft ballad from Davy called “Counting On You.” This is the exact sort of arena-rock ballad I would’ve expected more of on this album, right down to the guitar solo coming about 3/4ths of the way through it. Davy didn’t write this one but the fact he sang some of these clunky lyrics though is not exactly working in his favor. Ultimately it’s not a bad song but it also feels like a fart of a nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Alright, the album’s done. It felt like such a slog to get through this thing, honestly. Is the album any good? Oh, far from it. A couple good songs on an album does not make for a good album, and unfortunately even with the couple of good songs on here we do not have a good album. I don’t even know what to say about this album other than oh god why does this even exist? I’m blown away that this even exists, I’m amazed that Peter Tork’s songs are some of the best on here, I’m shocked that Davy Jones had to drop so many stinkers you would’ve thought it was a rest stop bathroom, and I can’t believe Micky Dolenz does as well with the material as he does. I don’t think some of the songs on here are necessary at all, especially “(I’d Go The) Whole Wide World,” I don’t see much of a need for “Rico” either, and generally we’ve got an EP of good songs here at best.

I’m flabbergasted, but what did critics think of it? Believe it or not it was pretty hard to find contemporary reviews for it, but I did find one from the LA Times which told you all you needed to know when their opening blub reads “hey hey, it’s a letdown!”

Woof.

In modern-day reviews; AllMusic gave it a 1-and-a-half out of five star review and a fairly brutal takedown in the form of, “this is normally the part of a review where the reviewer would advise this release for die-hard fans only, but I can’t even suggest that, as no one should be subjected to such poor quality unless they’re a collector or completist — and even then it’s best to keep Pool It! in its original packing, if anything to increase the resale value.”

Woof.

Well what did audiences think of it? Pretty much every music review site that isn’t Amazon also shits on this thing pretty mercilessly as well. I did find this one tidbit from Monkees Live Almanac where they asked people what their top 2 favorite songs on the album were and these were the results they came to.

The real shock here is that “She’s Movin’ In With Rico” isn’t ranked dead last.

For someone who doesn’t like doing so, I’ve been making conclusions left and right about this album here, but I do have one theory as to why this album ultimately stalled The Monkees’ potential for a longer wave of success during their reunion stage, and it doesn’t have as much to do with the music as one may assume, but rather it’s got a lot to do with the cover art. Seriously, take a look at this thing again and really look at it for good measure.

When Monkeemania 2.0 kicked off it was because a new generation of kids had been introduced to The Monkees via the TV marathons and the older albums, so in a way their look was still permanently stuck in the 60s. With the cover to Pool It! they looked less like the hot guys you’d find out at the pool and instead they looked more like the creepy uncles you’d see poolside at the family BBQ, especially Davy Jones whose mullet does him no favors. It might sound a bit mean to pin it entirely on their looks, but some folks certainly do still judge an album by its cover, and the music inside doesn’t give it much of a fighting chance either.

The worst thing to consider is that The Monkees didn’t need to go the route they did, they could’ve gone back to the sounds of the 60s and fit right in with bands like The Bangles or R.E.M. who were making their bread and butter doing jangly alt-rock that was reminiscent of the era The Monkees came from. Roger Béchirian also publicly stated that if Peter Tork had more of a say in what went on the album Pool It! wouldn’t have been as weak of an album as it ended up being, but of course Davy Jones wanted to have more of a say in what went on what, and it’s a shame we may never fully get to hear what Tork could’ve brought to the table. The aftermath of this whole ordeal wasn’t brought upon by just the album alone, but it sure as shit culminated with it and it spelled disaster for Micky, Davy, and Peter. In short; they would continue to tour for a couple years after the fact but Monkeemania 2.0 was over the second that album went out onto shelves across the country.

Davy Jones passed in 2012, Peter Tork passed in 2019, and Mike Nesmith passed away in 2021, leaving Micky Dolenz as the last man standing. In the wake of their respective passings as well as watching fans go blue in the face trying to get the band nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, history has become particularly kind to the pre-fab four. Their 1966-1970 run of albums as well as Good Times reminded folks that The Monkees were just that good and with more people embracing the commonplace knowledge of 60s bands using session musicians combined with their interesting story as a group there’s been something of a change in attitude regarding the band. In 2023 The Monkees legacy is secure, but 1987 was the year that The Monkees went for broke and it didn’t work out for them out of a desire to sound more “modern,” but Pool It! was far from the worst failure to come from Monkeemania 2.0. That honor goes to The New Monkees, but that’s a story for another day. Stay tuned.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers!! Peace.

(…P.S., here’s 1980s DC hardcore punk legends Minor Threat covering “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” in case you wanted to hear covers coming from unlikely bands.)

ONE AND DONE: “The Yellow Balloon” by The Yellow Balloon

The 1960s were a beautifully strange and fruitful time for music with the evolution of rock and roll rapidly taking place before our eyes. Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly were soon influencing the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys who influenced countless generations of artists and bands in their wake. While many know the names of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, and Mick Jagger there was another movement of pop music that was happening concurrently with the rise of “real rock bands” that originally took its form under the name “bubblegum pop” which consisted of catchy pop jingles that was often created by acts who were singles-oriented, without having anything resembling Pet Sounds in their arsenal and ready to strike but instead were content to churn out songs that would terrorize the pop charts. These acts were often studio creations with anonymous singers and studio musicians making the backing tracks and though there were major exceptions, the “bands” in question were often one-hit wonders.

Call it an evolution, call it a deviation, call it a product of the times, or call it inevitable but bubblegum pop soon found itself influencing other genres of music in the late 60s as well, but one of the less notable ones was called “sunshine pop.” Influenced by some of these bubblegum pop acts as well as the more commercial sounds of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, sunshine pop was never quite a “commercial success” but it has gone on to become something of a cult classic niche genre from that fruitful time in the 60s. (Believe it or not, but The Mamas and The Papas were directly associated with this month’s album as well, but we’ll get to that later!)

Normally for this kind of article I’d do my best to talk more about the band in question and what they were doing in the buildup to the album, but, in part due to the reasons explained before, there really is no “before the album” for the band. This isn’t like The Young Veins who split up from their previous band to do their own thing, this isn’t like Voxtrot who despite only having one album had also put out a handful of EPs that have gone on to become beloved classics in their own right. No, this album is the sort of project that only could’ve been made in the 60s and it’s due in part to Jan and Dean. Enter Gary Zekley.

In 1966 Jan and Dean were experiencing their most successful period as a group when in April of that year Jan Berry got into a car accident (ironically near Dead Man’s Curve) that put him into a coma for roughly two months and left him learning to walk again while recovering from the brain damage that came as a result of the crash. While Jan was incapacitated, Dean Torrence started working on the next Jan and Dean record without Jan, calling it Save For A Rainy Day. The album was a song cycle where all the songs related to rain in some way/shape/form. My honest take on the album? It was alright. Not bad, but not really great either. Gary Zekley would write two songs for the album, “Like A Summer Rain” and what would be the opening song on that album as well as the lead single “Yellow Balloon.” “Like A Summer Rain” is pretty damn good, but “Yellow Balloon” was… not, and Gary Zekley knew it. After trying to explain to the band and the studio musicians how he wanted the song to sound, he was shot down and told “we’ve got this under control.” Gary knew something was wrong and so he goes around banging on every door and any door in Los Angeles that would listen to him until he finally meets Ken Handler of Canterbury Records. He plays a demo of “Yellow Balloon” for Ken, Ken thinks it’s a good song, Gary explains that Jan and Dean were also recording a version so they had to beat it out or else the song would most likely be dead on arrival, and immediately Ken helps get everything together right then and there on the spot. Much like the bubblegum pop songs of the era, the song features studio musicians and “anonymous” singers (it’s actually Stan Farber singing, who despite being a fairly “anonymous singer” apparently sang on the theme song for Gillians Isle and did some backing vocals on Roger Waters’ 1990 live version of the Pink Floyd classic The Wall) and eventually becomes a hit; “Yellow Balloon” peaks at #25 on the charts while the Jan and Dean version was, in fact, dead on arrival, only ever peaking at #111. It beat out the Jan and Dean version and as evidenced by the fact that they tried their hardest to get their version out first, the b-side to “Yellow Balloon” is, I kid you not, “noolaB wolleY” or basically, the same song just played backwards. It works as a one-time novelty listen but I don’t find myself revisiting it for much of any reason at all.

So, you’ve got a hit with a bunch of hired guns and session vocalists, and the year is 1967. What happens when it’s the late 60s and you’ve got a hit on your hands? Well, at that point you have to do the media rounds and try to convince people to keep buying the record, convince radio to keep playing it, and deal with a whole bunch of “industry stuff” but what happens when the band that “made” this hit wasn’t even a real band? You grab random people from different groups and they become the band, of course. Enter Alex Valdez, Paul Canella, Don Braucht, Frosty Green and Luke R. Yoo. Here comes The Yellow Balloon.

The first thing we need to talk about is ironically the one thing this person didn’t want to talk about; while the identity of Gary Zekley would go on to be clouded in some mystery by going under the name Yodar Critch when he produced the band’s first album, the actual identity of Luke R. Yoo, the “drummer” for The Yellow Balloon was a big mystery. During the very brief lifetime of the band the identity of this drummer did get called into question quite a bit because Luke went out of his way to be… “mysterious.” You can see it on the album cover when he’s wearing the sunglasses

…you can see it in one of the official band photos where he’s still wearing the sunglasses but he also has a mustache this time

…and again on this particular clip where he kinda goes out of his way to be a man of few words.

And there he is again with the sunglasses and the hat but no mustache in this one…

…so who exactly even is Luke R. Yoo?

Well… have y’all ever heard of a show called My Three Sons? It was a show that ran from 1960 to 1972 on ABC but by 1967 the show had moved to CBS, and one of the leads on that show was a young man by the name of Don Grady. The show was never a major sensation that swept the nation but it was popular enough to where Don Grady would take on a disguise and drum in a little-known band called The Yellow Balloon and go under the alias of Luke R. Yoo. Grady didn’t want his celebrity status to overshadow the band, hence the whole charade. He also is a major reason why The Yellow Balloon ended up being a “real band” because he would keep in touch with guys from all over the country Grady thought were fantastic musicians. Eventually that’s how the “band” was formed outside the context of a studio creation.

Alright, you’ve got two guys donning aliases and disguises to go on with a charade, a handful of anonymous nobodies, a hit single and the opportunity to create an album because your self-titled single was popular enough to warrant the creation of an album, so what do you create?

Enter Yodar Critch and The Yellow Ballon with the opening track of their album, entitled “How Can I Be Down.”

Gary Zekley takes the mic on “How Can I Be Down,” which is an underrated gem of a pop song, though honestly I think I could say that for a majority of the songs on this record. The way the song slowly crescendos on the first verse before coming in fully with the harmonies (which are TIGHT by the way), the way the song itself is simply arranged, the way Zekley just sings it, it all comes together in a perfect way. Even the little “keep recording” flub you hear around the 1:50 mark may be unprofessional, but Gary recovers quickly and turns the song back on its heels.

The Yellow Balloon’s songs across the whole album are far from “wordy” much like many pop bands of the era, and though I definitely gave The Young Veins a lot of shit for it, I’ll just say that the few words of “How Can I Be Down” just work in a way a lot of the lyrics on Take A Vacation! simply didn’t because it all feels effortless when Zekley does it, especially for such an upbeat love song. I think it helps that the vocalists on this album all have more vocal range than Ryan Ross did, and there’s actual harmonies on this record and not just one guy trying to harmonize with another guy occasionally. Truly I think that’s really one of the only spots as a whole where Take A Vacation! fell flat, but that’s enough about all that for now, okay?

I made a big deal about Don Grady and his involvement with the band, so what does he have to contribute to the album?

Three words.

“Stained Glass Window.”

Grady not only wrote this one with Zekley but he also takes the lead vocal part here and it’s a gentle reminder of how amazing it is that Grady never really went on to have a successful solo career in his own right because he’s got such a smooth and wonderful voice on this track. Overall this song is a truly beautiful piece of orchestral pop that meshes well with the rest of the “band.” String sections will interact with guitars while horns and handclaps will collide with the harmonies of the band, and it’s wrapped up in two minutes. The lyrics recount the feeling of falling in love with someone and sharing those first moments of intimacy at what Don calls “the threshold of love.” See, this is what I mean, it’s not wordy but it’s the right words.

“Baby Baby It’s You” is the third track on here and is another song that Zekley had previously penned for another band, this time for a band simply called The Group. Keyboard player Frosty Green takes the lead vocal on this and he honestly outshines the original vocal that The Group does by a country mile. While the original version may have slightly better arrangements and production, Frosty’s vocals bring The Yellow Balloon’s version way out in front. Whether it’s just those little extra inflictions in his voice or the general feel of it, there’s just something there.

Often when I talk with my friends about albums we personally believe would be a 10/10 if it wasn’t for one song just killing the vibe, I would always bring this album up because with all due respect “Panama Red” is far from good. The lyrics are cheesy and try too hard to not make it obvious they’re talking about marijuana (“the grass is always greener
N O W”), the instrumentation and arrangement on it is questionable at best, and the only upside is that it’s only about 90 seconds. Seriously. 90 seconds. Some fun facts though; according to Discogs there’s also percussion in the form of a music stand, an ash tray, and a chair, and I can’t pick out what any of it is supposed to be unless it’s all the cheering and whatnot at the end. If you should take away anything from this it’s that the song is bad and it’s best left skipped if you’re not a completionist like many folks. In a way I’m actually kinda mad this song is the one that introduced the band’s lead vocalist Alex Valdez, he deserved better than this.

“I’ve Got A Feeling For Love” brings the mood right back up after that buzzkill of a song, this one does a lot of gear shifts and it feels effortless. It goes from the straight-forward thumps on the verse to the little marching drums on the chorus before going to the little “Dennis Wilson shuffle” on the pre-verse part before going into the waltz on the bridge. Gary Zekley’s songwriting is joined by the minds of a few different writers but most notably Jill Gibson, who was temporarily a member of The Mamas and The Papas, replacing Michelle Phillips for a time, and who also would occasionally write songs for Jan and Dean. The harmonies on this are tight as ever and interact with Valdez’s voice perfectly. I can say it over and over again; part of what makes this album work is that the harmonies are at the top of their game here. I know in the 60s the Beatles were a major influence on a lot of bands but here you get the full Beach Boys influence clear as day. For a while, actually, I used to say this album was what it would sound like if Brian Wilson didn’t “fuck with the formula” but also kept his artistic visions towards the more grandiose and lush instrumentation. Let this be a subtle reminder that Brian Wilson is god.

“Yellow Balloon” closes off side a, and we’ve heard that one already. We remember how it sounds, right? Right. I’ll give the song this; it works well as an album track as well as a standalone song. I know it’s partially committing to the trope that I call “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (band, song, album all have the same name) but if there was ever a song that deserved to help carry that trope, it’s this one. Also while it’s on my mind, not only is it one of the only songs where I don’t completely loathe the key changes that happen, but I love that the lyrics in the song compare someone’s love to “a yellow balloon on a rainy afternoon.” Who’s coming up with lines like that anymore? It also took me way longer than I’d like to admit to realize that a “yellow balloon” is supposed to be a metaphor for the sun and sunshine. Of course it’s easy to forget that when the band would do their TV appearances surrounded by literal yellow balloons. The song is a gem and there’s a reason it became a hit.

“Good Feelin’ Time” opens up the second side of the record and it’s another one of Don Grady’s tunes. It’s fairly average and honestly there isn’t a whole lot I could say about it outside of “well Grady’s vocals are nice at least.” Seriously, he holds his own on this song pretty well. I do like the switch-ups from the slow to fast parts but that’s really all I can add to this.

“Follow The Sunshine” is one of three songs on the album that doesn’t have Gary Zekley at the songwriting helm, and it shows almost immediately with that thumping drum intro. This one also does the trick of switching from a shuffle beat to something a bit more straightforward on the choruses. The backing vocals aren’t just harmonies and the way they play off Alex Valdez’s lead is nothing short of outstanding. Did I mention there’s also a banjo solo in here? And pretty fucking banging banjo solo at that? Yeah, so for all you Saskatchewan Roughriders fans you can finally feel represented in these articles I write!

“Springtime Girl” comes next, and this is another one Zekley didn’t have any hand in writing but his production is top-notch. The vocal harmonies and the arrangements are all stellar on this, it’s not just the third over the fifth and the rest, there’s actual interplay here with the leads and the backups. The instrumentation is pretty great, too, though unfortunately outside the core guitar-bass-drums-keys I couldn’t tell you much about what’s happening elsewhere but it sounds different from most pop music of the era. If nothing else it gets a thumbs up from me because that hook gets stuck in my head way more often than I’d like to admit

“Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” is the song on the album. It’s another one that The Group did a year beforehand but let’s be honest here, Alex Valdez absolutely stuns on this version and he’s a major part of why The Yellow Balloon’s version is not only my favorite, but this might actually be one of my favorite songs to come out of the 1960s point-blank. The way the harpsichord comes in with the bass before the drums kick in, the way the song slowly builds up before it hits that first big “YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH OOOOOOO BABYYYYYYYY” is chill-inducing. I’ve said it before to friends when speaking on this album, but that part around the 1:40 mark is where I think I saw god for the first time and it absolutely changed my view on a lot of things in my life. It’s good that The Yellow Balloon were able to give this song the recording it deserved because goddamnit it’s a beautiful song that does everything it should be doing in a two minute pop song. In a perfect world it would be the last song on the album because that’s the strong note you want to end on, but it goes in a completely different direction.

Enter Don Grady one final time for “Junk Maker Shoppe.”

If you knew me when I ran a vaporwave label the name may come as a bit of a surprise because this song is where I got the name for it. “Junk Maker Shoppe” is probably my favorite song on the album if only because it’s such a complete departure from the rest of what’s happening on here. It’s not a mid-tempo pop ditty whose lyrics are about sunshine and happiness, it’s a fast-paced almost proto-punk song about wanting to turn leave town, getting a job to “be someone” and starting a new life at the magical shoppe the song gets its title from. The harmonica is also absolutely blistering on this one and while the harmonies aren’t exactly in full force as they usually are on the album, they’re still here albeit tastefully applied on the choruses. Honestly I’ve been trying (and failing) for years to work out a cover for this song that would showcase how it works perfectly in a fuzzier rock setting but life has a way of making these things not happen.

Anyway, that’s the final song on the album proper. There’s an “expanded deluxe edition” of the album on streaming that features some demos and songs Don Grady did in other bands, but I wanted to focus on the album as it was originally presented and intended.

Was the album any good?

You bet your ass it was. This album is one of the unsung gems of the 60s and part of why it has managed to have any afterlife at all is because the record collectors who obsess over this stuff know it as well as I do. If I had to give this a rating, it would be a solid 9/10, it’s a good record full of nice little psychedelic pop ditties and damn good earworms.

So what happened after this album came out? Why is The Yellow Balloon the band’s sole album?

Well, Don Grady was still an actor so when the band was gigging during the week he’d have to be absent from the drum kit which left a man by the name of Daryl Dragon, better later known as The Captain in the band Captain and Tennille, to take over drumming duties during the week while Grady would only be available on the weekends. I’m going to be honest, I wouldn’t mind living in the alternate universe where the band kept making music and Daryl Dragon would eventually start contributing to the band the way Grady and Zekley did. The public did also eventually find out that Don Grady was the one drumming for The Yellow Balloon after an alleged contest came out identifying him as the man behind the kit, but it didn’t do much to promote the band. In fact, I kinda think it didn’t do nearly as much as Grady thought it would when he decided to go incognito.

The band themselves would go on tour in an attempt to promote the record and two singles were released afterward, with “Good Feelin’ Time” and “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” getting some time in the spotlight but not enough because both songs failed to follow-up on the success of “Yellow Balloon.” After a while it became clear that a one-hit-wonder band wasn’t going to have much further success and wouldn’t hit the charts again, and with Canterbury slowly falling apart as well the band eventually decided to split up, thus ending The Yellow Balloon as they’re known.

Anything Else?

The bulk of the band would allegedly go on to form a new group called The Popcorn Explosion (properly psychedelic, huh?) though from what I’ve tried finding there are no recordings to be found, however there was an album released in 1989 by a different group under the same name. Frosty Green would go on to put out a solo single that just feels like such a bizarre artifact for some reason.

Jan and Dean wouldn’t get a proper release for Save For A Rainy Day until 1996, almost 30 years after the “Yellow Balloon” debacle when Sundazed released it on CD and vinyl. Not many reviews of the album exist but for the most part it’s been given a thumbs up.

Don Grady would leave My Three Sons right before its final season but still put out music here and there, including a 1967 single “Impressions With Syvonne” that would be included on the deluxe version of The Yellow Balloon. That song is pretty great, the fuzz guitars playing off the saxophones work way better than they should, and the bridge is a work of beauty as well. Unfortunately Canterbury would fold right around 1968 and so we didn’t get a full Don Grady album until 1973 when he released Homegrown with Elektra Records under his proper name (Don Agrati), where it would be his only solo record. It’s alright, I guess, though it wasn’t something I found myself visiting frequently. I guess if you find yourself to be very curious about it, then you can listen to it for yourself. He also did musical scores for various movies and documentaries, so that’s not exactly the worst case scenario for the best of both worlds there, right?

Though The Yellow Balloon would ultimately be known as a smaller but significant part his lasting artistic legacy, Gary Zekley would produce a couple more bands including The Clique, Solar Heat, and The Fun And Games who are all bands that qualify for this series but those may come at another time. He also wrote some songs for the Grass Roots which would go on to become some of their biggest hits. The other part of his lasting legacy? Oh, you know this song he wrote for The Clique that R.E.M. ended up covering. Yeah, THAT is a Gary Zekley song and arguably it’s one of R.E.M.’s more well-known hit songs. Also, as a bonus, enjoy this video of Gary joining the band on stage to play the song. Zekley would pass away in 1996, a few years before Sundazed Music would put out the deluxe edition of The Yellow Balloon, which helped cement the band’s legacy as a notable 60s act. On the back cover they dedicate the album to “the artistic vision of Gary Zekley.” If anything, it truly is a lasting impression of the group and the man who took a major risk and created one of the greatest albums of the 60s. In his words, it may have been Yodar Critch who ended the record, but it’s Gary Zekley who stared it.

Would A Second Album Be Good?

Maybe? I feel like Zekley’s writing indicated that if a second album was going to happen it would’ve been just as good if not better than The Yellow Balloon’s lone effort, but there were certainly other x-factors to keep in mind including Grady’s songwriting and whether or not the other members would’ve wanted to start doing their own thing with the band as well. I wouldn’t have minded hearing Alex Valdez do a take on “Superman” though if I’m being honest. I think all the tools would’ve been there for a decent second album, but whether or not they would’ve been used is a different story. Either way I would’ve loved to see a second album from them.

Did They Deserve Better?

I think they got what they deserved, honestly. I did mention that I wouldn’t mind seeing a second album from them, but their story is pretty much on-par for the 60s and the studio bands that came from that era. I think Gary Zekley deserved to be alive and see just how much his legacy has bloomed with time, but I also think he knew good and well what his legacy was the minute R.E.M. said they were gonna make him rich and famous. Maybe Don Grady got the short end of the stick a little bit, but he still had a pretty decent career as an actor, I think. Grady passed away in 2012. Maybe the other guys in the band deserved better but that’s really it.

The Yellow Balloon’s legacy as a one-hit-wonder did eventually make way for their legacy as an act with an underrated album that also acts as a gemstone of sunshine pop goodness. Even if they’re only remembered for their one song though I think it’s important to remember that Zekley’s big gamble of trying to beat out Jan and Dean ended up having the most significant of consequences because if it wasn’t for that gamble we wouldn’t have the music we have, so thank you Gary Zekley. Your music is like a yellow balloon on a rainy afternoon.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers! Peace.

ONE AND DONE: “Take A Vacation!” by The Young Veins

Happy New Year, motherfuckers! I hope you all liked John’s review of GTR and I hope you all hated the album as much as I did. I also want to thank everyone who made 2022 a special first year for ROUGE! and I want to thank everyone who reads these articles that both John and myself write, this is ultimately a passion project for us outside our shenanigans in the world of ROUGE!.

Anyway, during the review for Fitz and the Tantrums I kinda went through a moment where I started experiencing some major burnout on writing only about shitty albums I don’t like so I passed on the December spot to John so he could write about this album he wanted to write about for a long time, and while he did that a thought a came to pass so with that we’re unveiling a new series for the blog called ONE AND DONE where we write about bands who did one (1) album and then called it quits for one reason or another. John made a joke when I pitched this that the GTR review was basically a backdoor pilot for this and he’s not entirely wrong. For this series we’re going to deviate a little bit from THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US in the sense that there will be a bit more structure; we’ll be looking into the history of the group in question, go over their album, talk about why they didn’t release a second album, and whether or not a second album would’ve even been any good if they did put one out while closing out with some musings and lamenting about the artist in question. New year, new concepts, new lease on life and all that good shit.

But why this concept?

Well, it’s unknown to many here but believe it or not, my favorite musical trope is actually “the difficult second album.” Not the “sophomore slump,” that’s entirely different. I’m talking about the second album that is such a radical change of pace from their first one for one reason or another. A band or artist will put out their first album and it either gets a lot of love immediately upon release or it goes on to slowly become a cult classic, but then their second album often gets some head-scratching reaction of “what is this?” (…looking at Pinkerton on this one) or maybe a band decides to experiment with their sound a little bit to interesting results (see: LP2 by Sunny Day Real Estate, an album made quite literally as the band was breaking up and falling apart, and my personal favorite in this particular trope) and end up in curious territory.

Many bands and artists will have that difficult second album and then eventually either go on to have success or will eventually fade away, which are both normal arcs for bands and artists, but some don’t even get as far as the second album. Hell, some barely get as far as the first album, and usually there’s an interesting story behind it, and that’s where ONE AND DONE comes in. With this series there’s only one qualification for being featured; if at the time of writing the subject is a band or artist with only one official studio album to their name they’re open for discussion.

There’s a lot of fascinating artists who are one-album wonders whose story should be told and heard by plenty, so what’s going on here with this band? Why am I picking The Young Veins to kick this series off? Well… to get there we need to talk about a lot of things surrounding the album first including how we got there in the first place.

Spoiler alert: In case you didn’t know already, it all starts with Panic! At The Disco.

In 2022 Panic! At The Disco came back with a new album which, outside of their usual hardcore fanbase, was met with the general response of “yuck,” and while that has been the consensus of their work over the last few albums in particular, there was a song that really stuck out to a lot of folks upon first listen entitled “Local God.” The song itself is alright, I guess, but what really poked out to a lot of folks were the lyrics.

In 1998, you bought a B.C. Rich
You were a master shredder from the jump
Blew them all away with the Ritalin kids
While I was shedding through my sophomore slump
You had so many chances to become a star
But you never really cared about that

Local God
You’ll live forever as a local God
You’ll be remembered for the thing you’re not
Local God

We signed a record deal at seventeen
Hated by every local band
They say we never paid our dues
But what does that mean when money never changes hands?
It’s 2021 and I’m almost famous
You never really cared about that

Panic! At The Disco, “Local God” (2022)

Many people read those lyrics and only thought one thing; Brendon Urie was taking presumably unprovoked jabs at former bandmate Ryan Ross.

In 2004, Panic! At The Disco wasn’t the Brendon Urie show the way it is now 18 years later, in fact it was a full-fledged bonafide band. The original version of P!ATD consisted of Brendon Urie on guitar and vocals, Brent Wilson on bass, Spencer Smith on drums, and Ryan Ross on guitar and occasionally doing lead vocals himself.

So who the fuck was Ryan Ross anyway? And why was Urie taking cheap shots at him?

Urie was the singer and the frontman for Panic!, but Ryan Ross was the one who wrote a decent-sized chunk of the music and all of the lyrics to their first album which contains one of the most famous songs of all-time from the mid-oos wave of emo. Yeah, he also wrote all the words on that first album, so if you didn’t know already; all those lyrics you sing along to all the time were written by Ryan Ross, and unless you’re a Panic! super-fan there’s a pretty solid chance you didn’t know that because Ryan Ross is a name that has faded into the background on more than a few occasions.

Ryan Ross was on the first two Panic! albums, 2005’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, and 2008’s Pretty. Odd.. On Fever you can hear the band’s Blink-182 influence come through, especially on “The Only Difference Between…” and the particularly underrated “Lying Is The Most Fun…”, but those influences more or less went out the window on Pretty. Odd., where they not only replaced Brent Wilson with Jon Walker, but they also took pages out of the playbook of 60s folk, garage rock, and psychedelia while meshing it ever-so-slightly with their pop-punk edge. Personally, I’d recommend that entire album from front to back but if you’re pressed for time, “Northern Downpour” and “Pas De Cheval” are a couple deeper cuts to check out because I’m sure that plenty of non-superfans have heard “Nine In The Afternoon” a bunch if only through its inclusion on the Rock Band 2 video game. The band as a whole did contribute songs to Pretty. Odd. but when you look at the songwriting credits you’ll find out the heavy majority of it was written by Ross.

It doesn’t take a genius to hear the very obvious differences between albums 1&2, and particularly the direction Ross wanted to push the band in (which would’ve built upon the sounds of Pretty. Odd.) and that was, in part, the beginning of the end of the Ryan Ross era of Panic! At The Disco.

In 2009 Ross and Walker announce they’re leaving the band, and it eventually comes out that it was, in fact, due to creative differences. The songs Ross and Walker were writing together for what was supposed to be P!ATD LP3 were more in line with the sounds of The Kinks and The Beach Boys whereas Urie and Smith wanted to go in more of a poppier-styled direction. In short…

“Musically, it got to a roadblock, and we were going one way and they were going the other. But fans will be able to hear it soon enough. And then maybe they’ll change their minds.”

Ryan Ross, MTV interview (2009)

Soon after the announcement of their departure Ross and Walker would announce the name of their project, christening themselves as The Young Veins, and that the name of their first album would be called Take A Vacation!

When I started doing research for this album and the history of the band I found that there were a few major recurring themes that came up, but the biggest one was regarding the band being able to find a label to put this album out on. Pete Wentz, the bassist for Fall Out Boy and head of the label Panic! At The Disco was on, Fueled By Ramen, made it pretty clear early on when the two camps had split that he was going to support Urie and Smith even though Ross’ songwriting was primarily what got the band to where they were in the first place. Ross was still contractually obligated to put out music for Fueled By Ramen and had to fight to get released from his contract so he and Walker could make music together and release The Young Veins’ material as a group. The album had been completed by the end of 2009 but they weren’t able to find a label that would release it until 2010, which that alone should’ve been a huge red flag. The album got released, though, and in the end that’s really all that matters. Shortly afterward they would debuted a song on MySpace that would eventually become the opening song for the album, it’s called “Change.”

Let’s hear how this album kicks off via this fairly low-quality music video from 2009 that was recently (2018ish?) uploaded to their YouTube page. Does anything get anyone from that millennial generation more nostalgic than seeing low-quality videos from the dawning of the age of YouTube? I digress.

Okay, that rips. I kinda like that subtle Bo Diddley shuffle it’s got going on. It’s not just a straight-forward pop song, it’s got moving parts. And the lyric sheet is short (as it is for all the songs on this album) but Ryan is straight-up smack-talking some unnamed woman who “thought she owned the city” and learned “pretty ain’t a job.” It’s a nice little introduction to the album as a whole.

The title track follows that opener and, in short, it’s as close as this album gets to a perfect song which makes sense in a way after all; if you’re going to name your album after a song it better be representative of the album as a whole. This song is relatively short clocking in at under two and a half minutes and yet it feels like it could go on for longer. They’ll introduce a guitar part or an organ lick at just the right time, and when you think the song runs out of tricks it manages to add another one. Ross’ vocals are spot-on and Walker’s subtle backing vocals add just the right flavor to the song as well. For a band whose entire thing was just about sounding “vintage” they knock it out of the park on this because it does, in fact, sound like the sort of obscure gem I would’ve heard on some late 60s psychedelic sunshine pop album.

Lyrically the song is a lot less cheery than the music suggests, it’s actually a song about being burnt the fuck out by life, which it even tells us as much in the opening line of…

I need to take a vacation if this is settling down

The Young Veins, “Take A Vacation” (2010)

Elsewhere on the track Ross sings about how loneliness will keep “them” warm and how they can “leave sand in a suitcase so they don’t forget the fun” while they go “very very far.” It’s a nice little song with catchy hook lyrically containing a surprisingly fucking downer mood.

“Cape Town” has the daunting task of following up the title track but it’s certainly more than up to the challenge. Allegedly the song is based on a true story of Ross falling in love with a woman in the titular Cape Town in South Africa where, as it turns out, she had a husband already who was in prison. It has these nice jangly guitar leads and some nice bells alongside some interesting percussion choices that give it some of that fascinating flavor. Personally, I always thought the song was just okay but apparently a lot of people really like it and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was because of the autobiographical lyrics. I will say this though, Ryan’s vocal lead on this absolutely fucking stands up on its own. His voice never had a whole lot of range but he definitely stretches it out a bit on here to more than pleasant results.

“Maybe I Will Maybe I Won’t” comes up next and is the first song on the album sung by Jon Walker, who also presumably was the primary songwriter on this as well. Truthfully, it’s okay I guess, though more than anything it acts as somewhat of a reminder of the albums I listen to from the early-to-mid-60s where they had to have some filler tracks in there to make it a full-blown “album” in the traditional sense. There’s nothing really noteworthy here but it’s also not awful. Ross and Walker’s vocals blend nicely together on this one though. Take it as it comes.

“Young Veins (Die Tonight)” acts as the perfect track to pick up the album’s spirits following that underwhelming song. Remember earlier in this when I mentioned that the majority of the songs on here were songs that Ross and Walker were writing for the third Panic! At The Disco album? That absolutely comes through here. Simply put, this song sounds like the main example of that anecdote. That vocal melody sounds like it was tailor-made for Brendon Urie’s voice, and while Ross does his best to deliver it on his own it kinda falls short considering who we could’ve had singing it in the first place. The music sounds like the perfect backing track for a P!ATD song as well, and it acts as an overall gentle reminder of what we never got. Even lyrically it kinda hits upon the more theatrical side of what would make P!ATD work in their prime while also being what would contribute to their major fall from grace. It’s Ryan Ross’ tenure in Panic! personified.

Up next we get the beautiful, somber, lowkey “Everyone But You.” Jon sings on this one and it’s truly one of the highlights of the album. The song itself is a bit moody and thrives on what could only be described as a sensual and remorseful vibe. The music itself is really pretty and sparse, but the keyboards are ultimately what give the track that extra “oomph.”

There’s yearning for an unnamed someone in these lyrics that I haven’t seen many folks match in a long time, especially in the chorus.

She comes to me when I dream
I’m tired of counting sheep to see her
I sleep because I need her
And everybody knows it but you

The Young Veins, “Everyone But You” (2010)

Walker’s lyrics have always been somewhat simplistic, but sometimes that simplicity is good when it’s delivered with the punch it has on here. It’s a song that makes me miss people I haven’t met yet and makes me yearn for places I’ve never been to.

The second half of the record proper (yeah, no, I’m not including the bonus tracks from the 2019 deluxe edition) starts off with “The Other Girl.”

This one is an absolute barnburner of a track even if it doesn’t immediately come off as such. Musically there isn’t much to say about it, it’s in the same style as the other songs on the album, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing though it kinda has a bit more of a charge to it than a lot of the other tunes. The lyrics recount a conversation that the song’s narrator is having with someone about their lover’s affair with the titular “other girl.” Who the characters are in this case is left somewhat ambiguous because even though he’s singing about the “you” and “I” of it all, this could still just be the perspective of the characters and not so much autobiographical. It’s one of those songs that Ross absolutely does his best to sell vocally while playing with another jangly backing tune, and that’s what makes it a standout track. It also ends, what in my opinion, is a standout three-track run.

“Dangerous Blues” is not part of that standout run for a reason, it’s not that it’s a particularly bad song but it feels like it kills the momentum set up by the three that come before it. It’s a nice little acoustic waltz of a tune with the lyrics talking about being in love with someone who is generally an emotionally unavailable person. On the whole, “Dangerous Blues” feels like the sort of song that could work if the lyrics felt like they weren’t trying too hard to be ambiguous and vague and worked more towards something direct. I will say this though, all “your love is a drug” sentiments in any song usually get met with an eye roll from me, so I’m sorry on that front.

“Defiance” has the vibes of being another song that was originally designed to be another Panic! At The Disco tune and though for a long time I couldn’t tell if it was the dynamics of the song where it would go from fuzzy guitars to just-drum verses to backing “ahh” vocals on the chorus, it all clicked together when I saw this photo from 2008 of the Pretty. Odd. lineup on a bridge that said “defiance” on it. Though it’s never been directly confirmed whether or not the photo inspired the song, there is no such thing as coincidence in the world of The Young Veins. The lyrics here talk about someone who goes against the grain and lives their life the way they want to, in defiance of what others say, but then it goes and gives us that subtle twist at the end for what this song may be all about, really.

Yeah, she said that it was rust and lead
That love could never live again
But they found a way, to make it stay
In defiance, she asked, defiance, she asked:

“Can’t we just be friends?”
This kind of thing always happens
I fell in love again
With defiance

The Young Veins, “Defiance” (2010)

Even when it’s not originally coming off a love song, it always finds a way to go back to the unnamed “she/her” in these tunes. This one kinda works though.

“Lie To The Truth” is another lowkey song that has the displeasure of following a barnburner on this album. Truthfully there isn’t much to talk about here in regards to the actual song itself. It’s another acoustic-driven song that tells the story of a guy who doesn’t feel bad cheating on his girlfriend because he suspects she’s been cheating on him, too. It’s also guilty of one of my least favorite musical tropes; mentioning “this song” directly in the song. I don’t care who you are, the minute you drop that in a track I immediately clock the fuck out on it. Also, quite honestly, it’s amazing that Ryan Ross could get away with writing stuff like this because it kinda makes him sound like a fuckboy.

The album closes out with “Heart of Mine,” another acoustic song that features more of a campfire atmosphere to it with numerous folks singing backing vocals and stomping to a song about how an unnamed love interest will “always have this heart of mine.” It’s actually pretty sweet in the grand scheme of things. Some songs can only work as opening tracks on an album, some tracks can only work as closing tracks on an album, and this track is one that could have only ever worked as a closing track. The album closes out with Jon Walker saying “happy birthday, Ryan!” before everyone cheers and the album closes off as a whole.

Alright. We’re done there. Was it any good?

Honestly, yeah I think so. The lyrics leave a lot to be desired at certain points and I would never accuse Take A Vacation! as a whole of being full of deep poetry that is on par with Bringing It All Back Home but also the album works more as an overall mood piece than as a group of songs to academically dissect, ironically kind of ruining the point of what this series of writings is all about.

Ryan Ross gets the job done as a vocalist but occasionally I’m reminded that there’s a reason Brendon Urie was the lead vocalist of Panic! At The Disco and not Ross. As mentioned earlier, Ross’ vocal range is very little and he really tries his hardest to stretch his voice out, but I can still acknowledge that Urie was on Broadway and has had the success he still has for a reason and it’s because he’s got a set of pipes on him.

There’s definitely a lot of standalone tracks that I really love here, but as a whole album I’d still give it a thumbs up, however it’s a thumbs up in the “7.5/10” variety and not “10/10.”

Reviews for the album were overall fairly positive though it feels like reading them suggests that the reviewers were more concerned with naming the influences on the band and not so much with the actual music itself. It’s pretty much impossible to find a review that doesn’t name check The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, or [place popular 60s group here]. Rightfully so at times, but the reviews all felt like they were placing the group themselves on the back seat while talking at length about other bands.

This series talks about bands and artists who only put out one album, so why is this their only album at the time of this writing?

About that…

In December 2010, a mere six months after the record came out, Jon Walker tweeted that the band was on an indefinite hiatus. The reasons for the hiatus have never been made public and are only known to the folks in the band’s respective camps as far as I know. There can only be so much speculation as to what happened where, but truthfully I have my suspicions though I don’t think I can lay them out there without rubbing some the wrong way. I’ll try anyway.

Personally, I think part of it has to do with Jon Walker wanting to write and sing more songs as evidenced by the plethora of stuff he’s released on Bandcamp ever since the band broke up including an EP of material that was released a month after the band split, but also it wouldn’t surprise me to find that it has a lot to do with Ryan Ross just being burnt the fuck out by life judging by the complete lack of material he’s put out since 2010. He didn’t go into “exile” necessarily but he’s been very quiet since The Young Veins split, and he’s probably more than content with living off the royalty checks from his Panic! days. I can share that Ross did do this thing in 2019, coming out of that very weird sort of somewhat “exile” to tour alongside his ex-wife/now-best-friend Z. Berg and a rotating cast of musicians. You can hear the excitement in the audience when they realize what’s about to happen and it’s a truly magical moment. Allegedly Ross also hit the studio in 2019 to start work on a solo album, but news on that front has been somewhat quiet which unfortunately doesn’t surprise me in the least. At this rate it seems more likely that Jeff Mangum is going to stroll out of the studio with a follow-up to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea than it is that Ryan Ross is going to come out of the woodwork again to give us new material.

In 2019 a deluxe edition of Take A Vacation! was released online that included a whole plethora of bonus tracks, mostly cover songs that made up the bonus tracks from various online released when the record originally came out. Anything good here? Well, technically yes, though the song that stands out more than any other to me is their cover of Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love.” Jon sings on that one and it kinda just works as a whole even more-so than the original version of the song in part because of the vaguely James Bond feel it exudes. Some people have speculated that between the deluxe reissue of Take A Vacation! and Ryan Ross slowly coming back out of the woodwork there may be a reunion on the horizon but honestly even if that was ever a plan I’m pretty sure COVID killed any possibility of that happening. Would it be nice if it happened? Sure, but I’m not counting on it.

Anything Else?

Okay, we’ve talked a bunch about The Young Veins and the impact that their story had, what happened on the other side of the split-up Panic! At The Disco camp? Well, Urie and Smith would go on to record and eventually release Vices and Virtues in 2011 which featured a Ryan Ross-penned tune that closed off the album, and the group would ultimately take on a much different direction with their sound than where Ryan Ross and Jon Walker would soon be headed. Eventually Smith left the band as well leaving Brendon Urie to be the sole remaining member of the original lineup. Panic! At The Disco would eventually become Urie’s solo project after bassist Dallon Weekes left the band to start his own group, I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME. For my money I’ve gotten more enjoyment out of any given IDKHBTFM release than anything Urie has released post-Death of a Bachelor. In a way I find the entire split and the subsequent directions that both camps went in to be a representation of rather interesting crossroads for the band. We could’ve very easily gotten the alternate-universe version of P!ATD where Ross and Walker stayed on board and controlled the direction of the band and they kept getting more and more “vintage” with their sound, but instead we got the version that tried to keep going after radio airplay and chasing after the big hits, and all due respect to Urie because the dude’s clearly a great vocalist who has more than paid his dues and cut his teeth doing some ballsy stuff including that run on Broadway, but for god’s sake the man needs people to write his songs for him because his attempts at trying to chase pop hits since Weekes left have been horrid to say the very least.

Would A Second Album Be Good?

…I know a second album would’ve been good but I’m not sure it would’ve been the jump from good to great that they would’ve inevitably strived for, though truthfully I think they would’ve found their footing better as a group. On Take A Vacation! The Young Veins sound so obsessed with sounding “vintage,” almost to a fault, that some of the songs on that album didn’t sound so great as just general basic songs. Personally, I would’ve rather heard what they themselves sounded like instead of trying to pursue “sounding vintage.” If Jon Walker contributed more songs in the style of “Everyone But You” and was more the Paul McCartney to Ryan’s John Lennon and less George Harrison then I could totally picture a second album from these guys being a bit better. Maybe if they didn’t split and kept releasing music they wouldn’t have been as big as Panic! At The Disco but they certainly would’ve gone the route of being critical indie darlings because all the tools for them to do so were right there.

Did They Deserve Better?

One of the top comments on the music video for “Take A Vacation” with over 600 “likes” simply states, “admit it: we all took it for granted.” I think that sums it up perfectly. Ryan Ross hasn’t put out a full-length album in over 10 years and in his absence he’s slowly become something of a cult hero for taking the reins in the early days of Panic! At The Disco as well as quarterbacking The Young Veins, in short he’s written the majority of the material on three separate albums that have all stood the test of time in their own special ways. In a way though there’s something oddly “on-brand” for The Young Veins that Take A Vacation! is something of a forgotten cult classic much like many of the great works of the 60s they tried so hard to emulate. I think Jon Walker definitely deserved better as well, especially when one considers his Home Recordings EP which was released a month after The Young Veins split. Those songs are as sharp and beautiful as anything off Take A Vacation! and it shows.

I think in the context of Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie it would be nice to see the two of them patch things up. I’m not a Panic! “stan” by any stretch of the imagination so having done some research as to what happened between the two, I came across some really disturbing stuff that I’m not going to share here but I’ll sum it up as “wow some fans are fucking insane.” Allegedly Urie reached out after seeing Ross in 2015 but Ross never texted back or reached out, in part because of the “disturbing stuff” I would imagine. I would also imagine that Urie’s jabs at Ross on “Local God” are coming from a place of hurt though because all evidence seems to suggest that Brendon Urie misses his friend deep down and is upset they’ve never reconciled. Also notable is that Panic! At The Disco as a stage act doesn’t really perform anything off those first two albums aside from “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and “Nine in the Afternoon,” and even then I would speculate that if he could cut those out of the setlist entirely then Urie absolutely would.

Ross’ name admittedly does come up a lot from people trying to badmouth Urie (and for somewhat rightful reasons… go look it up on your own time) but this tweet perfectly sums up my feelings on the matter.

“if y’all really meant it when you said ‘ryan ross supremacy’ the young veins would have more than 100k monthly listeners … to be clear i do not like brendon urie HOWEVER people do a lot of talking about ryan ross when dragging him just to not actually care about him and that is what bothers me. slander brendon urie all you want but dont use ryan’s name if you dont actually care about the dude”

@fandomphobic, Twitter (8/7/22)

Ross not being in Panic! has been a sore spot for a lot of folks, and rightfully so; the man helped write two of the coolest albums this writer has heard in a hot minute with that band, but to put it simply don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. Ryan Ross helped build up the world of Panic! At The Disco and gave us P!ATD as we used to know it, the version which has stood the test of time. It’s pretty cool that he had that second act of his career where The Young Veins was Ross’ attempt at writing the music he wanted to make and not the music he felt like he was going to be pressured into making by other bandmates. With all that said at the end of the day, who knows, maybe one day Ross and Urie will put their differences and grievances aside and come together to perform together once again and give the fans what they want. It would truly be a remarkable moment of healing for all involved parties, and I’d be all here for it.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers. Peace!

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “GTR” by GTR

(This month’s article was written by ROUGE! guitarist Johnny Cum-Lately)

The early 1970s may have been the heyday of progressive rock, but the eighties were a pretty good time to be an aging prog rocker.

Ridiculed as dinosaurs by music critics, in the eighties some prog rockers tightened their arrangements, shortened their songs, and made inroads on the pop charts. A version of Yes topped the Billboard Hot
100 for two weeks in January 1984 with “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” a song that sounded like nothing else any version of Yes had ever recorded. Two years earlier, former members of Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer called themselves Asia and went immediately into the top 5 with “Heat of the Moment.” (Disclosure: That Asia album was the first one I bought. I still have it.)

But no group of aging prog rockers dominated the eighties like Genesis, or more specifically, Phil Collins. From 1984 through 1989, Collins had 7 songs top the Billboard Hot 100 (None of which were “In the Air Tonight,”). Genesis, with Collins on vocals and drums, had hit after hit throughout the decade, briefly taking the top spot with “Invisible Touch” in 1986. Even Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford got in on the act with his side project Mike & the Mechanics topping the charts in 1989 with “The Living Years.”

Genesis’s dominance of the decade wasn’t limited to current members either. Their original singer, Peter Gabriel went to No. 1 in 1986 with “Sledgehammer.” That means that Genesis, either directly or
indirectly (mostly indirectly) accounted for 10 number 1 hits between 1984 and 1989. That’s a hell of a run.

But there was one person within the Genesis orbit who did not cash in on commercial success during the eighties. His name was Steve Hackett.

Before Genesis became synonymous with eighties yuppie pop rock, it was one of the best and most adventurous progressive rock acts of the first half of the 1970s. The band’s shows also had a theatrical
bent, thanks to Gabriel, which can be seen in this 25-minute live clip of “Supper’s Ready.” (Hackett’s the guitarist with the truly spectacular ‘stache). But Gabriel left for his solo career in 1975, and Hackett
followed two years later. He launched a solo career that was not exactly filled with commercial music, but his label stuck with him for a good decade, despite little mainstream success. In that time, his former bandmates in Genesis, now a trio, recognized that lengthy, complex songs were fading in popularity and wisely shifted to a more pop-oriented approach.

Guitarist Steve Howe encountered similar difficulties with his longtime band, Yes. After an ill-fated 1980 album in which the electro-pop duo The Buggles were merged with the remaining members of Yes, Howe and keyboardist/former Buggle Geoffrey Downes left Yes to form Asia. But as Asia quickly fell out of favor, Howe left the band in 1984. He and Hackett, who were friends, decided to work together.

The result was the formation of a supergroup called GTR, a band that aimed at the Album-Oriented Rock radio format that Asia briefly conquered. GTR’s eponymous debut album was released in May 1986 to a decent amount of hype. Surprisingly, some of that hype was contributed by MTV, even though Howe
was 39 years old and Hackett 36 when the GTR album was released.

So where did the name GTR come from? It’s the abbreviation for “guitar” used by recording studios for labeling guitar tracks. The name, along with the reputations of the two primary members, implied
excitement, and great guitar work for aficionados.

Did it deliver? Let’s dive into this album and find out.

“When the Heart Rules the Mind”: Here we are: THE BIG HIT. The first single. The first music video. The song that would define the supergroup GTR, accompanied by a video with everyone in suit jackets? Seriously, this looks like the other cops on “Miami Vice” formed a band to play in some club while Crockett and Tubbs searched out a drug lord. Either that or the lawyers on some eighties legal drama moonlighting in a band. From “L.A. Law” to corporate rock.

But what about the song? It’s got a good title. I hate to spoil the rest of the album for you, but it’s the cleverest word combination you’ll hear on the record. Maybe this song is about when emotion overtakes logic? As ROUGE! drummer/vocalist Harvey V.D. says, “red flags look like flags when you wear rose-colored glasses.” But do we get insight into this phenomenon? No. We get meaningless verses that
have no connection to what is being sung in the chorus, and we also get the first cliché on the album: “One look, and love is blind.”

The prog roots of the two guitar Steves are evident. This song has distinct parts, even a quiet fingerpicked acoustic guitar part, which becomes a vehicle to repeat the meaningless chorus. You know
what other song has distinct parts? “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead. That song is a 10 on a 10 scale. Its music video is a 10. “When the Heart Rules the Mind”? The song is a 5. The video is a 4. I wonder if the song became a hit single because of its musical merits, or because the hype fueled interest.

“The Hunter”: Is GTR a one-hit wonder? It fits the definition: A band that had one hit song, faded away, and had no impact beyond that one song. And if you assumed GTR was a one-hit wonder, you would be
wrong. This song, the second single off the album, cracked the Billboard Hot 100. It peaked at No. 85, so it wasn’t exactly a major hit.

This song was written by Downes, Howe’s former bandmate in Yes and Asia. It embodies the archetype of mid-eighties corporate rock. I have no recollection of seeing this video on MTV.

I wonder if the guitar Steves chose Max Bacon as the vocalist for GTR because of how similar he sounds to longtime Yes singer Jon Anderson. I’m not saying that to be dismissive. Jon Anderson is a terrific vocalist with a distinct, higher-range voice, and Bacon is as well. He demonstrates some serious voice control late in the song. It’s his best moment on this album. But this song sounds like it could be a Yes track.

“Here I Wait”: Am I listening to GTR, or Foreigner? That’s what I’m wondering. Here I wait for a GTR band identity to come out. For a song boasting two topflight guitarists, the guitar breaks are disappointing. They don’t take the song anywhere. The breaks are just there, as if by formula.

“Sketches in the Sun”: The first instrumental on the album, and probably closer to what people expected from GTR. Howe and Hackett trade licks throughout the 2 and a half minutes of this piece. It’s fine. But it doesn’t move. I don’t hear any passion nor attitude, just good technique. This song is closer to ambient music than rock.

“Jekyll and Hyde”: One criticism of this album is that there are brilliant moments, but the band never builds off them. This song is a perfect example of that. Its opening is solid. There’s some tension building in the music. But once the vocals kick in, that momentum vaporizes. The music never builds off the strong opening. A wasted opportunity.

“You Can Still Get Through”: RELAX! DON’T DO IT! WHEN YOU WANT TO GO IT!

Oh wait, this isn’t the Frankie Goes to Hollywood classic. It’s GTR basically ripping off the iconic synth bass line of that song.

I should mention that GTR’s debut album was produced by Downes. Downes’s Buggles bandmate was Trevor Horn, who handled vocals in both the Buggles and the ill-fated Yes sojourn. He quit Yes around
the time Downes and Howe did, but Horn went into production. In that role, he, along with Mutt Lange, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, pretty much defined the sound of eighties pop. Horn’s production
credits include “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes, The Art of Noise, Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, Seal, ABC, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Downes’s production resume is thinner. He’s focused his career on performing and recording. His production resume doesn’t include anywhere near the commercial success that Horn had. Saying that GTR hired the wrong ex-Buggle to produce its album is too easy, and a cheap shot. Look at Horn’s production resume. Aside from Yes, none of the acts were known for guitar being a featured instrument. The goal of GTR was to be less synthesizer-based (even though Downes was a keyboardist and Howe left Asia in part because he felt the keyboards were overtaking guitar in the band’s songs. If you’re getting the sense that YouTube music critic Todd in the Shadows could do a Trainwreckords episode on GTR, go ahead and suggest it to him.

What’s my point? If you wanted to summarize the mid-eighties in one song, “Relax” is a great example. “You Can Still Get Through,” is the attitude needed to survive the GTR song.

“Stop, look, and listen.” Those are the opening lyrics of this song. I want to hit stop and look for something else to listen to.

“Reach Out (Never Say No)”: This song is not to be confused with “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by The Four Tops. That song is performed with passion. Levi Stubbs’s lead vocal has a grit more in line with sixties Southern Soul rather than the smoother sounds of classic Motown. The Four Tops song has great harmony vocals, hooks galore, and a fantastic bassline by the legendary James Jamerson that keeps the song moving. It is everything that GTR’s “Reach Out” is not. GTR encourages you to “Never Say No” in this song. Be like Nancy Reagan in the eighties. Just say no to this GTR song. It isn’t memorable. “Reach Out I’ll Be There” is memorable. It’s immortal. Listen to The Four Tops song instead (after you finish reading this review, of course). The GTR song? It’s there. Lyrically, the verses and bridge seem
disconnected from what’s being sung in the chorus (the song’s title, repeated). Why am I writing about this GTR song – which reminds me of fellow mid-eighties crap band Starship – when I can listen to The Four Tops?

“Toe the Line”: “Sometimes you want to kick yourself for letting things get this far.” And there you have it: The most honest lyrics on this album.

But if you don’t kick yourself for getting this far, and pay attention to the lyrics, you get a series of cliches: “swimming against the tide,” “who holds the key,” “double-edged sword.” Then there’s the title.
I immediately thought of “Hold the Line,” by Toto, a similarly designed-for-AOR-radio rock song. Both songs are performed just fine. Both songs have verses that seem disconnected from the chorus. But
“Toe the Line” is lifeless, whereas the Toto song has some energy to it. “Hold the Line” also has a batshit crazy guitar solo from the underrated Steve Lukather. It’s a great solo. It has nothing to do with anything else going on in the song, but great solo. On the other hand, GTR never blessed the rains down in Africa. Fuck Toto and their white savior colonialist “Heart of Darkness.” And fuck Weezer for covering that goddamn song.

“Hackett to Bits”: There’s some shredding on this 2-minute instrumental, which is is one of the few highlights on this album, but it loses momentum toward the end. The sad irony here is that within a few years, instrumental shred albums would have a moment, with Steve Vai, Gary Hoey, and Joe Satriani releasing instrumental shred albums that got decent airplay on AOR stations. This track wouldn’t have gotten the airplay that Hoey and Satriani received, but it would’ve fit right in. Talent-wise, Steve Hackett’s right there with those guys I just mentioned. Too bad here he’s serving up more noodles than a package of Top Ramen.

“Imagining”: You’re not imagining it: this is the last track on the album. It’s 6 minutes long. And it takes a minute and a half before the song effectively kicks in. If you haven’t lost interest yet, I’m impressed. I’ve lost interest. But I must listen to this song. And write about it. Maybe I should apologize for this month’s selection for this column. This is brutal. A catch phrase for this column could be “We listen so you don’t have to!” I know. You’re expecting in-depth analysis, and her I am being a smartass again. You want to hear about chromatics and other music theory as applied to rock and pop? Go watch Rick Beato. Even he won’t touch GTR.

Now that we’ve made it through this album, and been harsh, maybe we should ask if this band was doomed from the start. As we’ve seen, no one in this band was a renowned lyricist. Aside from Hackett,
none of them had reputations as songwriters, and Hackett followed his creative impulses rather than trying to adhering to popular trends during most of his solo career. In a case of life imitating art, music
writer J.D. Considine practically plagiarized the Shark Sandwich album review from “This is Spinal Tap.” In his review of GTR for Musician magazine’s August 1986 issue, Considine wrote three letters: SHT. The
review perfectly describes the lyrics.

This album went gold in the U.S. and Canada, largely on the initial popularity of “When the Heart Rules the Mind,” a song that peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. GTR peaked at No. 11 on the album
chart. But Hackett soon lost interest in the project. There was no second GTR album, and the first one soon went out of print.

In the wake of GTR, Hackett went back to his solo career – which continues to this day – and Howe rejoined Yes. Except it wasn’t Yes. The reunited band had the entire lineup that recorded “Fragile,”
except for bassist Chris Squire. Squire remained in the entity known as Yes. Legal action ensued. So, the reunited Yes that wasn’t went by the name Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe. It’s a name that
screams “Hurt in a car wreck? Call the law firm of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe. We don’t get paid unless you win.”

GTR still has fans. Just read the comments on the videos of “When the Heart Rules the Mind” and “The Hunter.” Otherwise, the album and band have no lasting cultural relevance. You never hear the hit song on classic rock radio. None of the album’s songs have been sampled. You never hear GTR in any film or TV soundtracks. Aside from the album and additional tracks being available on at least one streaming music service, GTR has disappeared.

Consider the book “The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock” by David Weigel. In this otherwise thorough narrative history of progressive rock (including a section on prog from Italy, which led the authors of a leading rock history textbook to issue a new edition that included Italian prog), GTR is absent. Even though two of the genre’s legendary guitarists were involved; even though drummer
Jonathan Mover briefly played in Marillion, a band that is mentioned in 20 pages of the text, there is no mention of GTR. Reading the introduction, Weigel is clearly a fan. He conducted extensive interviews and did a lot of research. So why no mention of GTR? Did he too think the whole thing was SHT? Did Norton, the book’s publisher, think the same? How about you. Do you agree with Considine? I do. I briefly had the GTR cassette. I listened to it one time in 1986, found it boring, and never played it again. I
acquired the cassette from my dad, who bought it and found it boring. I’ve listened to the album more for writing this column then I did back when GTR had its moment.

In conclusion: THX for reading this SHT about GTR.

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “Fitz and the Tantrums” by Fitz and the Tantrums

I frequently get asked questions by some readers about what constitutes a certain album being featured on this recurring part of the website and honestly, I don’t know. I guess part of it is being able to tell a compelling story since my medium is more or less restricted to text and external links, but there’s more to it than that.

I can never cover The Orwells by The Orwells because even though that album is in fact a disaster I don’t think I can tell the story in a way that doesn’t somehow prop them up in a certain light, and if you want to know why I won’t do that despite being a fan of some of their work then go google it for yourself and be prepared to get real sad real fast.

I have considered tackling Revelation: Revolution ’69 by The Lovin’ Spoonful because wow that one is beyond bad but there’s not much out there about the album and it’s not really a compelling album to write about anyway. Here, I’ll sum it up; “lead singer and songwriter John Sebastian leaves the band, drummer and occasional singer Joe Butler takes over vocal duties and leaves the writing to songwriting teams, it’s underwhelming at best and the band breaks up.” See? Didn’t need a whole article to tell you that.

I can’t even really write about Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs even though that one seems like the most dead-to-rights Albums feature, and a perfect underhand pitch that’s slow and straight down the middle, but because of the weird afterlife it has had where it’s gone on to become a cult classic that in many ways leads to the band reuniting for a one-off special at MASS MOCA a few years back because Frank Zappa had to run his fucking mouth, I can’t cover it. Shame, really.

So why this album? Why this band?

You know… for a long time I really liked Fitz and the Tantrums. And then I didn’t. I haven’t thought about them in a long time and then I came across a tweet on my feed that perfectly encapsulated why I stopped paying attention to them. It’s so cringey in how it tries to pull off a weird promotional effort for whatever their latest stupid thing is these days while also completely ignoring how tone-deaf it comes off in the current sociopolitical climate. It’s the first time I’d thought about them and it’s because I had to absolutely recoil at the sight of this video.

So with that said…

Fuck it, I’m calling time on Fitz and the Tantrums.

Todd In The Shadows covered Crash by The Human League on his TRAINWRECKORDS series about disastrous career-ending albums, and in it he cites how in spite of it containing their biggest hit, the #1 single “Human,” it was also the album that ultimately leads to their downfall. The same argument could be made of many records, notably Liz Phair’s self-titled album from 2003, where she tanked her indie cred for popstar aspirations and while it yielded a hit single it also was the end of anyone really caring about Liz Phair (though now we’ve all come around and admitted that the album is perfectly fine). What do Fitz and the Tantrums have in common with these folks that even puts them in that same boat?

Well, before we can fully get into that, let’s get into who these guys even were before this album dropped and ruined us, because who they were varied from year to year. The year this whole thing really starts is 2008, a young man named Michael Fitzpatrick starts writing songs on this organ he gets from an ex-partner and eventually he starts a band with a couple of strikingly talented musicians; drummer John Wicks, bassist Joseph Karnes, saxophone player James King, backing/second vocalist Noelle Scaggs, and keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna. This band eventually signs with indie label Thunderbird Records and puts out their debut album Pickin’ Up The Pieces which contains a somewhat-big hit in the form of “MoneyGrabber,” a goddamn banger of Motown-influenced soul. The album itself is, in my opinion, pretty damn good too. It really hits this nice cross-section of soul, Motown, and pop, though notably it’s a record that does not feature a lick of guitar on it. Seriously, that’s pretty impressive that they managed to gain the success they did like that and there’s nothing in there for a guitar player to come in on. They would end up opening for The Specials on their reunion tour, wind up on some national TV spots including Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, play a lot of the big-name music festivals for up-and-coming bands, and would even play on the show Darryl’s House featuring Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame, whom Fitzpatrick got a lot of comparisons to early-on with his singing voice. Elsewhere the band’s star continued to rise in other less-known ways; for example, did you know James King played on this song? Yeah, that saxophone solo at the end is all him, and that’s a song that has gotten universal acclaim, has ultimately stood the test of time and is well on its way to being a goddamn classic if I must say so myself. Okay, the first album does well enough to top the Heatseekers chart and your saxophone player is now embedded in the musical canon whether you like it or not, what next?

On their second album More Than Just A Dream they not only got promoted to Elektra Records but they also upped the ante a lot by going in on adding some new wave influences to that cross-section of sounds they’d cultivated within the 3 years between albums. It featured some guitars and relied more heavily on synthesizers for parts of it, but those are still Fitz and the Tantrums songs deep down. For every “Spark” or “The Walker” where they were clearly trying to get on pop radio and grab a hit (which they did for “The Walker” by the way) they also had songs like “House on Fire,” “6AM,” and “Fools Gold” where, yeah the production values increased a little bit, but they still sounded like the same band. Two of the three singles from that album ended up getting them platinum records and the album itself peaked at #26 on the US Billboard Charts, but critics were less interested in it compared to their first record which received a lot of positive critical reviews when it came out. Even now some folks still ask “why this record?” and ponder why they chose to go chasing pop hits when they could’ve easily gained a more sustained albeit different brand of success if they stuck along their own road, but there’s more coming 3 years down the line.

In interviews with the band around the time their third album came out, the band said they attempted to “find that magical thing” in their music that made them who they are and admitted to the band being an ever-evolving group that didn’t have a consistent “sound,” and that their third record was going to be more about the success they experienced going into said third record. There’s no point in shadowboxing yourself when you’re in a band that’s on the rise and have all the best stuff in the world heading your way.

In June of 2016 Fitz and the Tantrums have come out with their third album, simply a self-titled effort. I guess I’m not a huge fan of bands self-titling any record of theirs after their first one (…YOU HEAR ME, WEEZER?) for what can only be described as a whole list of weird personal reasons but Fitzpatrick stood firm on his reasoning of why they ultimately went this route, saying…

“By having a self-titled album, it’s kind of like putting our stake in the ground, claiming our identity completely. We know who we are and that is a band that can take chances by taking all different genres and putting them together. We’re not going to be reducible to one genre or one stereotype, so for us it was a proclamation of our own confidence in our sound and what we do.”

-Michael Fitzpatrick, The Aquarian interview (2016)

Okay, you know what? Ballsy, but I can respect that. A band that jumped around with different sounds on their first two albums and kinda confusing some folks in the process is claiming “this is who we are” and sticking with it. Bold indeed. So what does the new Fitz ad the Tantrums sound like? What have they chosen to stake their claim in? Well… they chose to kick off their self-titled third album with the opening single “HandClap,” and if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard it at all since it came out, allow me to introduce you to it. It’s June 2016 and you go find the new album on whatever respective streaming service you’re into, and you hear that this is how we open up their third album.

Holy shit that sounded like absolute garbage. Like… holy shit what the fuck is going on with this song?? That saxophone line sounds bad, the riff it relies on isn’t any good either, and there’s really nothing good to grab onto here. There’s also Fitz’s psuedo-rap he’s doing on the verses and it’s… (don’t say cringe, don’t say cringe, don’t say cringe) …not great. Even that hook with the hand claps is not really a strong sentiment to build a song around. I sent this to a friend years ago when it came to talking about bands we thought “sold out” and when I brought this song up he said something to the effect of “I’ve never heard of these guys and they sound like they’re trying way too hard to write a hit. It sounds like garbage.” Telling him how far the band hand fallen was a depressing conversation.

In short my reaction upon first hearing it when it first came out in 2016 was “what. the. fucking. fuck?” but I can admit that I might just be a bit of a nasty critic towards this song though. In fact, the general public liked it enough to make it go 4x platinum in America and hit #53 on the Billboard charts and #2 on the US Alternative charts. Though maybe it is still just me being a nasty critic, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot considering all they changed up to get there, right? And for the record, it’s their highest-charting single. It didn’t even hit the top 40, but you’re certainly gonna hear it at every single sporting event from now until whenever people finally decide this song is no longer cool to use like that.

Okay, so that’s the first impression of the album, what’s next?

Well… it’s “Complicated.” And it features a truly horrible hook in

“It’s complicated when we get naked. But I can take it.”

Fitz and the Tantrums, “Complicated” (2016)

…they really just took the cringiest thing they could find a threw it into the MAIN HOOK didn’t they? And yeah, I know, it’s rich coming from a drummer/singer in a band that mostly just tells dick jokes in their songs, but FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS ARE NOT THAT KINDA BAND. And that’s saying nothing about the music which, once again, features this really cold, bland backing track that’s mostly driven by a drum machine and a few synths. Fitz and the Tantrums were cool when they were mixing the synths and live band stuff on their second album because it still had the human element to it, and it fucking worked, this doesn’t in really any stretch of the imagination. There’s really close to nothing going for this song, so to have it up near the very front of the record following one of your biggest singles is ballsy.

I almost didn’t want to continue, but I did. And incidentally the next song was probably titled after my reaction to the first two tracks, it’s called “Burn It Down.”

Okay, this one is nice, it starts with a nice little piano riff and has that classic Fitz feel to it, and Noelle’s vocals add some nice backup.

aaaaaaaaand there go the electric drum kits again trying to do these vaguely outdated dubsteppy fills. And the vocal manipulations to make it sound all skippy. Is the rest of this song bad?

Okay, the second verse comes in and it’s not as bad as it is at the start, Noelle gets the lead and she has a beautiful lead here as the song kinda tones it back a bit. There’s still little electronic flourishes here and there but it’s something much more in place with the second album than not.

Up next is the second single off the album, and one I don’t think I ever heard on the radio, it’s called “Roll Up.” To put it bluntly; this sounds like ass. Actually, it sounds even worse than ass; this sounds like a store-brand version of an Imagine Dragons song. The music video is a cringy little piece too that can basically be summed as “what if phone bad??” Not surprisingly this barely made a blip anywhere; it hit #42 on the US Rock charts and that was it. No certifications anywhere, and certainly not the follow-up to the success of multi-platinum “HandClap” that I’m sure Elektra was hoping for.

“Tricky,” “Fadeback,” and “Run It” follow “Roll Up.” I think the best I can say of pretty much any of these songs is “…eh.”

Is there anything good on this album?

“Get Right Back?” Eh, sounds too much like a bad take on a Britney Spears song.

“Do What You Want?” I kinda like this one, but I think that’s because it reminds me a bit too much of “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities, and I actually kinda like that one too. There are no guilty pleasures here at ROUGE! HQ.

“Walking Target?” Sounds too much like it’s trying to get play in a Target or Old Navy store. I do like some of the synthesizer choices here but overall it’s not a good song.

The album closes with “A Place For Us.” Much like all the others it’s alright, I guess.

Alright, we’re done here. This album as a whole ranges from boring to particularly bad cringe. Honestly I just don’t think these sounds work too well for this band and maybe that’s just why the album doesn’t work as a whole.

Maybe I’m just a nasty critic, I saw plenty of people who talked about how much they love this album and how much they really liked all the songs on it, so what about the other “nasty critics?” What did they have to say about it?

Well, AllMusic gave it a 3.5/5 star rating, Newsday gave it a B+ rating, and The Courier-Journal gave it a 3/4 star rating, even going so far as to say we’re back in the era where rock bands could have pop hits! Wow, that’s pretty good, right? So maybe this pop gambit paid off because they certainly had some good praise there.

…wait, hang on, I found all the other reviews.

ooooooh boy this is bad.

Consequence of Sound? D.

PopMatters? 4/10.

Rolling Stone? 2/5, even opening up their review by saying “Fitz and the Tantrums have lost their soul — literally.” The rest of that review is also particularly harsh at times so reader please be advised on that front.

There’s no actual rating system anywhere to be found for this one but Spectrum Culture didn’t have anything nice to say about it either, with this choice quote being “the combination of frenzied instruments tripping over each other and a heaping pile of useless lyrics leads to something that lacks listenability.”

Spill Magazine gave it a 1/5 star review, and said “the biggest qualm that exists with this record is that it isn’t just a sellout, but it’s an unimpressive sellout. If the tunes at least had some sense of artistry attached to them, there would be no need to so cruelly dismantle this effort. However, the cheesy ‘oh oh’s and terribly arranged vocal effects all crash and burn throughout the entire 11-track duration.”

The big one that came from The 405 (which is down now, but some websites have saved bits and pieces of the review) which stated, “I tried listening to this record in as many different ways as possible — sitting, standing, running, dancing, brain turned on, brain turned off. No mode of listening could redeem the fact that this album is just bad … Each and every track on this album is so jam-packed with garbage pop flourishes that it can get exhausting.”

Exhuasting is the proper adjective to describe the album, too. I was actually somewhat worried that despite having a few months to write this one out I wasn’t gonna get it done in time because the album truly is just exhausting in just about every sense of the word and trying to write about it feels like a chore. If you chose to listen along to the album as you read this article, I truly apologize for doing that to you.

The aftermath of the album wasn’t particularly notable because the album itself also wasn’t particularly notable either. They did an album 3 years later and even have a new album coming out this month, but when you go and look at their chart history it feels like any pop momentum they could’ve gained was immediately lost on them. Fitz and the Tantrums were never the sorta band that could terrorize the pop charts in any country to begin with, but their songs have only ever hit the US Rock charts. A lot of critics in their harsher reviews all stated that this was probably the album that was going to kill their relevance as a musical act, and honestly I’d say as much as well. Maybe taking a page out of the playbook of Pat Monahan (of Train), Michael Fitzpatrick would go on to do a solo record in 2021 and I literally just found that out during the research for this review which should, in theory, say all sorts of things about the band and how their relevancy was more or less killed by this album, even with their new album on the way I have heard absolutely nothing about it whatsoever that wasn’t found out by me poking and prodding around at what these guys have been up to lately.

In a way it’s actually pretty fucking sad; a band that had one of the better Motown revival sounds of the 2010s decides to go pop and instead crashes and burns so hard that it kills any and all momentum they could’ve possibly had. It didn’t have to be this way either, they could’ve easily stayed the course and had the sort of longevity that comes from a band that gains a hardcore cult following and they would’ve eventually broken out on their own accord that way and gotten success through that avenue as well. Instead they try to go directly for radio hits and dumbing down their lyrics to lowest-common-denominator status and hoping it was “relatable” enough, and while the short-term success was good for the band it ultimately would be their last taste of actual success. I guess in the end that’s just how it was always going to work out. The only other thing I can say about Fitz and the Tantrums is, “wow, that Hall and Oates album really fucking sucked.”

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers. Peace.

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: Johnny’s childhood record collection

(by Johnny Cum-Lately, guitarist for ROUGE!)

I was born and the sixties died.

In “1970” Iggy Pop yowled, “I feel all right.” Few young people probably agreed with him. The year was when the Vietnam War expanded into Laos and four Kent State students were murdered by National Guard troops. In music, the year of my birth was highlighted by three musical calamities: The breakup of the Beatles; and the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Boomer lore claims the final nail in the sixties rock coffin was Jim Morrison’s death in July 1971. The death of sixties music took place while Morrison was still drinking himself to death.

In addition to the big three, 1970 was the year that Peter, Paul and Mary, breakout stars of the early sixties’ folk
revival, split up to pursue solo careers. Just one year earlier, the trio topped Billboard’s Hot 100 during Christmas with John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

Also calling it quits in 1970 were Simon and Garfunkel, sixties icons who had the year’s biggest album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and the title track was the biggest song of the year. The song won enough Grammys to sink a boat floating in troubled water.

The 1970s are, arguably, rock’s greatest decade. It saw the emergence of many styles that are still popular: Punk, metal, dance music (in the form of disco), electronica, hip-hop, and prog (assimilated into metal). Think of your own tastes and I guarantee you love an act that either started during the decade or had its biggest success then. It’s as if the seventies were timeless, full of songs and albums that will outlive us all.

Consider: Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the Ramones, Stooges, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, the Cars, Devo, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, Aerosmith, Van Halen, P-Funk, Joni Mitchell, et al, meet the criteria laid down in the previous paragraph. We can add more to this list.

But we’re not here today to talk about quality. We’re going to discuss the forgotten chunk of half-used moldy cheddar lurking in the back of your fridge.

We’re taking this drive in a pea-green 1975 AMC Pacer equipped with an 8-track player. And on this drive, we’re wearing a red plaid suit with a wide-collared brown Dacron dress shirt left half open to
show off an untrimmed chest.

Did you honestly think that in a column called “The Albums That Ruined Us” we’d be talking about “Funhouse,” “Maggot Brain,” or “Rocket to Russia”?

My goal is to give you, the consumer, a truly complete picture of seventies music, for good or ill.

Find yourself a hazmat suit. You’re gonna need it.

When I’m not attacking a Fender Stratocaster in ROUGE!, I work as a college librarian. Part of a librarian’s job is historic preservation, whether it’s important documents, local history materials, or keeping that century-old copy of Jerome Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat” in good condition. That said, my biggest historical preservation interest is in albums and records. And recently, in the name of having some sort of historical record, I created a playlist called “My 45s as a kid.”

My memory is sharp, so compiling a 28-song, 113-minute playlist was simple. However, it’s incomplete. Only two B sides are included, thereby destroying what little hipster cred I had. I owned at least one KC and the Sunshine Band 45, but I don’t remember which song it is. I’m sure I had more 45s back then, but they got spun so infrequently that no imprint was made. The ones that are on the playlist made the biggest impact. There’s some true classics on the playlist (“Pinball Wizard,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Dust in the Wind,” “Bohemian Rhapsody”). There’s also dreck. Guess where we’re going?

I don’t recall how I acquired most of the 45s I had in my pre-K, kindergarten, and early elementary school years (1973-1977). I know my parents provided nearly all of them, but I don’t know if I asked for any of them. Once I showed a love of Elton John, they’d get some of his newer singles. Maybe my dad, a former musician who was an avid album collector, belonged to a record-of-the-month club? I say that because in researching this column, I discovered that some of these vintage vinyl Velveeta we’ll look at topped the Billboard Hot 100.

We’ll examine each of these pieces of moldy musical muenster in approximate chronological order of release. Keep in mind this shitlist is free of Tony Orlando & Dawn, Helen Reddy, “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” “The Night Chicago Died,” “You’re Having My Baby,” or “Disco Duck.” But what we’re about to look at will taste just as bad as drinking lukewarm orange juice after brushing your teeth.

Put on that hazmat suit. Now.

“No-No Song” – Ringo Starr: Dad was a Beatles fiend. He had nearly every American LP they released. Those albums got regular spins on the living room hi-fi stereo. He loved the Beatles. I do too. As a preschooler, I used to flip through his album collection. I was fascinated by album covers. Since my early childhood was just a few years after the psychedelic era, the LP covers were colorful. Many of those albums are today considered classics. Notably absent from his collection were Beatle solo records.

During the first half of the 1970s, all four Beatles were viable solo artists. Even Ringo. And if one gauges success by Billboard No. 1 hits, Ringo was, for a time, more successful than John Lennon. By the end of 1975, Ringo led Lennon 2-1, but Ringo was close to 100 pitches. He was about to leave the game as disco warmed up in the bullpen.

It may be hard to believe, but “Instant Karma” wasn’t a No. 1 hit. Neither was “Working Class Hero.” Ditto for “Mind Games.” And despite many overwrought cover versions, neither was “Imagine.”

Lennon’s only No. 1 hit of the polyester decade was 1974’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” a largely forgotten song that featured Elton John, then at his commercial peak, essentially sharing the lead vocal. Lennon wouldn’t catch his former drummer until the final week of 1980, when “Starting Over” went to No. 1 in the wake of his murder.

So yeah, Ringo had two No. 1 solo hits. “No-No Song” was not one of them. “No-No Song” was on his album “Goodnight Vienna,” which was released the same year (1974) as “You’re Sixteen,” which was his second – and final – song that topped the Billboard Hot 100. “No-No Song” was released as a single in early 1975 and reached No. 3 on Billboard. It was a No. 1 hit in Canada. Canada also gave us the hard rock band Monster Truck. These facts are not related but show that even awesome countries support lousy music.

“No-No Song” features a beat that, while not quite disco, is close. It even has horns. In it, the narrator declares, with a hint of a Jamaican accent, all the things he doesn’t do no more, like smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine, and drinking alcohol (specifically moonshine) because he’s “tired of waking up on the floor” and “it makes it hard to find the door.” Meanwhile, Ringo had a serious drinking problem during this time that continued until he entered rehab in the late eighties. He sadly had a lot of experience waking up on the floor and having trouble finding the door.

This tune has a vibe of a bunch of celebrity musicians getting together in the studio to record a temperance anthem while a mountain of cocaine sits atop the mixing board, and everyone drinks champagne between takes. Irony can be pretty ironic.

Did I mention my parents got a 4-year-old child this record? And said 4-year-old child played this record a lot? But maybe the song worked. I never tried cocaine. I also never thought about Ringo in the context of a solo artist. After the mid-seventies, neither did millions of others.

Three years ago, as of this writing, I saw Ringo’s All-Starr Band. This was the first – and possibly only – time that I got to see a Beatle. I don’t recall if “No-No Song” was played. But at one point during the show, Ringo, in a lecherous voice, asked “Are there any little girls in the audience tonight?”

Me: “RINGO, NO!”

After the cheers (CHEERS???) subsided, he said, “This song is for you.” The All-Starr Band launched into “You’re Sixteen.”
“You’re sixteen, and you’re mine,” sang Ringo. He was 78 FREAKING YEARS OLD.

By today’s standards, “You’re Sixteen” is creepy AF. Ringo’s tone-deaf introduction didn’t help. He would’ve been better off announcing that the next song was a number 1 hit for him, and that he hopes everyone enjoys it. I would’ve been ok with that, even if he was 33 years old when that song topped the charts.

No no no no, I don’t want cringe no more …

“Love Will Keep Us Together” – The Captain and Tennille: And you thought the hazmat suit talk was all hype.

I am not going to analyze why this song is bad. There’s plenty of that online. There’s no sense in piling on. But I will say that some strange noises emanate from The Captain’s keyboards during “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and they’re not strange in a good way.

Instead, I’m going to talk about “The Captain,” a.k.a. DARYL DRAGON. He got one of the coolest names ever and blew it.

Forget the turtlenecks and captain’s cap. He should’ve grown his hair out and started wearing satin capes (keeping the aviator shades, because aviator shades rule). He should’ve formed a proto-metal band called Dragon’s Lair. Said band could’ve featured DARYL DRAGON laying down some lengthy, complex keyboard solos in the middle of songs about Viking voyages, Visigoth conquests, and dwarves terrorizing hapless villagers. He could’ve been a keyboard god like Jon Lord, Keith Emerson, and Rick Wakeman. His band would’ve been better than Atilla, Billy Joel’s short-lived proto-metal duo. They couldn’t have been much worse.

Instead, a man named DARYL DRAGON marries an attractive female singer, scores several pop hits with her, makes a fortune, and … yeah, he probably made the right move. Especially since he later owned the recording studio where Guns N’ Roses recorded “Appetite for Destruction.”

And while we’re at it, quit dissing Toni Tennille. Four years after her and DARYL DRAGON released their signature song, she provided backing vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Everyone deserves a shot at redemption.

“Bad Blood” – Neil Sedaka: The same year this topped the Hot 100 for three weeks, classics like “Fame” by David Bowie, and “Shining Star” by Earth, Wind and Fire also topped the charts. Since my dad has passed on, I must ask my mom: “WHY DID YOU BUY ME THIS PIECE OF CRAP?” Oh, that’s right, Elton John provides uncredited backing vocals on “Bad Blood.” Elton was at his commercial peak in 1975, and he was my first musical hero. Buying this single for me made sense. And as far as my parents selecting my music, all parents make mistakes.

For those of you who don’t know (which is probably everyone reading this screed) Neil Sedaka was kind of a big deal in the early sixties. He was a successful Brill Building songwriter, scored some hits as a performer, and had a No. 1 hit in August 1962 with “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” Then The Beatles arrived and Sedaka disappeared from the American pop scene for more than a decade. Eventually, he met Elton John, and Sedaka signed to the Elton’s new Rocket Records label.

What followed was, at the time, perhaps the greatest comeback in American pop music history. Sedaka was more popular than ever in 1975, and he seemingly was as unlikely a pop star as can be imagined. He was in his mid-thirties. In some photos from that time, he looks pudgy and appears to have a combover. And he still became, for one year, a bona fide pop star.

Sedaka had a role in three No. 1 singles in 1975. He co-wrote “Love Will Keep Us Together,” for DARYL DRAGON and Tennille. As a performer he topped the charts twice that year. “Bad Blood” was his second No. 1 of the year – and last of his career.

“Bad Blood” is mostly forgotten today, but it deserves more respect in pop music history. In this song, Neil Sedaka unwittingly became a rap pioneer.

Sedaka’s contribution to the future genre appears in the second and third chorus, when the word “bitch” is sung. “Bad Blood” was probably the first No. 1 song to feature that word as a lyric. Prior to
Sedaka’s groundbreaking contribution, the closest that word came to appearing on a No. 1 single was as the title of the B-side to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” in 1971. I’ve listened to “Bad Blood” a few times recently. It’s a man talking to his friend, who was mistreated by a woman. Sedaka’s voice is thin, but he and Elton blend well in the chorus. Musically, it’s dated, but so are most pop hits from any year. It has a keyboard part that hints at funk, but the song itself goes nowhere. It’s mid-tempo and it stays there. It doesn’t inspire dancing, fast driving, volume cranking, head banging, moshing, or any combination thereof. It’s exists for 3 minutes and 10 seconds, provided you don’t tap out earlier.

And what does “bad blood” have to do with a woman who mistreats a man? Did she get a tainted transfusion? Is there a blood disorder that causes women to mistreat a man? Are there certain blood types that predisposes a woman to commit heinous acts? The title (repeated throughout the chorus) makes no sense in the context of the verses, which are delivered like a high school guy taunting his friend about that girl who mistreated him. So, it’s not cool for her to treat him “like small change,” but the narrator can talk to his so-called friend the same way?

Dear Neil Sedaka: You come off as a jerk in this song.

“Sky High” – Jigsaw: The best way to describe “Sky High,” is just like the pea-green Pacer I mentioned earlier: DOA. In this case, the acronym means Dated on Arrival.

Jigsaw was a British pop-rock act that in the U.S. was a one-hit wonder. In this case, “one-hit wonder” means you’re puzzled as to how the hell they ever had one hit.

“Sky High” was the main theme to the 1975 martial arts action yarn “The Man from Hong Kong.” It stars George Lazenby, who played James Bond once (“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”). “The Man from Hong Kong” has a 6.6 rating on IMDB, meaning that it is apparently a better movie than every Cheech and Chong picture, “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” “Freddy Got Fingered,” and “Twilight.” So beautiful.

This up-tempo song was a smash, going top 10 in seven countries and top 20 in two others. In the U.S., it peaked at No. 3 on Billboard. Musically, the song opens with blaring horns, a sub-disco hi-hat riff, and chicken scratch guitars. It sounds like a mid-seventies’ movie theme – to a blaxploitation film. But once the vocals of drummer Des Dyer start, we are whiter than Syracuse after a lake-effect blizzard.

I haven’t seen “The Man from Hong Kong,” but reading the brief synopsis on IMDB makes me wonder what “Sky High” has to do with the movie. The lyrics are about a guy proclaiming how wonderful his love affair could’ve been with an unnamed person (presumably a woman, given the homophobia of the times) who blew it all sky high, by telling him a lie, without a reason why.

What was the lie? Did said person say they were going to get Biffo Beech good seats for an Arsenal-Manchester City match and not come through? Did this person promise to meet Biffo at Applebee’s on a date night, but instead showed up at Wendy’s? We never find out what the lie is, but based on Biffo’s chirpy lyrical delivery, totally devoid of intensity, the lie couldn’t have been that bad. Biffo Beech doesn’t seem too upset. Why should we care?

But what makes this song stink, rather than just a dated artifact? It’s during the chorus, when Biffo Beech goes to the top of his vocal range and drags out the word “high.” Biffo Beech blew that one sky high, by telling the producer a lie – that he could not only hit that note, but sound good doing it.

“Saturday Night” – Bay City Rollers: Fuck you I still like this song.

“Convoy” – C.W. McCall: Listening to pop radio in the early and mid-seventies could easily transform into story time. Those were the years were when story songs were at their peak. Two great examples of this style both were No. 1 in their time: Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” and Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle.” If you’re a dad, especially if you have a son, hearing “Cats in the Cradle” at the wrong time will reduce you to tears.

“Convoy” is also a story song. It’s cheesy. It will not reduce you to tears. Well, maybe not the kind of tears that “Cats in the Cradle” inspire. But you know what “Convoy” can lay claim to? It spawned a pop-culture phenomenon. In a way, “Convoy” was the “Macarena” of the mid-seventies.

“Convoy” tells the story of a group of truckers uniting, driving across the country, defying speed limits, and evading the cops (known as ‘bears” in the ‘70s trucker slang of the song). We never find out why the truckers have decided to take on the bears outside of Flagtown. Or was it Tulsa Town? Do I really have to listen to this again for the sake of 100 percent accuracy?

The story is that the truckers continue to go “’cross the USA” and evade the cops, the “bear in the air,” the Illinois National Guard, blow through the toll booths of New Jersey, all to some unspecified location on the east coast. “Let them truckers roll!”

I have questions: What started this convoy? What’re they mad about? And how did they drive from Shakeytown to the Jersey shore without running out of gas? Logically, the bears would’ve nabbed those “thousand screaming trucks” well before they encountered the Illinois National Guard in Chicago; all those trucks would’ve run out of gas.

“Convoy” has a few plot holes. But what it lacked in literary finery it made up for in the deep baritone of C.W. McCall (an alias for an advertising executive) delivering the CB slang of the day. And it’s that CB slang that makes the song an oddly compelling listen. Musically, it’s a hodge-podge of dated countryish elements, like banjos coming in the second verse.

“Convoy” was a No. 1 hit for just one week in January 1976. But in its wake, it seemed more and more regular folks bought CB radios. They were the cell phones of the day. It was how people learned about accidents on the road ahead, speed traps, or the antics of a driver and a truck stop hooker at the rest stop you just passed. My parents had a CB radio in our motorhome. I hope dad didn’t call himself the Rubber Duck or Pigpen.

A couple of years after the song topped the charts, “Convoy” was turned into a movie. This film looks like it stinks. Here’s the trailer of another picture that cashed in on the fad.

And yet somehow, “Convoy” is a reliable go-to in any “worst songs ever” list. I’m not sure why. Dated? Absolutely. Cheesy? Like homemade mac and cheese. A novelty song? Of course. But so is “I’m Too Sexy,” which is one of the greatest songs ever written. Why? Because it’s fun. I guess “Convoy” is as well.

This tune is considered a country song, mainly because it’s about truckers. In general, I LOATHE country music. But I was 5 years old when this song dominated radio. The story and delivery would probably appeal to any 5-year-old, even today’s kids. These children can watch “Frozen” every day for a year and still love it, whereas the kid’s parents were ready to let it go after seeing it for the fifth time this week and it’s only Tuesday.

We should not entrust our pop culture to 5-year-olds. Bad things happen when we entrust our pop culture to 5-year-olds.

“Afternoon Delight” – Starland Vocal Band: ROUGE! vocalist/drummer Harvey V.D. likes to sit on the toilet and sing this song while playing his acoustic guitar. I could end this in-depth, scholarly analysis of this song right here, but more must be said. Out of all the examples of bad seventies songs, why does this one receive so much invective? Why isn’t more hate directed at “Shannon,” a hit single (peaking at No. 6) for Henry Gross that’s from the same year (1976) as “Afternoon Delight.” “Shannon” is about a DEAD DOG.

“Afternoon Delight,” meanwhile, is a celebration of midday sex. People are more tolerant of a DEAD DOG than they are about getting it on in the afternoon. This is America. We work in the afternoon! If you’re not working, you’re lazy, don’t care about your family, and are probably a woke communist snowflake instead of a real American with real values! Because real Americans apparently prefer a DEAD DOG to boning in the afternoon.

I’m not going to pile on “Afternoon Delight.” It’s done. It’s a cliché. You want to read about how lousy this song is, you can find it online.

Maybe this ditty gets hate because it helped Starland Vocal Band win the Grammy for best new artist instead of Boston. Yes, ahead of the band that gave us “More Than a Feeling.” Ahead of the band whose self-titled debut was, for many years, the biggest selling debut album in history. The Ramones debut album was released the same year as “Afternoon Delight,” but hardly anyone bought that first Ramones album that year. More people, including two young parents in Las Vegas, bought “Afternoon Delight.” So maybe some hate is justified.

Does “Afternoon Delight” stink? Not really. The female vocals sound a bit screechy, but it’s no worse than a lot of other mediocre pop songs that went No. 1. Its biggest crime is that it’s from mid-seventies and is not about a DEAD DOG. I say, let’s get it on at 2 in the afternoon. Everyone couple up, forget waiting ‘til the cold dark night, because everything is clearer in the light of day. Put skyrockets in flight. Let’s all get sweaty and fill the air with grunting sounds. Let’s turn our houses, our apartments, the vans we live in down by the river, into Chateau Grunteau. Let El Grunteau in the afternoon reign supreme!

…Unless you all would rather hear about a DEAD DOG.

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “Garth Brooks in… the Life of Chris Gaines” aka “Chris Gaines’ Greatest Hits” by Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines

In April of 2021 the New York Times published an opinion piece with a headline titled “You Can Be a Different Person After the Pandemic.” The title pretty much sums up the idea the article is presenting; you don’t need to be a certain way or live a certain life if you’re not happy with your station in life. Our lives are not set in stone. It’s an article that, despite its general sentiments, only made me think of two men and two men only.

Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines.

I say two men, but really I only mean one man because the thing to remember is that Garth Brooks is Chris Gaines.


Even just saying that name out loud or showing a photo of the man in question elicits a roar of thunderous laughter among a certain group of people. It’s an album that lives in such infamy that when Brooks teased that the album would eventually be available on streaming services, CD and vinyl a month before that New York Times article was released it sent chills down the spines of many folks, myself included. Even now when the name Garth Brooks comes up people often ask if he was the guy who did that Chris Gaines album. That’s his legacy to the many of the most casual listeners on the surface, and I want to make it clear; Garth Brooks wasn’t just some guy who decided to put on a costume and cosplay as someone else, he was a multi-platinum, muti-diamond-selling artist from 1989 to 1999. He’s sold more records than many artists and bands whose careers and music are deeply imbedded in the American musical canon, and when you see some of the names in question it just reinforces the main question; what the fuck happened to this guy?? How is he still getting the shit kicked out of him for this?? How did this guy become the subject of a Family Guy punchline?? How does one of the best-selling artists of all time get relegated to being the subject of a question by a friend asking how come they don’t know a single Garth Brooks song?

(For the sake of transparency I’d also like to be upfront about the fact that a large chunk of what I learned and what I’m going to be sharing comes directly and indirectly from Chris Gaines: The Podcast because of course there’s a podcast about it, why would there not be? I’d highly recommend giving it a listen though because it’s really fantastic stuff.)

Well, for starters, he was a country artist and I’ll be the first to admit that many of my friends who I talk music with sort of recoil when they hear “country” and they act like it’s a dirty word when in reality it isn’t, and it’s far from it. Garth Brooks is a damn good artist and he absolutely earned every single award he’s racked up in his career, but when you’re in a genre that’s got acts like Florida Georgia Line and Walker Hayes muddying up the waters it’s hard to not look at the genre as a joke on the whole.

Second off, the year was 1999 and Garth Brooks was the biggest country star of all-time. As previously stated, he had 10 years of mega success with his music and it wouldn’t be too hard to believe that nobody around him was going to tell him “no” on what seemed to be an obviously bad idea. I can only compare this to if Lady Gaga decided she was going to make a heavy metal album under a different alias but still had the “Lady Gaga” name attached to it. But the point I’m trying to make here is that Garth wanted to branch out, and no one was going to tell him he couldn’t, right?

Well, you have to consider that at the end of the day Brooks was still the top-selling country artist. No disrespect towards country music as a whole obviously, but even with all those records sold and the massive audience he built up he was always going to be a major league guy on a triple-a ball club at best. 1999 comes around and it’s time for Garth to step up to the plate and prove he can branch out and make it into the upper-echelons of musical superstardom.

Actually, more than anything it’s telling that for this entire thing Garth felt like he had to put on a costume and come up with a whole character and backstory at all just to be able to do something a tad bit different from what he usually did. Maybe he felt cornered into just being Garth Brooks and this really was his way of branching out and being able to explore the non-country side of his sensibilities. I don’t know if it’s ever been fully confirmed but if someone told me that was the case I’d fully believe it.

…which is what I would say if any of that was the case. Garth actually swore up and down in various interviews that this wasn’t him trying to break from country music, this wasn’t an attempt at crossing over into pop, this wasn’t an “alter-ego” and this was just him playing a character for a movie. That’s not really that weird at all. But trying to get people familiar with the character of Chris Gaines before the movie came out? THAT is a very fucking weird train of thought to have though. Not once have I seen a movie and thought to myself something along the lines of “oh, but I need to know the entire backstory of this person before I go into it. Tell me more about Randall Graves, what drew him to RST Video??” Realistically it’s more than likely he was just used to banging out an album a year and when he got the green light to do the movie he started making the music and didn’t want to just sit around with it because the process of making a movie was long and boring. I can only speculate though.

Also while it’s on my mind I’d just like to say that doing research for this one has been a bit weird because the lines between Garth and Chris get blurred at times, so I may refer to the real-life canon of Garth Brooks and the in-universe canon of Chris Gaines as one in the same at times. Reading through the album’s liner notes establishes a world of oddly specific details about his career and anecdotes such as albums staying on the charts for 200+ weeks at a time (not a typo, by the way) and how this was the start of a new major era for the life of Chris Gaines, but in the real world a lot of what happened after the fact informs what happens now when I’m digging around and doing research trying to write this article. To that end I’d just like to say upfront that, spoiler alert, both sides of this story do not have a happy ending. I mentioned that the album isn’t available on streaming services and that’s partially due to this unhappy ending, so I had to actually go and actually buy the CD off eBay in order to give it a proper listen for this review, it’s also where I got the liner notes for the album from, but also it feels like Garth’s people did as much as they could to actively sweep as much of this album and its subsequently related pieces off the internet. Even trying to find anything on YouTube feels like heavy lifting because there just isn’t much of anything there outside of a plethora of video essays, a single music video, the occasional thing related to Gaines that isn’t directly Chris Gaines and the occasional video of Garth directly talking about the project. For all intents and purposes despite his promise of giving the album a new life on digital services it feels like he’s still somewhat embarrassed by the project and doesn’t get how so many people love the album even after all this time. This is all a very roundabout way of saying that because of this when I speak about individual songs on this album I will not be able to link to videos for it as I normally would unfortunately (with the exception of the lead single which we will get to in a bit) but I’ll do my best to provide something for you.

Alright, now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way let’s try to kick this shit off.

The year is 1999 and Garth Brooks is the biggest country star of the decade, and really the biggest country star of all-time one might argue. Before Chris Gaines entered the picture the lowest any of his singles had peaked on the country charts was at #23 and even then it was a cover of an Aerosmith song. Every album peaked at #1 or #2 on the country music charts as well as being certified diamond and gold. Aside from that one droop into the 20s and one song that peaked at #19 on the singles charts he had unparalleled success and was the country guy. He had all this success with the charts, the certifications, and multiple world tours under his belt but there was one thing Garth had not conquered yet; the big screen.

Enter Chris Gaines.

For his major foray into the movie industry Paramount and Brooks worked to develop the ideas for and flesh out the character of Chris Gaines for a movie centered around the character called The Lamb. Allegedly the movie was going to center on an obsessed fan trying to investigate the mysterious death of Gaines while piecing his life together with the majority of the story being told through flashbacks. Brooks built up this elaborate backstory about the life of Gaines that included everything from dead friends to contract disputes, from disapproving parents to sex addiction and even a bit about facial reconstruction surgery. It’s a bizarre story to put it gently and it’s the sort of thing that would have gotten spoofed to hell and back in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (Side bar: In a way it’s a bit bizarre to see all the biopics out in the world now that still follow the ridiculous formulas set up the way Walk Hard presented them, but if anyone needed a reason to shy away from the “formula” in the current era, just show this soul-patched man and that should do it).

For this album Brooks teamed up with the legendary Don Was (of Was Not Was fame) and a stable of songwriters to put together a “pre-soundtrack” to the movie that was eventually going to become The Lamb and presented not just a collection of songs, but the aforementioned elaborate backstory with completely fleshed out details about every aspect of his life. In March of 1999 this idea is shared to the public in a press conference that not only features Brooks and Was, but also the folks who are helping make this movie come to life. After that the chatter dies down a bit we don’t hear much publicly about Gaines but the wheels have been in motion in making this character become a public icon.

Around this time Brooks joins up with the San Diego Padres and plays on the team at spring training. No, that is not a joke. It was for his charity and apparently it did pretty well though so maybe I should stop being an asshole about it.

We eventually do end up getting our first hint of what’s to come and what the country superstar has chosen to do a few months later in the middle of a particularly tumultuous summer for Garth Brooks when on July 19th Garth, as Gaines, releases the first single off the upcoming album, entitled “Lost In You.”

So far what we’ve read is a bit of a bizarre story, yes, but people will be able to gloss over it if the music is any good, right? So let’s see if we can forget that, at least publicly, Garth looks like he’s losing his goddamn mind and give this song a listen.

Well… it’s… actually not that bad. It’s a smooth pretty lowkey little song that talks about falling head-over-heels for somebody and being in love with them. In the context of the Gaines universe this is one of two songs specifically recorded for the Greatest Hits CD and it truly does sound like a nice little hit. In fact it ended up peaking at #5 on the Billboard charts and gave Brooks his only appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, which is a bit of a big deal because this single ended up causing quite the stir for a lot of radio stations; country radio didn’t want to play it because it wasn’t country and pop stations didn’t really want to play it because it was Garth Brooks. History has given this song a fairly positive legacy though if Donald Glover covering it is meant to be any indication at all. I like it, I’ll give this a thumbs-up, if this is the sorta stuff to expect from this strange Gaines character then you know what? It can’t be that bad.

It is a bit odd though because everybody involved made such a big deal about how the character of Chris Gaines was supposed to be a rocker and was in a rock band before he became a big rock star and has the whole rock star aesthetic and yet the first song we hear to promote the album is actually a gentle little R&B-influenced number that wouldn’t have felt out of place on the softer radio station my grandma used to listen to when I was a kid growing up in the early-to-mid-00s. A bit of conflicting messaging going on? Absolutely, but the song is nice so it’s something I’m personally willing to overlook.

Two months go by, it’s now September 28th, 1999 and Garth Brooks in… The Life and Times of Chris Gaines gets released in stores for the general public to buy and listen to. You get home, you crack open the CD, read the 20-something pages of liner notes that accompany the album, put the CD in the stereo system of your choice and the first song that comes on is a track called “That’s The Way I Remember It.”

Let’s get acquainted with Chris Gaines.

Alright. Well. This is… okay, I guess. It’s kinda mellow, which makes sense in the context of the Gaines universe because it’s off his then-most-recent album Triangle. I’m still waiting for the “rocker” thing that’s been advertised to come out. Lyrically, it’s a love song about how no matter what, he’s going to remember the unnamed love interest the song is dedicated to. If you read the liner notes he mentions that he originally wrote it as a downer song but then when he “wrote” the music the lyrics didn’t fit anymore so he changed it up to be more in line with something the Beatles would write. It’s not exactly a standout track or interesting way to open the album up, but it’s something. I will say that for an artist such as Garth who was mostly known for a booming low voice, hearing this soft gentle high voice is… interesting.

After this is “Lost In You,” we heard this one already, we know how it sounds. In the context of the album it’s actually a good follow-up to “That’s The Way I Remember It.”

Up next we’ve got “Snow In July,” this is another Triangle song.
It opens up with this… well… kinda funky little riff. Maybe this is the “rocker” thing I keep hearing so much about? Well, yeah but no. The song has more of a backbeat and a bit more energy but he’s still channeling his best Matchbox 20 here. Lyrically it’s about a good relationship that’s gone bad and presents this clever metaphor for it by saying “it ain’t even cold baby, how could it snow in July?”

Actually, I’ll give this one a thumbs up. It kinda gives off Weather Channel background vibes which is oddly appropriate, but I also kinda like those types of songs anyway.

Up next is the final Triangle song on this so-called Greatest Hits compilation. It’s called “Driftin’ Away.” It’s another gentile ballad of a song. It’s got these pretty acoustic guitars, some electric piano underneath the surface and a stiff drum machine to back it all up. The lyrics talk about loving someone but feeling yourself drifting away from them. It’s a fairly relatable concept, it just falls flat because the music is this dainty little backing track that’s afraid to give any sort of dynamics to it. That backing drum absolutely kills this song, though. It’s dated and not even in a kitsch way either.

The next track is “Way of the Girl,” a song off the Apostle album. Immediately we’re treated to some slap bass and stabby guitars playing around with a synth lead. The guitars and bass sound really good on this one. It’s a shame that it took us five songs to get to something with even the slightest hint of a “rock” edge to it. Hell, Garth hits these vocal inflections on the second verse that absolutely rip. The lyrics here are a bit questionable in parts, like this piece here…

“Some made it for money
And some made it for love
Some made it for romance
My baby’s all the above”

Chris Gaines, “Way of the Girl” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Chris, Garth, baby, honey… what? Is this chick someone you like or what? That “made it for money” bit throws a weird wrench in the whole thing.

Okay, if those are the first lyrics I’m questioning, we’re not that bad here.

Next track.

“Unsigned Letter” follows this, another Apostle song, and honestly? Yeah this one rips. It kinda feels like a Great Value Everclear song but I also like Everclear. It also reminds more than a little of the “lite-rock” songs I heard growing up. The guitars are nice on this one too. Some folks compared it to The Wallflowers, and yeah that kinda tracks.

The lyrics tell about an infatuation Chris has with a girl who takes care of him after his in-universe “accident” (…we’ll get to that later.) He offers this detail in the liner notes that they’re still good friends but deep down he “still wonders what she would be like if she ever let go.”

Wow, dude. Just… wow. That’s deep character development right there.

“It Don’t Matter to the Sun” comes after that. In-universe, it’s a song that Chris’ dad used to sing to his mom all the time and then when his father died there was no one around to sing it to her so this is a real recording of a fake cover song which is… bold. Lyrically though, holy shit this is a fucking downer.

It don’t matter to the sun
If you go or if you stay
I know the sun is going to rise
Shine down on another day
There still be a tomorrow
Even if you choose to leave
Because it don’t matter to the sun, oh baby
It matters to me
It ain’t going to stop the world
If you walk out that door
This old world will just keep turning ’round, turning ’round
Like it did the day before
Because see to them it makes no difference, ohh
It just keep on keeping time
Because it ain’t going to stop the world out there
But it’ll be the end of mine

Chris Gaines, “It Don’t Matter to the Sun” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Even the back half tries to lighten up the mood and still fails miserably. I don’t hear a love song in this, I hear an absolute bummer of a song. If I sang this to any partner I’ve had I’m pretty sure I’d hear the same thing.

It should come as no surprise though that a few artists have actually covered this. It’s a nice song with a real soulful delivery to it, and honestly it bums me out that none of the covers were by Motown or soul/r&b artists. It’s got that special something to it, but those bummer lyrics sure aren’t it. It’s also the closest that Gaines gets to Garth on this album which explains why it’s considered a highlight all these years later.

Don Henley covered this song with Stevie Nicks though, and you know what Don Henley is? An asshole.

Alright, so we’re about halfway through this record and honestly, the only thoughts that cross my mind are that it gets better as it goes on, but that also I’m not particularly attached to any of these songs aside from maybe “Unsigned Letter,” and “It Don’t Matter to the Sun.” I kinda have a soft spot for “Lost In You” as well but it’s not a huge soft spot. Aside from that this album so far is kinda “meh,” but as I said, it gets better as it goes on, I hope that remains true for the rest of the record.

Also I should note that these songs go in more-or-less reverse chronological order, so we’re getting the more mature Chris at the start but it walks itself back further and further in time. I remain intrigued. Onward!

And onward we get to… well… this is the one. This is the most bizarre track on the album. Maybe that doesn’t say much considering otherwise this album as a whole so far is as bizarre as beige paint but this one is called “Right Now” and is in fact, one of the few tracks I can properly link here for the time being. Enjoy.

The liner notes state that this is, in short, a song about “senseless slaughtering of innocence, and the countless opportunities for peace wasted.” He mentions that he “isn’t a preacher” and he “doesn’t do anthems” but he felt compelled to do one. So, what does Chris have to say about the state of the world?

“Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books
Maybe it’s the government and all the other crooks
Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents
Maybe it’s the gangs, or the colors that we’re wearing
Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers
Tattoos, pipe bombs underneath the bleachers
Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack
Maybe it’s the bible, or could it be the lack”

Chris Gaines, “Right Now” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Huh. Alright.

Guys…


…why is Chris Gaines rapping on this?


This is so out-of-place on this album, but it should come as no surprise that in-universe it was another song specifically recorded for the Greatest Hits record. So yeah, a song recorded for the Greatest Hits is the weirdest one on here so far. Go figure.

The hook is the strongest part of this song though by a country mile though. He claims he “joined the current events of the 90s with the ‘give peace a chance’ of the 60s” and pleads to “please, love one another” which he also says in the chorus.

Come on people, now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another, right now…right now

Chris Gaines, “Right Now” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

It should be noted that this chorus comes from a song called “Get Together” by The Youngbloods. I can’t tell if it’s a direct sample or just an interpolation but I will say his voice sounds damn good on that hook. It doesn’t speak well to the song though when the strongest part of it isn’t even something Chris wrote in-universe though, but that’s just me. Does the next verse get better?

“Okay, maybe it’s the papers, maybe it’s the family
Maybe it’s the internet, radio, TV
Maybe it’s the president, maybe it’s the last one
Maybe it’s the one before that
Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the dads
Maybe it’s the sports fans, agents, fads
Maybe it’s the homeless, aliens, immigrants
Maybe it’s life, don’t tell me that it’s imminent”

Chris Gaines, “Right Now” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Wow, that’s awful. Third verse, maybe?

“Maybe it’s the fallout, maybe it’s the ozone
Maybe it’s the chemicals, the radiation, cell phones
Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it the next page
Lotteries, fast food, bad news, road rage
Maybe it the unions, big business
Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it’s the daughters, maybe it’s the sons
Maybe it’s the brothers of the mothers or the guns”

Chris Gaines, “Right Now” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Nope. Last verse?

“Maybe it’s the parks, maybe it’s the sex
Maybe it’s the talk shows, maybe it’s a reflex
Maybe it’s the taxes, maybe it’s the system
Judges, lawyers, prisons
Maybe it’s the Catholics, maybe it’s the Protestants
Maybe it’s the addicts, and the hippies and communists
Maybe it’s a fashion, maybe it’s a trend
Maybe it’s the future… maybe it’s the end”

Chris Gaines, “Right Now” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

OH MY GOD, DUDE. STOP.

What’s the point of trying to say to love one another if you’re gonna spend the entire song pointing the finger at everyone and trying to figure out why the world is fucked?? That’s not very “love one another” Chris!

I’m gonna be honest, I loathe that the great hook is overshadowed by this weird-ass speak-rap that he’s doing on this song. It wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if people heard this and were immediately turned the fuck off by “Chris Gaines” and thought Garth lost his goddamn mind. I read a couple reviews that suggested this was Garth trying to take the piss out of all those super serious “artists” who had to constantly write something with a “message” and that this is all satire. I wouldn’t go that far but it’s still a strange choice of a song.

The weirdest parts of this story have yet to come though despite the weirdest part of the album being that.

I wanted to clock the fuck out after that but this is an album review so we have to keep on truckin’ I suppose.

Please tell me something good comes after this.

Well, after that it’s “Main Street.” It’s a song about leaving your small town and experiencing what’s out there. I wouldn’t be surprised if a pop punk band got their hands on this and gave it a spin, it’s kinda got that energy even though this song has Matchbox 20-Lite/”adult alternative” energy to it. This is also kinda more in line with something Garth probably would’ve done on his own honestly, there’s still that subtle country twang to it that comes out just so.

Alright, that’s a way to recover from the trainwreck of “Right Now” at least.

“White Flag” follows this. It’s another love song, but more specifically it’s comparing love to a battlefield and how he’s “sending up a white flag.” Huh, if only there was a song about almost that exact thing. I like the little funky vibes it gives off though, and Gaines certainly isn’t phoning it in on the vocal delivery here, he goes full-throat on a few parts and it really sells the song.

Up next is “Digging for Gold” and it’s exactly about what you think it’s about.

“They married on a fancy yacht out on the water
He knew she was young enough to be his daughter
There’re always questions in the heart of millionaires
Would she make heartfelt promises if the money was not there”

Chris Gaines, “Digging for Gold” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Uhhhhhhh

“And he said, do you love me, baby, do you want me to hold
Or are you just digging for gold
Do you care enough to give me your heart and soul
Or are you just digging for gold”

Chris Gaines, “Digging for Gold” (Greatest Hits, 1999)

Yeah, exactly. Hey Kanye, don’t watch the anime if you haven’t read the manga, am I right?

Musically this actually reminds me more than a little of Sting and The Police, and I kinda like it because of that. The drums kinda have that Stuart Copeland feel to them, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Sting give it a go and do his own version of the song at some point. The guitar actually rocks on this, and the switch up in tempo and vibe from verse to chorus is pretty neat too. Alright, this is the “rocker Chris Gaines” I was waiting for. Hello there!

Are we almost done with this album?

Well, “Maybe.” That’s the name of the second-to-last track at least. It’s a cross between a ballad and one of those adult alternative songs you’d eventually hear on the radio a few years later. It’s an alright track, but it’s nothing too particularly fascinating. The lyrics are another “I love you but you’re bringing me down” type of song. It gets very Beatles-inspired near the end, but in a good way. The way the orchestra and guitars mesh together in particular is nice.

We’re finally at the end, this last song is called “My Love Tells Me So” and, as should be noted, is not actually sung by Chris Gaines. It’s sung by the song’s real-world songwriter Gordon Kennedy taking on the role of Tommy, the singer Crush, the band Gaines was in before his solo career took off due to the young, tragic premature death of Tommy. He claims this is just the “demo version” but that the label liked it so much they wanted to use it as it was on the Crush album. As such, this song is dedicated to Tommy and in honor of his memory. It should be noted that in-universe this song was recorded and released in 1986, which stands out because it’s a verrrrry Beatleseque song which feels more in line with 1966 than 1986, and admittedly the resemblance to a typical Fab Four song is kinda creepy. I like the way the bass moves on this song in particular, it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

But that’s how we end the record, on a positive upbeat note, pretty polar opposite to most of the album before it.

Okay, so it wasn’t a particularly great record but it sure as shit was far from the disaster I was anticipating it to be after years of hearing about this album like it was some urban myth or something. Honestly I think my major complaint about this record is that it’s far from “rocking,” but for what is basically an adult alternative album it’s alright. It does get under my skin just a little to hear about the Gaines character being written as a rocker and then most of the album straight-up doesn’t rock like that at all. That’s just a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things though, so whatever. Also if I’m being honest here it’s weird that the record covers the “in-universe” era of 1989-1999 and yet it all sounds like late 90s adult alternative and lite-funk. I guess I should’ve expected less here? Also it’s a bit of a long album but at 56ish minutes it felt like an eternity of listening and even after a few listens that feeling doesn’t go away.

The album gets released on September 28th, 1999 and if my research and timeline is correct then the very next day on NBC there’s a special that airs where Garth plays some songs off the Chris Gaines record and talks about the project in between songs, including some background on the character of Gaines. I think it’s actually a pretty neat special and Gaines really brings his A-game with the live performances of the songs he sings, including how he gets so into it on the opening of “Snow In July.” The performance of the batshit-crazy “Right Now” that closes it all off is pretty great, too, honestly. In truth, maybe he would’ve been an alright actor considering Garth really tries his hardest to sell these songs on stage as his own in spite of not writing a single damn piece of music or lyrics on this thing. As a reminder; he wrote nothing here and all the songs were handled by someone else in a stable of songwriters.

One small thing, though. On this TV special Garth Brooks did these songs as himself, not as the Chris Gaines character. Sure, he doesn’t wear his signature cowboy hat for these and in between songs he mentions how this is “going to be a little different,” he gets that “not everyone will want to come along for the ride,” and is overall a pretty cool sport about all of it but I personally believe that it would make more sense to do the songs in-character as Chris Gaines if he really wanted to promote the character and get audiences more well-acquainted with him like he said he wanted to, though he says “you’re gonna see a lot of Garth Brooks in Chis Gaines.”

…we get that wish eventually for a portrayal. Sit tight though, this is a long story.

After the album release and the NBC special, the reviews are in. CNN says “it takes a certain amount of courage for a star so firmly niched in one idiom to risk, if not fortune, at least the nature of his well-established fame in a venture of this kind” in what is otherwise a generally mixed review that amounts to “it’s alright in parts but I don’t know about all of this.” Allmusic gave it 3 stars out of five, The A.V. Club gave it a mixed review, famed critic Robert Christgau gave it a “dud” rating and never elaborates why, and it even got some favorable reviews whose articles are unfortunately long gone. I think the only ones who really ripped into it were Rolling Stone, and even then it’s just “eh, it’s weird, but he tried something different.”

The critical consensus is very middle-of-the-road, but the listening public in general just asked, “what even is this? and who is this even for??” It’s a fair question and it doesn’t help that on this album there were some conflicts with getting it on the radio; as I previously stated, country stations wouldn’t play the songs because they weren’t really country, and pop/rock stations wouldn’t play it because it was Garth Brooks. Honestly I think people would’ve let this whole weird public display slide if the music was up to par and honestly not a lot of it really is. It’s a weird concept for a generally “meh” album and people were turned the fuck off by it.

Audiences were generally confused by Garth Brooks at this point but he had a few more promotional tricks up his sleeve to try and drum up more awareness for Gaines; the first of which being a November 1999 appearance on SNL (featuring this wonderfully chaotic clip) where Garth Brooks hosts the episode as himself but then later on he finally dons on the wig and does what would be his only public appearance as Chris Gaines where he performs “Way of the Girl.” It’s a particularly weird and surreal moment but it’s also kinda funny as hell. You may remember the episode for this skit but there’s also one lesser-known skit where Tracy Morgan starts ripping into Chris Gaines right to Garth’s face and the whole time Garth is mortified by some of the comments Tracy is making that kinda adds to the “Garth is Chris” of it all. Some of it hasn’t particularly aged well in regards to Tracy’s homophobic punchlines, though, so view at your own risk.

The other promotional item he did was a VH1 special similar to Behind The Music which was released near the end of November 1999, and… I’m going to be honest, this has got to be some of the funniest shit I have ever seen. It tries so hard to portray the tragic backstory of Chris Gaines through a VH1 light (and to be fair, this is a story that, again, includes dead bandmates, romantic strifes with managers, label issues, a dad passing of cancer, a deadly car crash that almost killed Gaines, facial-reconstruction surgery, sex addiction, and a case or two of arson,) but the Chris Gaines character is so hard to take seriously because they throw almost every single goddamn rock and roll cliche you can think of in there. This is like if Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was an entirely serious movie and wasn’t trying to take the piss out of the biopic genre. I found myself laughing the entire way through this special, and if you want to join me in laughing all over again, please be my guest. Also WHY is Billy Joel in this?? Brooks may want this buried but this shit should be on display in a museum.

After this, well, there is no more Chris Gaines to speak about. The audience reception to the character coupled with the album only going 2-times-platinum in America (which was bad compared to the diamond-selling certifications Garth was earning the entire decade before) killed any further development of The Lamb and therefore killed any reason to keep pushing Chris Gaines onto the public despite the alleged commitment to record the soundtrack to The Lamb as well as “one more Gaines album.” The whole Chris Gaines saga is something that Garth would have liked to bury in the past if it wasn’t for the recent promise that Greatest Hits was eventually going to be “released on all formats” as well as streaming alongside “new music.” Maybe Garth is finally embracing that side of himself again.

The aftermath of this was, say it with me now, disastrous for Brooks and his career. If you go on Wikipedia and look at where each of his singles had charted before this album was released, you find a lot of “1s,” “2s,” and “3s.” Afterward he wouldn’t sniff the top of the country charts save for a lone song from his follow-up album which did in fact hit #1. He would put out a Christmas album shortly after the Gaines record was released, probably because of the lack of Brooks-like sales numbers from the album, and would only release one album a few years later before taking an extended hiatus where he wouldn’t release another album of all-new material until 2014. I’m not going to say that the Gaines backlash caused him to go into an early retirement but he also never fully recovered from the disastrous consequences of it all and there’s a very clear line of demarcation in his career that this album caused.

Personally, I suspect that his career may have gone differently if he had fully committed to publicly treating the Gaines character as a separate entity from the bigger-than-life persona of Garth Brooks. He only ever did one performance in-character and the rest of the time he was promoting the album as himself with his name attached to it, and that couldn’t have done any favors for the record-buying public who kept wondering what this was all even supposed to amount to. It wasn’t just “Chris Gaines” as it should’ve been, it was always “Garth Brooks is Chris Gaines” and he never quite stuck the landing with it.

Through all of this though, I fully believe it’s important to give Garth his flowers and applaud him for this bold break from what made him Garth Brooks even if he fell flat on his face, because he still managed to unintentionally pave the way for others to do similar things. It may be easy to forget but you may notice that Taylor Swift went off in a pop direction herself after however long of being a country goddess/”it-girl” which paid off for her in the most beneficial way possible, and she did it all-the-while publicly continuing to stay true to herself. Even now there’s plenty of folks out there who have so many kind things to say about the Chris Gaines album and wish Brooks would still make The Lamb. There’s all that backstory to dig into plus the extra 2+ decades of time since that album came out. All I’m saying is there’s still time, Garth. Embrace the campiness of Chris Gaines once more.

And hey, who knows, maybe it would’ve been nice if we got to live in the alternate universe where Garth Brooks put out an album under an alter-ego pseudonym and eventually got to live out his dreams of movie stardom while continuing to occasionally make new Brooks and Gaines music. Unfortunately we live in the here and now, and what we have is the hope that Brooks will make good on his promise and unleash this puzzling piece of musical history onto the world at large once again. I hope it comes sooner than later so I can get lost in it right now.

This is Harvey VD reminds you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers! Peace.

THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US: “Hefty Fine” by Bloodhound Gang

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…………………you know, before we dig into this one I think I might need to clarify something; that photo is not a joke.

That is the actual cover for the actual album.

I feel like if I really wanted to get into why this album “ruined” Bloodhound Gang I could just point to this album cover and ask, “any questions?” and we would all say “nope, point taken.”

But it is my job as a critic to give the albums I review an honest assessment, so here we are.

The Bloodhound Gang.
When you talk about Bloodhound Gang, peoples’ minds typically go to one song, and one song only: “The Bad Touch.” The song as well as the video both perfectly encapsulate the 90s in one short 4-minute time frame; a video featuring the band in literal monkey costumes causing mischief and mayhem around Paris, France while being soundtracked by a Euro dance-pop song that gave us the iconic chorus of…

“you and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”

Bloodhound Gang, “The Bad Touch” (1999)

That line still gets people of a certain age group going in 2022, 23 years after its release. It was even referenced in “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem less than a year later at a time when Eminem was probably near his absolute peak as an artist. For all intents and purposes that song is their legacy which would lead many to write them off as a one-hit wonder (which ignores that their song “Fire Water Burn” was also a hit on the alternative music charts, but I digress).

It’s hard to imagine it now considering this pseudo-one-hit-wonder status but Bloodhound Gang were big in the 90s and early 00s, and by big I mean biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig. They played big festivals, their second album One Fierce Beer Coaster went gold in the US and their third album Hooray for Boobies went gold AND platinum in multiple countries, you google Chasey Lain (…for all intents and purposes I’d look that up in an incognito tab) and the main results are not about the pornstar herself, but for their song “The Ballad of Chasey Lain”. That is absolutely insane. I guess to put it in a modern-day perspective it would be like if The 1975 wrote a song about Ivy LeBelle and it got so big that it turned her into just a reference point for that song. The internet is for porn and that shit doesn’t just happen, but it did for Bloodhound Gang.

So for all of that and for their legacy to have been reduced to one song I couldn’t help but wonder “what the fuck happened here?” The answer might be real easy depending on how you’re looking at it; they were a doofy joke band with lyrics that absolutely would not fly if they came out now and both time and the general listening community have just moved on from them. There. Plain and simple. Now I don’t need to keep writing about this.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers! Peace.

…hold on, that can’t be right. Their greatest hits album, appropriately titled Show Us Your Hits chronicles the band and it shows that their history more or less ends in 2007 alongside a song they released on that comp which came out in 2010. Hooray for Boobies came out in 1999, there isn’t just 11 years of music and history missing from the group, what happened?

Well if Hooray for Boobies came out in 1999 and they had a pretty decent legacy at that point, and Show Us Your Hits came out in 2010, so really there’s only one assumption that could be made; the answer can be found in 2005’s Hefty Fine, their follow-up to Hooray. Right?

I went investigating further.

…actually before we get too deep into this I just need to say something up front; I think one thing that definitely didn’t help Bloodhound Gang was the length of the wait for Hefty Fine. Six years. Five if you’re counting when Hooray got a wider rerelease And this wasn’t in the era of streaming and unlimited content to tide us over, this was in the very early days of the internet and at a time when 6 years felt like 6 centuries. The shift in culture and humor certainly didn’t help as well, especially when one realizes that an entire new century came, a national tragedy happened in America and it reflected in how we consumed entertainment as made evident in how by some measures Freddy Got Fingered is the last real piece of pre-9/11 humor, and that thing is an experience from start to finish.

A lot has happened in the band as well, most notably that their drummer Spanky G who had been with them on Beer Coaster and Hooray left the band shortly after recording Hooray (but still appears on the album cover) under what has generally been considered mysterious circumstances (with many assuming it was the bullying he endured by some of the band members, primarily their bassist Evil Jared Hasslehoff, as evidenced in their DVD One Fierce Beer Run) and has now been replaced by the appropriately-titled Willie The New Guy, who appears in some of the music videos from the Hooray album. Aside from that the band has still remained with the main core of lead vocalist Jimmy Pop, guitarist Lupus Thunder, the aforementioned bassist Evil Jared, and turntable/backing vocal/hype guy DJ Q Ball. It’s not the first time that the band has had a lineup overhaul or a changing of members, but Spanky G’s drumming really gave off a certain vibe on the two albums he was around for, so what Willie would bring to the table with the group was still uncertain.

So after 5 years and a lineup change the wait is over, and Bloodhound Gang have a new album coming out called Hefty Fine, but before the album comes out we’re treated to the leadoff single from the record, called “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.”

Alright, five years in the making now, let’s see what Jimmy and the boys have come up with.

Huh. Well, that’s… something I guess.

Something feels off about the lyrics though.

Vulcanize the whoopee stick
In the ham wallet

Cattle prod the oyster ditch
With the lap rocket

Batter-dip the cranny axe
In the gut locker

Retro-fit the pudding hatch, ooh la la
With the boink swatter

Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)

Hmmmm….

FOXTROT!
UNIFORM!
CHARLIE!
KILO!

Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)

wait…

Foxtrot
Uniform
Charlie
Kilo

Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)

…oh those boys.
If it’s not obvious, the song is pretty much this. Two verses of sexual innuendo, two choruses of doing the NATO alphabet spelling for “fuck,” and then this wonderful outro where they say…

put the you-know-what in the you-know where

Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)

…but that’s not surprising by any stretch of the imagination. Lyrically this has almost always been their jam so it’s not much of a surprise but it does feel kinda low-effort. It might come off as laughable to a lot of folks who may consider themselves listeners of a more sophisticated taste but deep down there’s always been a lot of good lines in Bloodhound Gang songs that would actually come off deep and profound when taken out of context. Even a lot of those out of context lines are pretty clever and interesting, but that’s just my two cents. Here they basically give you a bunch of innuendo for the exact same thing and then wrap it up with the title of the track. There’s no substance here is what I’m getting at. I do find something funny though about doing verses of innuendo before the choruses say “I don’t want to beat around the bush.” Ironic, eh?

Musically there isn’t much going on here, either. “Foxtrot…” is a fairly straight-forward pop-punk jam with beefy chords, a singalong chorus, synths to add a little bit to the sound and a neat little riff to go with it all as well. I will say that it’s nice to have the first single off this album be a song with the full band playing on it unlike most of the singles off Hooray which mostly highlighted the “Jimmy Pop Show” factor of the group and in turn sort of erased the other personalities of the band and what made them all so great in their own regards.

So “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” gets a thumbs-up from me, it’s not awful but I guess I could’ve expected a little bit more. I wouldn’t skip it if it came on a playlist of Bloodhound Gang songs.

Alright, that came out in August of 2005, the full album arrives a month later. After years of waiting between Bloodhound Gang albums you finally open the CD, pop it in the tray, and the first thing you hear is this…

…a fucking skit.

You know what, it’s an 8-second skit, let’s share it here for those of you who don’t click the links.

Jimmy Pop: “Eminem’s gotta cuss in his raps to sell records, well me too! So fuck Will Smith!“

DJ Q-Ball: “That don’t rhyme”

Jim: “Drats! …haha”

Bloodhound Gang, “Strictly For the Tardcore (Skit)”

…you know, that line is way more relevant than I could’ve ever imagined it being in the current year, except for the fact that the song being referenced here was already five years old by the time this album came out. Incidentally the song in question is also the one where Eminem referenced Bloodhound Gang, so maybe it’s a “thank you” of sorts?

But that’s still not exactly a thrilling opening note for a record. To be fair neither is the follow-up track and the first actual song on the album, “Balls Out.”

You know, for 2005 this song is severely out-of-date with that crunk rock opening and the nu-metal influences that are all over it. I don’t want to say crunk was never popular because that’s Lil Jon erasure and we don’t do that around these parts, but this song is trying way too hard to keep up with the heavyweights of a genre that was way out of vogue by then. Hell even with the second wave of “angry white boy metal” bands that came up around the time Limp Bizkit more or less killed the first wave of nu-metal single-handed when they released their 2004 album (and probable future feature on this blog) Results May Vary, why the band chose to go this route for a song is beyond me.

Lyrically the song is supposed to feel braggadocious, and it does, but it falls flat in the execution. Even Jimmy Pop’s screaming on the chorus feels like he’s phoning it in and that’s not something you wanna do on a song like this. What’s more, a lot of folks have actually called this Bloodhound Gang’s worst song ever, and I’d be somewhat inclined to agree which says a lot considering I could never really get through Use Your Fingers and they’ve done way worse metal pastiches like “Yummy Down On This.” (Yes, I will personally die on that hill if I have to.)

That was a painful stretch to get through, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” comes after that and we know how that song sounds already since we heard it before right? Right? Great.

Up next we get to my personal favorite off the album, “I’m The Least You Can Do.” You know what works about this song and why it’s so interesting to me and me personally? It has dynamics. It has parts. Identifiable moving parts. Not just “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, everything chugs along at the same speed” parts, like actual identifiable things go on for the entirety of the song. The piano riff absolutely rips, the way the real drums interact with the drum machines works way better than it should, the guitars aren’t severely out-of-place on here, and the synth choices here are A+. Lyrically it deals with Jimmy Pop being a bit more desperate than usual as the title of the song is uttered in the chorus.

I’m the least you can do
If only life were as easy as you
I would still get screwed

Bloodhound Gang, “I’m The Least You Could Do” (2005)

The other joke here is that the girl in question is really dumb. Really that’s the only joke in the song, and even then it’s not that much of a funny one. I should clarify that I’m not one of those people who would clutch their pearls if they heard Bloodhound Gang lyrics for the first time, but if this was my first impression of the band I really would’ve given myself a headache with how often I roll my eyes back. With that said this is still a noticeable improvement over “Balls Out” and is one of the better songs on this album by a couple country miles but that’s still not exactly a high bar to clear.

After this we get a short little song called “Farting With A Walkman On.” It follows the Moby trick of repeating something over and over again but each repeat adds a new element to the table. The comparison to Moby here is probably spot-on depending on who you talk to but ironic considering the name of the album was supposed to be Heavy Flow before they found out that was the name of a Moby song (various members have expressed disliking Moby in the past) so they switched up the title to avoid any association with him. Unfortunately the lyrics are the same verse repeated a couple times, which is great when you’ve got a strong verse or at least a couple funny lines to work with but some of this stuff is not great.

I know you’re gonna play me
when you get wind
I heard you’re full of shit, so
I’ve been duped again
but if you cover your ass
with the same old song
you might as well be farting
farting with a walkman on

Bloodhound Gang, “Farting With A Walkman On” (2005)

I guess the second half of that verse is alright but it’s not that strong of a punchline to lean on and repeat three times before going into a guitar solo. There’s an idea here but it feels like an incomplete idea.

The next track is another skit called “Diarrhea Runs In The Family” and consists of one of the band members going to the bathroom for about 30 seconds. I’m not linking it. If you wanna hear someone pass a bowel movement, that’s all on you, my dear reader. Some even say that’s the album in a nutshell.

We’re about halfway through this record and all I can really think is that this album so far honestly sounds way too fucking depressing to be a Bloodhound Gang album. What the fuck is going on here? How does a band go from bangers like “Mope” to funeral dirges like “Farting With A Walkman On?”

Well, in the six years between Hooray and Hefty a lot has happened in the band’s career that doesn’t even dive into possible label-artist politics that might have possibly delayed the release (this album was recorded between 2001 and 2004 but wasn’t released until a whole year later, why’s that?)

Jimmy Pop, as well as the band as a whole, has not only crossed over into his 30s but has allegedly gotten to a stage in his career where drug addiction has gotten the best of him. Jimmy in particular has started battling depression and the medicine he’s on for it has started to make him feel fatigued, which explains why he sounds so depressed on these songs and why he’s phoning it in on them as well; he’s not phoning it in, he’s just tired. As someone who also fights with his own depression and the effects of it I absolutely feel for him in a way I didn’t expect to. It also explains why this album has been described by some as his “angry” record, because once you read into the lyrics of a lot of these songs, there’s a lot of venom and malice directed at unspecified people and it’s so unlike the band as a whole. (Usually their malice is directed at various groups in a punching-down moment or two or way too many I don’t want to get into here). On Hefty Fine Jimmy Pop just sounds bitter at life.

So we’re halfway through this album, where do we go from here?

Well… have you guys ever heard of this wacky television series called The Simpsons?

Make no beef about it, The Simpsons are a pillar of American pop culture and a show that Bloodhound Gang have a soft spot for. They’ve put Simpsons references in their songs before, they even have a song at the end of One Fierce Beer Coaster where Jimmy Pop does his best impression of Homer Simpson, and of course there’s the “holy macaroni” line at the end of “Mope” that closes out the clusterfuck of a song. Surely there’s gonna be more Simpsons shenanigans on this record at some point, right?

Enter “Ralph Wiggum.”

The second half of Hefty Fine kicks off with yet another pop-punk romp all about everyone’s favorite comic relief and one-liner machine, the titular character of this song. The pop-punk stuff is alright so far, I guess, but the lyrics are where this band has always shined brightest. Surely Jimmy Pop will give us some lyrical gold here, right?

…well…

I’m going to Africa

Yes ma’am

I’m a brick

Was president Lincoln okay?

Mittens

There’s a dog in the vent

Chicken necks?

I pick Ken Griffey Jr.

I fell out 2 times

I’m pedaling backwards

This snowflake tastes like fish sticks

We’re a totem pole

Dying tickles

I hear a frankenstein lives there

She’s touching my special area

Go banana!

Bloodhound Gang, “Ralph Wiggum” (2005)

…Jimmy Pop didn’t write any lyrics for this. He just searched through piles and piles of Simpsons scripts, grabbed his favorite lines, and arranged them accordingly.

You know, for all my bitching about some of the lyrical choices he’s made on this album so far, I’d still say that some of the best parts of Bloodhound Gang are the lyrics through and through. I still quote the chorus to “Take The Long Way Home” a lot and even considered getting a tattoo of it once because it’s a straight-up great line. I’ve combed over some of this stuff off Hooray For Boobies for hours on end before just to fully grasp everything being spoken about because yeah, sure, you’ll get a song where the hook rips off Pink Floyd, but then the deeper dig shows a fantastic amount of wordplay going on. One Fierce Beer Coaster has more than its fair share of great lyrics as well, and there’s even songs further down this album that have great lyrics (so no it’s not all bad here). But to have the lyrics all revolve around one-liners that have been taking out of context is just a poor choice all around. The crazy part about this to me is that I’m in the minority with this opinion; a lot of fans of the group even now still say “Ralph Wiggum” is the highlight of the album for them. Different strokes for different folks though, right?

Up next we get “Something Diabolical,” one of the few “serious” songs Bloodhound Gang ever did. This one features that style of baton-passing on the mic between Jimmy Pop and DJ Q-Ball that has made for some of Bloodhound Gang’s best material in the past, it can’t fail here, right? Well, it can’t but also it can. I’ll come out and say that I like the idea the song is trying to present here, and I like the feature from Ville Valo of the band H.I.M. (who released some things on Pop’s vanity label at one point) on the chorus, but ultimately this song feels both unfinished and way too long at the same time. It’s the longest song on the record, clocking in at a little over 5 minutes and it gives us barely anything outside of “heh, satan, am I right guys?” and a vaguely moody backing track. Even in trying to bring in a guest vocalist to bring something to the track, Valo just feels shoehorned in here. This isn’t Bloodhound Gang material point-blank.

Another skit follows this. It’s stupid. We’re not talking about it.

After the dumb skit is a song named after their home state of “Pennsylvania,” and even though it was never released as an official single to promote the album a little bit of extra research shows that they started a campaign to make the track the official song of the Keystone State. See? That’s nice, it’s always cool to see bands do songs about their home state and bring a little bit of that hometown pride out, right?

Uhhhh… how do I put this?
Read this for yourself.

We are “Cop Rock”
We are Screech
We are Z. Cavaricci
We are laser-removed
Tasmanian Devil tattoos
We are third string we are puck
We are special people’s club
We are the half shirts with
Irreverent spring break top ten lists

Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)

…ohhhhh god.

We are munsoned we are squat
We are flashing twelve o’clock
We are spread out butt cheeks
Pulled apart so just the air leaks
We are “ishtar” we are tab
We are no right turn on red
We are the moustaches
The Beatles grew when they dropped acid

Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)

…what the fuck is going on here?

So they don’t really like their state so they made a song comparing it to all of the worst things in the world. I’ll admit, this is pretty clever and genuinely one of the only times where the pop-punk thing they do actually works. I also really like the chorus because it still reeks of that “Jimmy Pop is depressed” thing but it feels fun. The song overall feels fun. This is what I expected when I pressed “play” on this album, not the stuff that came before this. This is top-tier Bloodhound stuff.

The funniest part, and truly one of the most Pennsylvanian lines, comes at the end, too, by which point I’m audibly laughing way harder than I’d like to admit.

Girl do you even know what a Wawa is?
Do you even know what a Wawa is?
Girl do you even know what a Wawa is?
Do you even know what a Wawa is?
I’m in a state of P-fuckin’-A.

Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)

I mean c’mon, anybody who’s talked to anybody from PA knows that at some point Wawa always factors into a conversation, it’s just the facts of life. The drummer in one of my previous bands is from PA and he’s brought it up multiple times (mostly in regards to saying it’s better than Sheetz) and it feels like the specific reference that was needed to drive home the regional flavor of this song. A-fucking-plus, Jimmy.

After that we get the second official single off the album, “Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss.” It’s got that danceable backing beat on the drum machine, a noodly guitar loop, sexual innuendos out the ass and plenty of synths to work with. I kinda like this fine enough, but it’s got one glaring problem with it; this song is trying way too hard to be “The Bad Touch 2.0.” Catching lightning in a bottle once is rare, twice is damn near impossible and they’re trying so hard to tempt fate here. Even the title is made to sound like the noises one makes when they try replicating that europop dance beat like the one prominently featured in “The Bad Touch.” That song was already kinda stale in 2005 on its own because that sort of music was no longer en-vogue like it was back in the free-for-all era of the 90s, so the fact the band revisited that sound on a new song was just a bad idea. They’d do another rehash of the formula on the 2007 song “Screwing You on the Beach At Night” that feels infinitely funnier on just the song along before you get into the music video. Also important to note this was released as the second single a couple of months after the album’s release when it was more-or-less already dead in the water, and likewise this single did nothing on the charts in America despite managing to chart in other countries that were more open to their shenanigans.

The final track on the album is the third and final single off this album entitled “No Hard Feelings.” The song didn’t chart anywhere and didn’t even get a music video which doesn’t help the single much either. In my opinion it’s one of their best songs, bar-none. When I mentioned that this was Jimmy Pop’s “angry” album, it especially comes through on this song. Lyrically it’s a breakup song that takes the attitude of “well fuck you, too.” There’s a lot of gems in this song too such as…

Maybe you got screwed, but I dumped you
Cause you ain’t nothin’ but trash
I put out despite the, fact that you’re like a
Hawaiian Punch mustache
Right under my nose

Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)

If I want to be repeatedly shit on
I’ll go make Dutch porn

Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)

Maybe it ain’t your birthday
But then again ya know I wouldn’t give a fuck
When what I shoulda got is over ya sooner so now
I’m just gonna wrap it up

Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)

but not every line on here is a winner.

I’m missing you like a hijacked flight on September 11th
I don’t know who got on you but I’m not wrong in thanking them

Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)

WHOA WHOA WHOA HOLD THE FUCK UP HERE.

Look, I like edgy humor as much as the next guy but I don’t personally like 9/11 jokes, especially since it’s a very real thing that happened where a lot of people died and it was used as propaganda for a boondoggle in the middle-east, and I DON’T LIKE THEM IN 2005, 4 YEARS AFTER THEY FUCKING HAPPENED.

Okay, that’s one really bad line. I’ll live. I’ll cringe but I’ll live.

Aside from that one line I really like this one. It’s kinda got this interesting little backbeat going for it and it’s got a nice blend of electronica and grunge influences. The guitars absolutely rip on this thing as well, and when they come back in on the bridge the entire mood changes with it. The song also ends on a beautiful guitar solo that perfectly closes the album off, too.

That’s the album proper unless you listen to the last skit that closes it out. Yes, another skit.

I think really that’s my big gripe with this album; there’s 13 tracks on this thing, 4 of which are skits. Skits on albums are rarely if ever funny, and really the only welcome part of it is that opening skit as a nod to the Eminem reference. So there’s 9 actual songs on the album. Out of those 9 songs, there’s maybe 5 that I personally like (“Balls Out,” which in spite of all my bitching I kinda have a soft spot for, “Foxtrot…” “I’m The Least You Can Do,” “Pennsylvania,” “No Hard Feelings.”) Take away the skits, the songs that sound unfinished, and the overall bad songs, and you’ve got a 5-track EP. Basically people waited 6 years for an EP. If I’m a Bloodhound fan during that time, I’d think that’s insulting.

I feel like at some point in these articles I always say “the fallout from this was bad” but this one is flag-raising in just how bad the fallout from it really was. It only peaked 10 positions lower than Hooray for Boobies did on the charts, but unlike Hooray, Hefty Fine didn’t certify anything in America, and only got certified gold in Austria and Germany. It peaked at 24 which isn’t bad but it fell out of the charts almost as quickly as it came up, and didn’t feature any singles that charted in America. That’s bad compared to the success of Hooray and its singles.

One of the things the band said in previous interviews was that it was nice that their label Geffen Records didn’t want an immediate follow-up to an album that was, by all accounts, an absolutely smashing success, but the downside of that was just how much the cultural zeitgeist changed in the years between albums. In various interviews the band also more or less admitted that they knew the album was shit and that was probably what did them in with their fans who waited 5 years for 9 songs, but at least they can admit that no matter how sarcastic they tried to make those comments come off. A select group of reviews from RateYourMusic all gave the album pretty bad reviews so there’s a bunch of vocal fans who didn’t like it. Hindsight has given the album a bit more charm to the group’s fans and a lot of them have also said they actually really like the album a lot and that it was never gonna be a particularly loved album regardless of how good it was gonna be. Fair play to them.

The real issue was always going to be with critics though.

The band have always said they didn’t care about good reviews because “the only bands that get good reviews are bands like Dave Matthews Band” so that was never gonna be their bag, and critics were never big Bloodhound fans in the first place either. Even their best work got reviews that could be summed up as “eh, it’s okay, I guess” but things were about to get bad.

Critically, Hefty Fine absolutely booooooooombed.
Allmusic gave it a 2.5/5, Billboard gave it a negative review, PopMatters gave it a 2/10, HotPress gave it a 0/5, IGN gave it a 3/10, and all these reviews give the exact same general consensus; “the joke isn’t funny anymore, and fart jokes have never been funny so why did they do these?” That’s just sharing some of the kinder reviews. All of this also helped contribute to giving it the hefty honor of making it the second-worst reviewed album of all-time on Metacritic with a lowly metascore of 28, only 7 points off from the poorly-reviewed Playing With Fire by Kevin Federline and 8 points worse than Results May Very by Limp Bizkit. That’s absolutely insane. That is absolutely fucking insane.

I find it kind of insulting that the album got this much critical bitchslapping and yet history hasn’t even relegated it to any of those “worst music of all time” albums, it doesn’t have an infamous following the way something like Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs might, it doesn’t come up on any Wikipedia articles about “music considered the worst” like how the Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack does and really this album is an artifact that the world has done its best to leave in 2005. For a band who had a hit song about fucking, that was explicitly about fucking, to have their follow-up album get forgotten like that is absolutely nuts.

What happened to the group after the release of the album, I can’t quite tell you. What I can share is that guitarist Lupus Thunder and drummer Willie The New Guy both left the band in 2007 and 2006 respectively and were both replaced by members of a band called A. The group spent the better part of 10 years trying to, and unsuccessfully work on a new album until the long-awaited follow-up Hard Off came out in 2015, and the general consensus there was that it wasn’t a good record either, even by the standards of many Bloodhound fans. I sometimes wonder how much the negative press of Hefty Fine factored into the longer wait between albums. The band kinda fizzled out after the released of Hard-Off and though Jimmy Pop has popped up as a guest artist here and there in various songs he’s more-or-less stuck by the admission that he’s retired, though bassist Evil Jared Hasselhoff has said he’d still consider himself a member of the band.

Personally, I don’t like to whine about “cancel culture” because it’s not the big old boogeyman that many want to make it out to be, and the general conversation about how “[thing] can’t happen now because everyone’s a bunch of snowflakes” or whatever is dumb because there’s always this implication of “I don’t like that I can’t punch-down without getting called-out anymore” but genuinely Bloodhound Gang is, both musically and lyrically, simply a product of a point in time, plain and simple. They also say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ll absolutely judge this album by its cover.

On an unrelated note, these days it’s actually pretty fun to follow Lupus Thunder on Instagram in particular because he’s always sharing nice historical photos of the group back when he was a member. They all seem pretty content and happy with what they’ve all done, and sometimes having the guys on social media share the memories themselves is just as good as the concept of a Bloodhound reunion tour.

Who knows though? Maybe one day Jimmy Pop will come out of “retirement,” reunite with Lupus and Willie, grab the others, and do one last tour for the sake of doing it all over again one more time. If they don’t they’ll still have a heck of a legacy and two albums that will probably continue to have their share of vocal critics but whose sounds are as great now as they were then. They wouldn’t want it any other way.


This is Harvey VD reminding you to get your balls out, and kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers! Peace.