special introductory
paragraph!
The Frogs
It's Only Right And Natural
Racially Yours
My Daughter The Broad
Starjob EP
Bananimals
Hopscotch Lollipop Sunday Surprise
Death Songs
Made-Up Cassette (A)
Made-Up Cassette (B)
Made-Up Cassette (C)
Made-Up Cassette (D)
Made-Up Songs #1,6
Made-Up Songs #6,8
Made-Up Songs #2,3,4
Made-Up Songs #5,7,9
Made-Up Songs #10,11,12
Made-Up Songs #13,14,15
Racially Yours Live (12/14/91 CBGB NYC)
Milwaukee's The Frogs are one of the very few entertainment combinations I've found that are even more tasteless than me. Comprised chiefly of siblings Dennis and Jimmy Flemion, The Frogs have pulled such uplaughious pranks as pretending to be incestuous gay lovers, issuing an entire album of racist songs (both anti-black and anti-white), and building a gigantic back catalog of home-recorded and self-released CDs full of songs like "Free All The Niggers" and "The Benefits of AIDS." On the musical 'tip,' they rely a lot on an acoustically guitar and pinano, and their work is separated into three types: (a) serious-sounding songs, mostly written and sung by Jimmy, (B) funny songs sung in a fey 'British minstrel'-style manner by Jimmy, and (B) funny as SHIT character studies, gay jokes, cartoons, crude scenarios and collections of one-liners recited mostly by Dennis while Jimmy strums or pianos quiet little melodies in the background. The Frogs, Racially Yours, Starjob and Hopscotch Lollipop Sunday Surprise are of type (a), while It's Only Right And Natural, My Daughter The Broad, Bananimals and all of the Made-Up Songs collections represent types (b) and (c). At present, the Frogs are apparently seeking a record company to release a new album of 'spiritual songs.' Say, you're a record company; get off your eyes and sign the mufukin Frogs! What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?
If so, here:
You are hereby invited to sign The Frogs to a recording contract.
Actually I didn't want to carve up my computer screen proper, so I engraved the mirror image of an invitation into my arm and went squishy-squoo. Is that 'cool'? Are you 'down with that'? Am I 'bleeding to death'?
Originally self-released in 1988, the Frogs' first album sounds almost nothing like their others, but it's a melodic dream! Written and sung almost entirely by Jimmy, it kinda resembles a cross between the Violent Femmes, They Might Be Giants and Sparks. But don't vomit yet! I haven't even mentioned the warbly 'Tyrannosaurus Rex-era Marc Bolan' vocals!
Let's start over, but more positively. Because their sound on this album relies heavily on acoustic guitar and what sounds to me like acoustic bass, the overall feel is similar to the first Violent Femmes album (which I hate). However, because the Frogs also use lots of silly keyboard tones, the sound of early '80s Sparks also comes to mind. Finally, due to a heartwarming abundance of cute, childlike and playful melodies, They Might Be Giants is another contemporary with whom I might find comparison. Again, this is the *ONLY* Frogs album that sounds like this, so it's easy to enjoy as a one-shot even if you hate the three fey, faggotyass bands I just compared them to (though I actually quite like two of those queer-as-shit tongue-covered-in-another-guy's-ball-hair outfits).
The first half of the album is kind of hit-or-miss, with a few girly and/or uneventful half-melodies sneaking onto the disc between the good ones. The second half (however) is just hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after hit, for a total of nine hits. Jimmy's voice is double-tracked for increased power (on its own, it's a little thin - check out the painfully strained chorus of "C-R-Y"), the vocal melodies are full of memorable note combinations, and the musical moods range from cheerful and somber to angry and snuggly to dirty and ridiculous, incorporating frills like chiming bell tones, fake strings, bongos, fuzzy distortion and 'scary' electronic noises as required.
Though the song titles are a far cry (waaaaah!
GET IT?!?!? HA HA HA!!!! HA !!! FONT SIZE HUMOR!!!!!! WHEeEEeEeeEEEEEeeeEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!) from the laugh-loud-out jokes-in-themselves that they would soon become, a few of the lyrics already show the Frogs to be a bit off in the Funny Dept. For example, although I can imagine today's top performers (Tiffany, Huey Lewis And The News) writing a song called "Layin' Down My Love 4 You," I can't imagine them seeing the need to include the rhyme "We stood there naked in the grass/You had a fine ass." Other early examples of the Frogs' oddly smart quirkily funny ridiculousness to be found herein include:
- "She believed in ghosts, she didn't believe in Gods/But what hurt most was a great big lightning rod"
- "The last thing I saw was a priest/And now I'm dead but more than that, I'm deceased"
- "When you were young, your pony danced upon your face/So you hit the bottle at the very early age of eight"
- "You meant well, but you fucked over Jesus"
- "Hades High School/How I remember/Hades High School/In September/You're not having fun/But maybe this is my point"
- "Whether U like it or not I'm gonna hump you/Dry hump you tonight"
But these are just little snippets here and there. Most of the lyrics are surprisingly straightforward, especially considering how tacky they would become even by the next record. If you're into the Frogs for the comedy, don't pick this album. But again, the melodies are all over the pop place, with pop poppiness popping like popular populist popcorn popped from poppies and the pope!
Hi, I'm Tired McJohnson, comin' at ya in Mark Prindle form. A long time ago when my old band Low-Maintenance Perennials recorded our top-selling hit album Tamara's Little Sex Secret Cleverly Disguised As The Third Low-Maintenance Perennials Album, I for some reason thought it would be hilarious to include a 'fag' joke at the end of every single song. (examples: after "Boring Classical Ergh!," I can be heard lamenting, "I bet FAGS like classical music." Likewise, during one ridiculous bout of fake laughter in another song, you can hear the following exchange: Me: "Yeah, FAGS think that joke was funny!" Our Lead Singer: "Then why are we laughing? We're not FAGS!" Me: "We're laughing at the FAGS!") The way we did it, it was very obvious that we were joking: taking homophobia to such a ridiculous extreme that EVERYTHING reminded us of fags. Even the very WORD "fag" (and all derivatives: faggy, faggot, etc) became hilarious and meaningless after a while, never more so than when guest vocalist Andy Williams gruffly intoned, "Aww fags - all they ever do is eat fried chicken and watermelon and drive around in their cadillacs. None of 'em work; they're all drug dealers! Aw, to hell with 'em. Send 'em back to Africa where they came from -- Goddamned faggots!" There was just something about the idea of gay people that was just... I don't know... FUNNY! I mean, none of us had/have anything at all against gay people. So why the appeal as a project/object of humor?
Thus, The Frogs. The Frogs had us one-upped from the getgo, skipping right past our juvenile 'pretend homophobia' to a truly bewildering form of 'pretend homosexuality.' To the average unsuspecting listener, it must be nearly impossible to tell what their true intentions are on this record. Their voices are so aggressively pansy-ized and lyrics so grotesque and graphic ("Start by kissing my ass; I'll start by rubbing your balls") that one's first reaction is to ask, "Is this a legitimate 'stand up and shout it' gay pride thing with a humorous bent? Or just two assholes making fun of fags for half an hour?" The truth is most likely "neither." Judging from my own experience with 'fag jokes,' I'd guess that Dennis and Jimmy were simply amused by the idea of ridiculously over-the-top homosexual banter, and kept doing it to make each other laugh. Should gays be offended by this material? I don't think so, but then I'm not gay so I can't make that call.
The impetus for this release was a bunch of funny homemade tapes that the brothers had recorded solely for themselves and their friends, possibly under the influence of marijuana or harder drugs such as mushroom. Somehow Gerard Cosloy, head of Homestead Records, got hold of these private tapes and asked for permission to release an LP of gay-centric songs. The final result was 14 tracks and 31 minutes of gayer-than-gay hilarity (and as you'll see when you get to my reviews of the homemade material, it could have been MUCH, MUCH longer).
What makes the album so much fun (to me personally) is that, rather than trying to sound like actual gay men with a slight lisp or lilt in their speech patterns, the Frogs just sound like complete assholes -- specifically, a pair of hilarious and intelligent assholes who would be fun as hell to hang out with. It's the same feeling I get when I listen to early Ween or live Zip Code Rapists. Denny and Jimmis' obviously fake voices alternate between snide/hateful, campy/horny, happy/Vegasy, and serious/sensitive, but more than anything they sound like they just completely don't give a shit whether they're viewed as gay, straight, serious, mocking, jocular, homopobic or none of the above. I suppose that's what happens when you record at home with no intention of ever releasing your work!
Musically, the album definitely has that 'recorded at home' feel, with the acoustic strumming at times getting completely buried by over-volumed vocals in the other speaker. Still, the songs are surprisingly catchy, especially considering that they were most likely written while recording was in progress. They sound not a whit like the material on the first album, replacing that record's keyboard-enhanced childlike poppiness with melodic singer-songwritery acoustic guitarwork and raw live drumsmanship, along with the occasional electric guitar, violin, mandolin or tambourine augmentation.
Now for some sample lyrics, all of which sound much funnier coming out of the mouths of The Frogs than they appear on the printed page, but I want to give you a feel for their gay-focused work, much of which was likely made up on the spot:
"Here comes Big Fat George/Look at that butt/Look at him gorge away/All the boys play with his butt/Rammin' him up and down/This is a crazy faggy town we live in!"
"What will we do later on when the butter runs out?/You'll probably scream and shout,/'Here comes the watermelon seed up my snoot snout!'/(And that's your asshole, your snoot snout.)"
"Oh child, child, child don't cry/Child, child I'll tell you why/Rosy jack man is down your pants."
"I can almost - I can almost CUM IN YOUR MOUTH!!!"
"Oh I got too close to the stroller/And put my thing down his mouth/....Baby Greaser George took off with my left ball."
"My face didn't get too badly burned in the car crash/But my thighs were lacerated heavily/The doctor took care of that though/Thank God it wasn't a female nurse."
"Once there was a woman with a man/They held Eden between the fingers of their hands/Fuck that."
"Been a month since I had a man/Been a month since I had the sperm taken out of my pants/The laundry worked wonders/The laundry is best for these things."
Hey, it's me again. You should buy this album. A few of the songs are indeed a bit less interesting than the majority (how did "Richard Dick Richards" make the cut!?), but most of it is a gassy hoot. And I didn't even mention "I've Got Drugs" or the song where they claim to be lesbians while not bothering to change their voices at all! Also, my wife was pleasantly surprised to learn that Beck's "That was a good drum break" sample came from a song on this album (that statement is SUNG - not spoken, but SUNG - after a drum break comprised of two basic snare hits). So pleasure your wife and buy this CD!
Now let me talk to you for a second about something else. I've been very, very tired lately for some reason. This doesn't mesh well with my desire to be a 'zany, entertaining' writer guy. Not only that, but I always have trouble being 'funny' when I'm reviewing somebody who is already 'funny.' Strangely, I feel that I should treat these artists more seriously than 'serious' musicians, because a 'hilarious' review about a 'hilarious' artist - that's just too much 'hilarity,' I would think. But mainly I'm just very tired all the time. This one time I told my psychiatrist that I was falling asleep at work all the time and she prescribed this stuff that was unbelievable. I would sit in boring meetings with my eyes WIDE OPEN (!) thinking to myself, "So THIS is what it feels like to be a normal person!" However, this miracle drug had two unfortunate side effects: (a) making me talk and talk and talk about myself ceaselessly, interrupting others if necessary, and (b) nurturing within my mind a disconcerting obsession with the song "Dead Man's Curve." The wife made me stop taking it, and since then it's been Sleep City U.S.A. for Ol' Prind.
Having said that, everybody likes jokes so let me make up a few. That'll cheer us all up, because we're all sad.
Boy: Hey, have you checked my blog today?
How can you tell if a dog has gotten into your garbage?
First Man: Boy, this bus sure is late.
Q. What did Santa Claus leave for the three farmers on Christmas morning?
Q. What did Santa Claus leave for the three pimps on Christmas morning?
Q. Why did a crowd of onlookers ignore Mark Knopfler's screams for help as he dangled from the edge of a cliff, eventually falling to his death?
Show me your female parent's furry malodorous rooster-eating feline and I'll show you your mom's smelly hairy pussy with five cocks in it!
Knock knock
Those were great. Thanks to all my readers for submitting those.
Sorry about the fits of tiredness. I've heard that if you coat your 'nads with tabasco sauce between meals, it helps perk you up at work.
I love this album! From its poignant, meaningful lyrics to its heartbreakingly beautiful melodies, The Frogs' IPRaN insightfully reveals the deeper aspects of the human condition. I particularly enjoy the track "Baby Greaser George," as it calls into question the narrow-minded viewpoints many of us who enjoy sticking our balls into baby's mouths experience.
Great site, keep up the good work!
Wouldn't it be awesome if your last name was "Georgenringo" and your parents named you "John Paul" so that your full name was "John Paul Georgenringo"??? That would kick so much ass! Or what about if your last name was Billencharlie and your parents named you "Mickeith Brianronormick(taylor)" so your full n
Tomorrow's Thanksgiving so let's talk turkey about what many people and fans alike consider to be The Frogs' least appointing release, Racially Yours. See, what happened was that in 1993, word leaked out around the world that The Hilarious Frogs of "gay album" fame had recorded a new 'racist' album. So everyone was all like, "This is gonna be great! It'll be like the funny gay album but with them making fun of black people!," which you have to admit is a hilariously offensive idea that people of all creeds and backgrounds could enjoy together. But then they couldn't find a record label to release their 'racist album,' it sat around getting all dusty and full of urine for years and years, and then when it finally came out everyone went "Skibbidy-doo!" which is a pretty negative statement if you think about it.
The problem is this: Racially Yours is NOT It's Only Right And Natural (Racist Edition), nor was it ever intended to be. It is in fact as different from IORAN as that record was from the band's debut. Racially Yours is an extremely mellow, quiet collection of SERIOUS songs written and sung from the points of view of various white racists and angry blacks from different time periods throughout history. When the lyrics are blunt, they are written that way in order to make a point about racist thought and the racially divided history of our nation. The point is not to make you laugh (though some lyrics seem so blatantly offensive that it's hard to resist), but to address the fact that 200+ years into our nation's existence, whites and blacks still hate each other. Some of the best lyrics are the least Frogs-esque -- I especially like when Jimmy closes up a chant of "A black man's heaven is a white man's hell/A white man's heaven is a black man's hell" with the conclusion, "But it doesn't have to be."
The instrumentation is minimal: dark acoustic (or clean electric) guitar lines, inobtrusive keyboard accompaniment and sometimes a bit of light drumming. Jimmy's melodies are simple but easy on the ear, probably written fairly quickly but no less worth hearing - based on folk, country, pop, blues and rock (the whole bit). But quiet, my GOD quiet. Relaxed. Some might call it boring. I wouldn't. And if you're looking for subtle humor, listen to the keyboards in the background. In some songs they play an active role in the melody (the somber and excellent "The Blue-Eyed Devil & The Brown-Eyed Angel" and "Uncle Sam Loves U," for example), but half the time Dennis just seems to be fiddling around and making funny noises. You don't even really notice it if you're not paying attention because he's mixed really low, but pay attention to the keyboard work in a track like "My Slave" and see if you hear what I mean.
The key is to - at least the first couple times through - take each song as a singular creation and give it the attention you would afford a 7" single. Because if you go, "Hey! New Frogs album!" and throw it in your machine while you check your email or play with a battery or something, you're going to come out of the experience an hour later thinking, "Christ that album was slow and boring." Yes, it's slow and yes it's understated - but track for track, it's NOT boring! I'm serious! There are catchy riffs out the browntube on here, written in all sorts of different styles ("I Had A Dream" is a beautiful piano ballad, "Darkmeat 4 Sale" swizzles up into a neat multi-guitar drone, and "Blackman, Blackman" even has distorted guitars and Nirvana-style chorused feedback!). They just happen to be 4,000 times quieter than the vocals, that's all.
Jimmy's vocals are in the same style as those of The Frogs, sung in his high, cracking, warbly, and occasionally weak voice. Could've used a bit of double-tracking if you ask me, but then you probably wouldn't be able to hear the music at all. So now then - onto the lyrics!
Oh - also, it's really, really long. Nearly as long as the first two albums put together, with a full 25 songs. (And don't listen to the first track and go, "Mark was full of beans - this album has all kinds of energy!" because the first song is by far the most energetic song on the record)
First, a few song titles to whet your appeTITe: "Sorry I'm White," "My Slave," "Whitefully Dead," "Massa," "2 Blacks Don't Make A White," "The Purification Of The Race," others.
Now some lyrics that it's likely best not to take out of context and sing in a crowded urban setting:
"You're to be applauded for singin' in a church and bringin' us rock 'n' roll"
"I will shove this spade in the dirt with pride"
"If I had to come back as an animal/I'd be a polar bear/White like me"
"When your back is broken, I will let you play/But 'til your back is broken, there's cotton to be picked"
"White man's head on the end of a stick/Pay him back that fucking prick."
"The White House is filled with monkeys/If they can't read, how can they run the country?"
"Every week it's the same/Dark meat for sale/And like others I know/It's hard to pass up a sale/And at the very least/she'll keep me warm/Nine months to the day/Field hand is born"
"An unwanted child & a wanted man/Are one and the same"
"It's wrong to interfere with what we've got/Would a chimpanzee make it with a dog?/I don't think so"
"I've been callin' 'em colored for years/And still they call me prejudiced/When AIDS broke out I cried alongside the queers/And still they call me prejudiced"
In short, I am very fond of this record. Some of the songs are a little too draggy, and an hour probably IS a bit too long, but I could easily name fifteen really fucking amazingly great songs on here. So don't be 'niggardly'; give it a chance!
Apparently there are certain people in our world that don't like novelty music. In the 1950s I would have labeled these people 'communists,' but today I'd go with 'registered sex offenders.' For some reason, these registered sex offenders think that all music should be 'serious,' and that 'joke songs' are worthless once the joke has been heard one time. My response to this line of thinking is as follows: combining the two separate forms of entertainment known as "music" and "comedy" is no less valid an artistic act than what most songwriters do, which is combine the separate forms of entertainment known as "music" and "poetry." Perhaps combining "music" with "political thought" or "social commentary" is a bit more thought-provoking than either, but the person who argues that say, Van Morrison's music is more timeless and worthy of respect than that of Ween or the Dead Milkmen is saying - to me, anyway - that this is a person who takes music a bit too seriously. Certainly there is plenty of horrendous garbage in the novelty subgenre, but what musical category is this NOT true of? I'll be good and goddamned if every "serious" songwriter in the world is worth the cost of the postage stamp it would take to mail his/her latest CD to Hell. If the music's catchy and the jokes are funny, what's the problem? What's wrong with laughing and being happy? The only conclusion I can draw is that registered sex offenders either (a) simply have no sense of humor, because there are PLENTY of hilarious people making music, or (b) for some reason consider music to be something more than mere entertainment -- something life-affirming and desperately *IMPORTANT*. But whatever. The day Pete Townshend stops masturbating to little kids on the Internet and invents an album that cures cancer - that's the day I'll agree with the registered sex offenders of the world that rock music deserves to be taken seriously.
Which brings us to the Frogs' funniest album, My Daughter The Broad. Compiled from a number of homemade tapes, this 52-minute CD features 22 tracks and more morbid laughs than an episode of Best Of The West. Insanely, I wrote that TV show title BEFORE remembering that it featured a character named "Frog." Isn't it woolly how the mind works? It's always one step ahead of you. Literally even, if you pull your brain out of your head and hold it in your extended hand. I'd like to welcome you to a few of Dennis Flemion's hilarious characters, including the grotesque drooling old man ("Reelin' And Rockin' Pts. I & II," "I'm Sad The Goat Just Died Today," "I'm Hungry"), the deranged father of a missing/dead daughter ("Gwendyln Macrae," "Which One Of You Gave My Daughter The Dope?"), the high-pitched wailing creep ("I'm Evil, Jack"), and (sigh) the umm... campy gay man ("April Fools - He Had The Change Done At The Shop," "The Boys With The Boys," "Put Your Finger In The Dike, Stop The Leak," "God Is Gay," "Lifeguard of Love," "Banjo Bonnie," "Candyland Joe," "I Had A Second Change Done At The Shop - Now I've Added Animal Cocks").
Let's now discuss the nature of the Frogs' many humorses. One aspect is simply the ludicrous offensiveness of the situations they set up -- for example, rewriting "Reelin' And Rockin'" to bluntly STATE what is merely hinted at in the original '50s version (ex. "I looked at my watch, it was quarter to one/(pause)/I cummed."). A second component is the enjoyable dichotomy of bizarre lyrics set to serious music found in tracks like the lovely piano track "Children Run Away (The Man With The Candy)," the sorrowful arpeggiated "Which One Of You Gave My Daughter The Dope?," and the dark classical composition "I Love U (You Know I Don't)." The third and likely most important part of their humor is that they are brilliant improvisational wordsmiths who do amazing, sickening things with the English language. Though they have their occasional dull lapses, Dennis and Jimmy at their best are not only able to consistently come up with outrageous situations and comments, but also display the ability to instantly twist their own statements - even their own MISTAKES - into wordplay comedy riffs. Here, let me give a few examples of this aspect of their work:
In this passage, Dennis accidentally says something that his evil narrator wouldn't have said, then corrects himself by pretending that it's somebody else ADDRESSING his evil narrator (though somehow his voice is exactly the same as that of our evil narrator!): "I'll take a life/I'll take MORE than a life!/I'll take life over death/(PAUSE AS DENNIS REALIZES WHAT HE'S SAID)/No you won't, after you meet me!"
In this passage, Dennis's hungry old man narrator gets two of his words backwards and continues his diatribe as if nothing has happened at all: "I got a bent throat!/
What do you mean what the fuck's the pro - the throat is bent!/You can't eat food with a bent throat!/YOU try fooding eat - / You eat... /Yeah, you eat all right. I WATCH you eat!/ I never get no food...."
I'm not even sure WHAT the heck he meant to say here, but it sure is funny hearing the incorrect verbiage pour out of his mouth: "Tell me how to cope?/YOU cope with a closed casket full of doped-up daughter dope!"
In this selection, Dennis's gay narrator begins by discussing one of the animal parts he's had added to his body in a series of impossible sexual operations, and then makes a sudden left turn based on the word 'roof': "It's hard to eat with the squirrel balls hanging down from the roof.../Roof of my mouth.../Ruth was the attendant nurse by the way, who helped in the shop/Let's give her a hand (*claps*)"
The music seems a bit secondary to the vocals, but the mostly acoustic guitar/drum tracks are still catchy in the same 'made up on the spot' way as It's Only Right And Natural. Plus, it has a few songs so catchy you'll be singing them for weeks after hearing them -- especially the Vegasy "Where's Jerry Lewis? When you need the man. Where's Jerry Lewis? When nobody gives a damn," the sorrowful children's song "I'm sad because my goat just died today/I'm sad my goat just fell in the hay - hey!," the surprisingly sinister "Grandma sitting in the corner with a penis in her hand going 'No no no no no!'" and the awesome bombastic rocker (with sitar!) "Dreambox dreambox - Baby's got a dreambox. Wanna get inside your panties 2nite!" Why no radio success? Come on, radio!
So if you like to laugh and music is an enjoyable component in your experience, you've got to hunt down a copy of this record. So many characters and strange bits of dialogue! Would it be okay if I closed this review with a few more examples of the many, many lines on here that put a crack in my ass even after about a dozen listens? I'll take your lack of being here as I type as a 'yes':
"I looked at my watch and it was 6 to 4/(pause)/25 or./Terry Kath!"
(sung as a back-and-forth duet): "They’re crazy. They’re crippled but they’re lovely/(And young) And young and wild and lovely/(And crippled!) And crippled (And crippled)/And it’s a crime, they’re lovely (And lovely!)"
"There was a priest who once tried to have a speech with me/I got news for him/He's dead now!"
There are many, many other zingers where those came from, but I'd like you to hear them for yourself. Buy away! Buy today! Buy in the morning and buy on ebay!
Also, thanks to Jesse Alora for getting me into this band in the first place, to JWB for helping me realize that the time was nigh to review them, and to Oprah for recommending all the awesome books.
"You're looking a little stiff there / Looks like it might be Shark bite / Help Me / That looks like that needs some sucking out..."
'I'm Hungry' is one of the funniest songs I have ever heard. Fantastic.
Billy Corgan has done many horrible things in his life (ex. purchased a guitar; brought a microphone to his lips), but one of these things was not his love for and support of The Frogs during their lean underground years. Which is to say "that was a good thing," but in a grammatically confusing and probably incorrect manner.
Billy Corgan both produced this CD and released it on his own label. It's the first Frogs CD with radio-ready production, which both amplifies the beauty of their best work and blands all to hell the less memorable compositions. One would assume that the EP is a take-off on the music industry in general and the grunge scene in particular, especially with the first song having the word "Grunge" in the title and all. Unfortunately I hate that particular song. Instead of being a poppy heavy take-off on Nirvana's riches-earning Nevermind, it sounds more like the Smashing Pumpkins, a terrible Chicago band that got sucked up into the 'grunge' hype due to lucky timing and a cute bass player. So fuck that.
The rest of the EP works though, pissing whiskers on the despicable egomania that runs rampant through every level of the music industry, from the 'blow jobs for stardom' record executive to the Rock God who refuses to sign autographs, along with a seething overcurrent of sexism that I'm not quite sure I understand but I'll assume it has something to do with rockers dating strippers and prostitutes and then dumping them when they get bored.
Musically, according to my notes, there's a lot of acoustic guitar but with full-band arrangements. Lovely trumpets in a song or two. A piano once or twice. One high multi-tracked vocal bit that sounds like Queen. One song that sounds like a hair metal ballad. A guitar break that sounds like Pink Floyd's "Is There Anybody Out There?" Though it has some stunningly beautiful moments (particularly the ethereal slide guitar of "Starboy" and "Weird On The Avenue"), half of these (mere SIX) melodies sound more like stylistic exercises (trying to imitate the music of the culture they're trashing) than good old reliable Frogsy catchiness. Still, for getting their *BIG CHANCE* of recording a *REAL RECORD* with the support of a *MAJOR YOUTH CULTURE ICON*, and responding by writing a bunch of crude lyrics trashing the cult and fantasy of rock celebrity - man, you GOTTA give 'em props for that. Not movie props though.
It's worth noting that the funniest, catchiest and most offensively Frogslike song on here seems to exist outside of the EP's thematic concerns. I have a theory about this track - and though it's likely an incorrect theory, I like to think it's true because it would prove that The Frogs are even more brilliant than I already think they are. Remember all the controversy that erupted when Kurt Cobain put a song called "Rape Me" on the final Nirvana album? And how the song was clearly not about rape at all, but rather how Kurt felt he was being treated by the media? And remember how this explanation made no difference to Wal-Mart, who insisted that the copies sold in their outlets had to have the track retitled "Waif Me"? Well, according to my theory, The Frogs remembered this sickening puritanism quite well. Their response? A strongly-produced MTV-ready alterna-pop song entitled "Raped." A song whose lyrics read - AND I QUOTE - "Everybody's making a big deal out of the fact that I raped someone/What's the crime?/I had fun!" Galaxies away from poor Kurt's self-pitying plight, Jimmy Flemion's bouncy little tune threatened to have an entire nation of impressionable Smashing Pumpkins fans wearing black eyeliner while singing "After all, she was a nun/And the priest wanted to watch." Why does the Lord not work in such mysterious ways that this event could have occurred as a favor to me personally? Can you imagine how fucking HILARIOUS that would have been? A warm, poppy summer hit celebrating the sexual assault of a nun? And Billy Corgan produced it!!! I never in a jillion years thought I would say these words, but I mean them with all sincerity: "THANK YOU, BILLY CORGAN!"
No hang on - I said that when he broke up his fucking horrible shit band too. So "THANK YOU A SECOND TIME, BILLY CORGAN!"
This is the third and final (to date) Frogs CD compiled from their thousands and thousands of homemade recordings. It's not as funny as My Daughter The Broad, but it might be the catchiest collection of Frogs tunes you'll ever find in one place. Kicking off with the cheerfully snooty indie rock parody "Pay" ("Fuckin' bitch gonna pay/Gonna wring her ass in May/I got all the records that Pavement made/And I smashed them all today"), Bananimals In Pajamimals winds its way through a diverse, infectingble collection of jovial acoustic strummers, macabre evil riffs, sorrowful dramatic piano works, and a handful of remarkably romantic guitar/piano duets -- all with titles like "Blonde And Beautiful, Beat-Up (And The Bitch Was Young)," "(Try Out My New) Sex Doll Baby!!!," "Golden Showers," "Love Me Or Die Bitch" and "Dead Pussy In The Road With Mother's Name On Top." All huge hits.
There are no slobbering old men or deranged parents yelling about on here, though Dennis does get to exercise his most annoyingly strident voice ever in both "Evil Arnold (With The Ugly Name)" and "Sex Doll Baby." Mostly it's a collection of actual SONGS, albeit songs performed in a variety of silly voices rather than Jimmy's wiggly 'serious' voice. Wait a second! Are they saying "Ban Animals"!?
AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Oh, alright. That wasn't really a photo of me. Can you see the resemblance though? That's my son Henry The Dog! He runs an interactive Dogs' Butts Review Guide. Incidentally, does anyone know how to dock photos or make them somehow 'smaller'? I tried for like five minutes to figure it out, then said "Fuck it." You people are rich; I'm sure your screens all load at about 900 miles an hour anyway. Buncha damn college students with your 'scholarships' and your 'whole lives ahead of you.' Whatever you do, don't waste your youth like I did. I didn't have sex til I was 21! Then after that, I didn't start drinking til I was 27!! If I'd had half a goddamn brain, I'd have spiked my mother's breasts with vodka and nailed that little bald broad in the incubator next door. But you know my motto: If there's a hole between the field's legs, PLAY BALL!
As for this album, as expected, most of the songs address (a) cruel violence, (b) yucky sex, and (c) issues of importance to the homosexual community (including cruel violence and yucky sex). However, in the two most intriguing tracks, The Frogs step completely out of character in order to vent their real-life frustrations. See, behind the scenes when nobody was paying attention, The Frogs had been playing music for nearly a decade, still couldn't find a record label to release Racially Yours, and were watching the most creative years of their lives pass by without notice (except for everybody wondering whether they were gay or not). I don't know why on Earth they thought they had a chance of succeeding in the record business in the first place (have you seen their song titles!?), but apparently they DID feel so, hence "U Bastards" (written as a note from the music industry to The Frogs) and "Fur Z Muzik Biz" (written as The Frogs' response). These songs are particularly moving because the sore feelings are so obviously REAL. Here, let's look
(from "U Bastards")
(from "Fur Z Muzik Biz")
Lest you worry that this excoriating cry of wounded painliness contain no glint of light nor humor, note how Jimmy's decision to tap his foot for percussive accompaniment inevitably leads to a fatigued "My foot's getting tired" about halfway through the song. Yet ANOTHER similarity between The Frogs and the Low-Maintenance Perennials (!!), as anybody who has borne witness to my aching cry of "My hand's gettin' tired" in the middle of thrash metal classic "Blood For The Blood God" can attest. But enough about my successful career in the music business.
For other paroxysm-inducing moments of levity, please see such lyrics as:
(wherein Dennis accidentally strays from his "Evil Arnold, brother of Evil Jack" voice in the middle of the song): "My name is Arnold/How'd ya like a heart attack?/(pause)/That wasn't me speaking, that sounded like Jack"
"Get out your wieners and your vagina things/And have yourselves a kick/Have yourselves a blast/Teach someone the meaning of the word ''ass''"
"It's your birthday/It's a birthday boy salute/21 candles up in flames/And one of them is my fist"
"The light fell upon my penis/And in the distance a sailboat swam away and cried/I lied on the beach/And lied to myself that you loved me/The seagulls were no comfort, believe me"
"Cocktail lounging on our yachts made of hot cock/Oh greased down and waxed and built and bulging boys/Named Jimmy Jack Roy Bloy/(pause)/Weird last name but just the same"
My advice is to buy this album. Trade in one of those shitty Blackfoot albums if you have to. The Queens Of The Stone Age aren't funny, and Merle Travis can't write a simple yet haunting guitar riff like Jimmy Flemion. Britney Spears has some great talents, but you can't buy a CD based solely on diameter of rectal opening. So do the right thing and buy a CD by indie rock's great lost paradise, The Frogs. And please don't confuse them with Box Of Frogs - that was an '80s band featuring three former members of the Yardbirds (as opposed to the 2003 Yardbirds reunion CD, which featured TWO former members of the Yardbirds).
In some ways, of which I'll name none, this CD represents the culmination of everything that Jimmy Flemion had been working towards since the early '80s. It's just hard to tell because he has completely turned his back on the humor that had become both The Frogs' bread and butter and, impossibly, the side on which their bread was buttered. In contrast, HLSS is essentially a very well-written and meticulously produced alternative pop-rock CD. The songs feature both acoustic and distorted electric guitars, as well as drums, bass, keyboards, piano, violin, western-tinged harmonica, horns, sitar, celestes, strings, swooshy synth effects and everything else you'd expect from a young artistic band like the Flaming Lips. Best of all, the mix is top-of-the-line clarity-wise without making the music sound smoothed over and faceless.
The songs cover a full range of human emotion and creativity, from the electro-T.Rex swagger of "Bear" to the folky peace anthem "Bad Daddy" to the sissy cowboy strumminer "Nipple Clamps" to the pisseder-off than off "Fuck Off" to the gentle, sparkling "Jewels" to the anthemic "Enter I" to one of the most BEAUTIFUL and PAIN-DRENCHED heartstring jerkers I've ever heard, the gorgeous GOD SO GORGEOUS "The Longing Goes Away," which will make you cry if you have any tear ducts in your body. Adding pensult to perjury, Jimmy's vocals are his finest yet, full of confidence and warmth and often multitracked, echoed and/or backed by additional voices singing harmonies, making noise or doing "ooo" or whatever. It's a good CD! Damned god!
In addition to damning God (in the dark/light upstroker "Better Than God"), James (or "Jimmy") sings of poor parenting, jerks, celebrity, lost love and assorted other metaphorical crap that probably means plenty in some universe where people GET poetry. Me, I'll stick with the lyrics I understand and appreciate, which include:
"I think about you every night/I'm sleepin' less and less each night/They say it gets easier/And the longing goes away/I wish I'd never said those things/I hurt you something bad something/They watch me from the Heavens/And although I fall/I dream about you every night/I'm sleepin' with your picture tight/They say i gets easier/And the longing goes away."
"Bad Daddy says your highchair accidentally fell over/Now, here comes Rover the pit bull/Bad Daddy accidentally let him out"
"Know it all, fuckin' know it all/You're the teacher, the guru/So you should know already/How to blow me"
"For all those who say/'Make me happy,' 'Please me,' 'Entertain me'/I've only this to say/Fuck off, get out of my life/Fuck off, get out of my sight/'Cause I don't need your B.S. tonight"
Will you weep, laugh, snigger or try to understand? Jimmy Flemion never intended to be thought of as a 'novelty artist.' He's a serious (or at least semi-serious) songwriter who accidentally developed a (well-deserved) reputation as a hilariousman because of a bunch of tapes he made with his brother at home for fun. And yes, both he and his brother are funny as all get-out's hell, but he clearly also believes in music as an art form - the studio as his easel, you might say if you're into that kind of language. This album is really good, I'm telling you! There are a couple tracks that don't quite rub me personally the correct way ("Bear" is COMPLETELY not my type of music, for example), but most of it deserves to be heard by a much larger audience than that which to date has heard it by my calculations. It's the grandest and most colorful Frogs release you can buy, even though it won't make you laugh. But look - what if "Weird Al" Yankovic suddenly decided he wanted to be taken seriously? Do you think his 'mature' album would be anywhere near as dynamic and affecting as this one? Shit no! It'd be a bunch of serious songs about TV shows. Here, I'll give you an example of a song that might appear on this, "Weird Al" Yankovic's debut foray into 'serious' songwriting:
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Iraq War sees no sign of closure
Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, yeah Bugs Bunny
Nature striking back with earthquakes
Why must people rape and murder
Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, yeah Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, hey Bugs Bunny
So that covers the seven official Frogs releases that you might be able to find at your local Sam Goody even though I'm pretty sure they're all long out of print. The rest of these CDs I'm reviewing may be purchased from the Frogs themselves at The Frogs' Online Store. Don't go yet though; I'm still talking.
It's cold as a cat's meow in my workplace today. I'm sitting at my desk wearing a scarf like some cold asshole. My fingers are frozen solid and little bits of bloody flesh keep chipping away as I smash them against the keyboard. A polar bear is walking around my office, an eskimo is building an igloo in Nancy's cube, and a bunch of elves are making toys in the urinal. All life has now ceased as a modern Ice Age begins here on the 4th floor of my workplace, 24th Street, USA (next to David Geffen's AIDS Clinic).
Being dead, I feel I am now more qualified to review The Frogs' Death Songs cassette, apparently recorded five years before their self-titled debut came out. This tape - This tape! This tape ain't big enough for stars and stripes.
I'd like to express my sincerest thanks for allowing me to reference an Anderson Bruford Wakeman & Howe filler track. For extra fun, try to find a second Anderson Bruford Wakeman & Howe reference in the next paragraph!
Death Songs appears to be 66 minutes of Jimmy and Dennis Flemion making fun of D&D; Fantasy Nerds. This is just my take on it - I don't know the real story - but judging from Jimmy's slow nerdy vocal style of choice and song titles like "(I've Locked You In My) Dungeon" and "(I Come Out At Night To Ride My) Dragon," it seems a pretty fair bet that Dungeons and Dragons isn't exactly the SECOND thing on their minds. They come up with several funny lyrics on this early homemade effort (it's hard to beat the catchy refrain "This is your deathbed; please lay down"), but the songs are all so lethargic, repetitive and overextended, you have to wonder whether the Flemions were sick with the flu, high on the pot or pissed up a rope when they walked downstairs for the session. Also, Teakbois.
Most of these 19 tracks are performed by Jimmy on acoustic guitar/vocals and Dennis on drums/funny background mouth noises, with only a few showcasing the duo's prodigious keyboard and electric guitar skills. Jimmy sings with a pinched-nose dorky voice, perfect for uttering such 'threatening' nonsense as "By mistake, you left a black cat on my throne/The gargoyles are my friends, not yours" and "At the worst, you shall perish/At the best, you will die" and "If I don't kill you, my dragons will/If I don't kill you, the warlocks are bound to." Even the two *HAPPY* songs have brilliantly hidden ulterior motives: "Sunny And Bright (The Way I'm Feeling)" will likely catch you offguard with its early line "People don't see me/They just turn their eyes/It's hard to look a deity in the face," and if you're as unobservant as me, you won't even NOTICE the first line of the folky peace protest anthem "Oh My Brother (Holding Hands)," which apparently is "For the children of Hell...." So if you like to laugh, get out your funnybones because The Frogs will tickle your ribs!
Sadly there's not a single gay song on here, though if the subject matter is any indication, the narrator has never had heterosexual relations either so there's still hope.
Two other highlights I'd like to point out if I might:
(1) this completely unnecessary piece of nerd dork dialogue in the middle of the otherwise dialogue-free "Swamp Broad (Acoustic)":
(2) the unexplainably hilarious final track "The Dragon And The Rocker," which is esentially a minute-and-a-half-long anthemic CODA to a dopey funk song. It's like 'short verse/chorus/chorus keeps going/still the chorus/verse doesn't appear to be coming back/chorus still going/end.' HEE! is what I said when I heard it, but I was alone at the time so I don't have any solid proof.
I swear it's even colder in here now than it was when I started typing. I'm also falling asleep. Maybe I'd better get on ebay for a while to keep myself awake. It's all in a day's work for Bil Keane!
Wait a minute - who wrote this review?
"Not Me!"
Check back tomorrow for a hilarious trail of Jeffy's footprints! (Ignore the bit where he assfucks the dog - Bil just started a new medication)
From this classic cassette, 5 songs wound up on Bananimals, 3 on My Daughter The Broad and 1 on It's Only Right And Natural, leaving 14 unreleased tracks. Of these 14, 8 are performed on piano/drums, 5 on acoustic guitar/drums and 1 on electric guitar/bass/drums. Six involve homosexuality. Push tracks include "(You're A) Nigger Homosexual," "The Corpse Steps Out," "I Must Be In Heaven ('Cause It Feels So Good) Ooohh," "Fetus (It Rhymes With Venus)," "Oh It Ain't June No More," "I'm The Anarchist," "Raspberry Jam From The Jar," "'Cilla Will Ya?" and "I Sucked The Saliva Off The Dead Homo's Ass."
The Frogs know how easy it is to write a simple catchy melody. That's why it's so enjoyable to listen to their material even when it's made up on the spot and the lyrics don't go anywhere. It's the same philosophy as Guided By Voices, but in duo-form, less rock-oriented, and more offensive. These simplistic little piano and acoustic guitar melodies are catchy! They're pleasing to the ear. Sure, it's just a couple guys fucking around, but it's a couple of melodically-oriented guys fucking around. And what kind of puritanical witch trial country do we live in when such compelling lyrics as these aren't gladhandedly embraced by top executives:
"You're a nigger homosexual/And that's why I love you/I love your fine leather black ass/And your big black lips/Why don't you wrap them/Around my big hard dick?"
"The homo rips his chute and the fruit flies out the door"
"I'm the anarchist/How'd you like my fist/UP YOUR ASS!?
"My wife just had a child - the damn thing is straight!"
"Nurse, won't you do me a favor and hand me another fetus to fuck?"
Add to these delightful jalopies a song that rhymes 'Sheraton' with 'backgammon,' another in which the love-struck narrator asks the object of his affection, "Will you kill the karate instructor for me?", a third that rhymes 'penny' with 'Lenny/Bruce is dead,' a fourth about a corpse having a happy night on the town because 'he's tired of the underground scene,' and a fifth that croons "There's cum stains on the moon," and you have five songs, total. There are many others too, some sung by the old man, others not. Some are dramatic, others feature high screams, some sound like Paul McCartney, one has a harmonica, some are pretty, I'm depressed.
It's not your fault. I've been pretty down for a full week because my wife's been out of town. I like that wife of mine. She was due back tonight, but I just got an email from her saying she has to leave tomorrow for ANOTHER trip out of town. So that bums me out, bummingly. FUCK! I feel all sleepy and tired. Sad. Not lonesome, because that would imply that I want to hang out with somebody. Such is not the case. I just miss my wife, not people in general. People in general can eat the dick.
Though not you specifically. You seem passable.
By which I mean you're only driving about 30 MPH. Slowy. That's your new name - Slowy.
Hey Slowy. Something's going on here and I don't know what it is. I don't know if I'm physically illin' or suffering from Seasonal Affective Distribution System (SARS) or if I just miss my wife or have a poor diet or what, but my usual 'humor and energy' appear to have taken the 'A' train from my body at some point in the last two weeks, leaving me a shallow hell of the man I once was. Today I was supposed to be working from home, but instead I slept on the couch til 3 in the afternoon. Then while walking Henry The Dog, I experienced the most disturbing lack of personal wit since my Who's Missing review: as we walked into a bank so I could get some cash from the ATM, an old man behind us joshingly remarked, "Does your dog have an account at this bank?" There are many ways I could have responded to this wacky anecdote of a question - for example, "Yep, he has a URINE account -- in your safety deposit box!" Or perhaps "No, but if you keep talking sexy like that, this place is gonna be a SPERM bank in a few minutes!" Alternately, a simple "Nah, he doesn't have any money at the moment. Can he suck you off for a dollar?" would have done fine. So what did I say? What was my 'snappy answer' to his 'stupid question'? Let me show it to you in dialogue form for full effect:
Old Man: "Look at my life! I'm a lot l
Try that again:
Old Man: Does your dog have an account at this bank?
So something's going on. I mean, you're no fool. You can tell by these doldrums of a Frogs review that I'm only half-awake these days. But who takes breaks from their hobby? That's like not brushing your teeth just because you don't have any arms! So today I came up with an idea. What I'm going to do now is write the most annoyingly hyperactive record review in the history of dawn. In this way, I will fool you all into thinking I'm in a terrific, wacky mood. Unless you read this preface.
ZIP ZOP FLIPPITY BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Get our your terds everybody because it's time to talk about the MotherFruggin' Frigs!! Grab your wife and shibbidy-doobs! Eat my butt like a front page boobs! Hay look! A photo of my urine sample!
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BRAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!! (*makes fart noise*) BRAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey Underwear Head! Check out all of the hilarious 'put-downs' I'm going to use if I ever review The Eagles: "SHITchy Woman," "Take SHIT to the limSHIT," "The TEST(icles) of My Love," "Life In The ASS Lane," "One Of These SHITES," "HoSMELL CaliFUCKYOU," "Lyin' (SHIT) Pies," "New SHID In Town," "DeSHITsperSHITadSHITo." FUCKADIDDLYDASTARDOODAH!!!!!
Here's a joke:
Knock knock!
This Frogs cassettettettettettetteetetetetteett WHEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has 4 songs that wound up on My Brother The Dot and 2 that wound up on Bananas & Animals, leaving 18 previously unreleased shackleberries. Unfortunately, I only own 16 of these shackleberries (HA HA! THEY'RE NOT 'SHACKLEBERRIES' AT ALL! THEY'RE SONGS! IN FACT, I DON'T EVEN THINK THERE'S SUCH THING AS A 'SHACKLEBERRY'! HA HA! MY LIES ARE LIKE THE WIND -- THEY JUST KEEP ON BRINGIN' FRESH AIR INTO THE WORLD!), so for all I know "Adam In Eden" and "President No. 9" might be as lousy as Adam on Batman and President No. 43. If such is the case, please understand that my grade of "Eight Dots" no longer applies. Forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Record Review Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual future results and trends may differ materially from what is forecast in forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including, without limitation:
- "Adam In Eden" not being any good
- "President No. 9" demonstrating a marked lack of quality
So let's talk bunions everybody! Big fuckin' cactus, in my opinion!
Of the 16 unreleased tracks on here that I own, 3 are pianoers and 13 acoustic guitaricles. 4 of them appear to be about gay issues. Push tracks include "Hobble Dog Harry (I'm An Artist)," "Suck Me Off (It's The End Of The World)," "Lesbian Nation (Coming On Strong)," "I've Got Coconuts For Testes," "(Don't Bother) Darling Daughter Dotty Is Dead," "Who Needs Love When I Was Born With Jewels," "Have A Merry X-Mas," "The New In Town Sailor" and "You Wanna Kiss Me Or You Wanna Die? (Or You Wanna Kiss Me And Die)."
Let's be honestly behaving here and admit that although they almost always come up with catchy music, many of The Frags' 'made up on the spot' lyrics simply don't go anywhere. Why does Millie Mitch Philip Bitch Burton III "milk Mary's vagina," for example? And why should any of us care about a swan with no legs that reads from the Bible down at the fair? These are questions to which no answers are provided or otherwise arranged through a third party. And I sure like to PARTY!!! (*parties*)
Isn't this review a HOOT so far? HEY, GET OFF MY COMPUTER, YOU OWL!!!!
Ha ha! Can you imagine an owl actually getting on my computer and typing in a sentence with the word "hoot" in it? That would be hilarious! You see, owls most likely don't even know that we spell their noise "Hoot"! Scholars have tried many times to teach them but it's just too weird when you're talking to somebody and their head spins all the way around. Take it from me, a friend of many demonically possessed teenage girls! (who put out)
On the other ham, many of these lyrics tap quite the humorous vein before injecting a fatal dose of comedy, including:
"Blow me, world!/And while you're at it, suck me off!"
"Gender and gender/Don't mix and match/Girls, get inside each other/Crawl inside each others' snatch"
"I've got my art down to an art form"
"Coconut ball lovers, unite!"
"It's a lovely day/For a roll in the.../Month of...../Homo May"
"Have a funny paper evening/Why don't you go tell the world you're queer?"
"I've only visited the clinic once/And that was just for AIDS!"
"You wanna kiss me now? Or wait 'til I VOMIT IN YOUR FACE!?"
I understand your confusion regarding my consistent habit of quoting heavily from lyrics on Frogs albums, something I normally don't do for bands because who gives a shit what Linkin Park or Bob Dylan have to say about anything, but The Frogs have a way with words that just totally cracks me up. Their sense of humor is so absurd that I can't help but share many examples with you, the reader. For example, you know that song "Which One Of You Gave My Dauighter The Dope?" It's on here, along with two unreleased sequels recited by the same vein-pulsing-forehead father. The first sequel is a ridiculously happy piano song, in which you can clearly hear the narrator tapdancing as he sings "My daughter's dead!" and talks about how the guys who gave her the killer dope have invited him to a drug party. The second follow-up is "Have A Merry X-Mas," in which he announces that his wife has just died by jumping out of an airplane during an acid trip. But it's okay, he figures, because now his wife and daughter are both together in Hell, and "Satan's pretty good company." !!! See? See what I mean? Nutso crazy-go! Also, WOOBIDY SCOOBIDY DOOBIDY DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! (*waits 'til after midnight; shakes a tambourine*)
So if you like pretty, catchy music and don't mind the occasional directionless lyric (I'm lookin' at YOU, "Tiger Tot Tommy, Victoria Victim Holly"), then The Frogs' Made-Up Cassette B is like money in the bank.
Their bank though, not yours. It's kind of expensive.
So thanks for stopping by Mark 'I Fucked Your Wife' Prindle's Zappy Zany Wild And Crazy Record Review Universe of Love On The Internet of Hate for a Society of Indifference Web Site Catalog Scroll!
P.S. FUCK YOU!!!! I'm Phil "Philthy Animal" Collins and 'Sussudio' is a slang term for 'my hairy smelly ass filled with Mike Rutherford's shit'!!!!!!!!!
One track wound up on Bananimals; the other 23 remain unreleased. I personally don't own "Charleston Memories," but of the 22 unreleased songs I own, 15 are pianoey and 7 are acoustic guitarish, with only 3 or 4 tackling difficult homosexual issues. Push tracks include "The Solution To All Your Problems - Dance," "It's A Lovely Day (In Every Way)," "The Return Of Donny Swan Boy," "U Wanna Rock (Go To The Quarry)," "Feel The Heat (Feel The Meat In Your Mouth)," "Bathhouse," "The Toughest Man On The Block," "Dear Granny," "Plastic Everything," "Beating Up Animals & Children (It's My Specialty)," "Evil Jerry (It's Not Often U Eat The Dead)," "Kill Yourself If U Love Me (If U Love Me Kill Me Too)" and "Undertaker Fred." As you can see, there is a veritable sleeping bag full of great unreleased material on here, so dig in, Ol' Munchy! I changed your name again; it's "Ol' Munchy" now.
Some of it's terrible though, and unsurprisingly the music is much more consistently enjoyable than the words. It's odd how a fellow as witty as Dennis Flemion so often simply can't think of anywhere at all to take his story. For example, even by normal standards of 'unreleased outtakes,' "Wine And Roses," "I Love Sex (It's All I Care About These Days)" and "It's A Joke (This Deity On My Back)" literally stink to High Heaven, where the angels smell them. Several other tracks -- "Why? Mother Why? (The Creature In Your Womb)" and "Surprise (I've Changed Bodies/Souls W/U Now)" included -- start off with a great concept and then just dick around with a whole lotta nothin' for three minutes til you almost start recording 'actual jokes' onto the tape yourself.
Here's the part where I post some funny lyrics. You're invited to read them:
"There's a girl. Bad news, everyone. Get your guns."
"I kinda wish you weren't dead. We could go out somewhere together and have some soup.... Don't run away! Ah, what am I talking about. How are you gonna do that?"
"Old people and kids under 3: I'll kick your asses inside and out!"
"Today I put a flower on your grave. (Pause) I PISSED ON IT FIRST!"
"I'm sorry your daughter ain't breathin' too good no more. I guess it's cuz she ain't livin' no more."
"Your grandmother had beautiful pubic cunt hairs."
"Kill me if you love me - and turn me into a butterfly!"
"You won't live long with AIDS on your mind/You'll live even less with AIDS in your system"
Sweet sweet funny lyrics. We all like them. Who doesn't? But even more so, the hilariously bad harmonica in "The Solution To All Your Problems -- Dance," the ludicrously overdramatic delivery of "A bathhouse full of sperm/Oh bathhouse!," the Nick Cavey murder balladry of "The Return Of Donny Swan Boy" and the minor-key intrigue of "They Never Hang The Clouds Out To Dry (Die)" all pbbbllll.
Most of the songs are sung in the same sleazy gayish pinched-nose voice, and most of the music is played on the same two instruments. On an entirely different note -- is AIDS funny? Of course not. In real life, AIDS isn't funny at all. What's funny is the very idea of making AIDS jokes. What kind of human being would make AIDS jokes? Especially ones as dumb as ending a slow, terrible song with the lyric "In your eyes there's a tear/Your friend has died of AIDS"? I think it's just the taboo nature of it that makes it so funny. Or the outrageousness. It's not SHOCKING, per se; it's just not something you normally hear. And it's one of those topics that are only joked about by (a) homophobic asshole morons or (b) intelligent people using the concept in an absurd, postmodern manner. It's the same thing that the Frogs do with all of their gay supremacist jokes and one-liners about beating up children and old people. You definitely don't get the sense that their goal is to attract fratboys; like Andrew Dice Clay at his best (those last three words are important, as Clay has done some real garbage in his day), it seems like the Frogs' goal with this type of material is to create humor by going completely over-the-top with concepts that in normal circumstances simply aren't funny at all! Would a serious real-life murderer have the comedic timing to tell an old woman, "You won't need that Geritol where you're going, woman. The other side of the grave has no need for these things." Of course not. This stuff is fiction, it's over-the-top, it's parody, and when the language flows well, it's as funny as a comedian.
Hmm. In an odd twist of luck, it appears that today is "AIDS Day." "Our teacher told us that AIDS is a very dangerous disease," said 13-year-old Aissatou Niang, wearing a green Muslim headscarf. "Only abstinence can save us," she said as her schoolmates giggled nearby. Children sure are smarter now than they were back in my day. When I was 13, we all used to get together and play Chinese Heroin Needle, Pin The Semen-Filled Syringe On The Open Sore, Charades Involving Buttfucking and all sorts of other silly pastimes. However, you might say that "The Most Dangerous Game" we played was the one involving a strange enigmatic man who arranged for a ship to be wrecked on an island so he could indulge in his favorite brand of hunting -- killing the passengers! Then we'd make Stone Soup and hold a lottery where the winner would be killed.
Oh senor Don Gato was a cat
I remember when that happened.
As the Xmas season falls upon us like a wheelbarrow of beer, I can't help but ruminate yet again on Elmo & Patsy's tragic inability to follow up their legendary holiday carol favorite with a similar success of likeward fashion. "Percy The Puny Poinsettia" was an admirable attempt, but simply didn't have the popular appeal or staying power of their previous comedy song about the brutal murder of an old woman. As such, I decided to 'Do The Right Thing' and draft a surefire comeback hit for our favorite curmudgeons from the American South. It follows:
CHORUS:
She'd been dead for near-three decades
When we found her Christmas morning
(CHORUS)
Now we're all so proud of Grandpa
(fart solo)
That's as far as I've gotten, but so far it has 'major studio hit' written all over it, I'm told by some.
The Flogs' Made Up Cassette D features only one officially released track - the tepid "Stand Up For Your Rights (Or Sit Down)," which found its way onto My Daughter The Broad (apparently at the record company's insistence) at the expense of such superior tracks as elf-focused (!) piano practice piece "He Opened The Door," sensitive acoustic "Were The Boys (Merely) Kissing Or Just Fooling Around?," angry gladiator stomp "Boys Will Be Boys," tiny messy "Knife Through The Face Of The Bitch I Hate," relaxed semi-intricate "The Day I Got AIDS," hooky as hell "How Many Times, Times, Times (Pink Triangle Special)," super-peppy protest "No More 'Nams," stupid but spirited "The Civil Rights Movement March Song," sad "Kim Jim John (Where Have You Gone?)," pleasant and sexist "Soldier Maria" and melancholy musical masterwork "What They Don't Know About Us Won't Hurt Them Mother (It'll Just Kill Them)." The 23 unreleased tracks break down into 15 acoustic guitar pieces, 7 piano songs, and a short electric swishy of "Blackman, Blackman" with different lyrics. 13 of them address topics predominantly of interest to the fruity pebble community.
As always, the melodies are so good that you could play them on an acoustic guitar or piano and they'd still sound great (?), but the lyrics are lacking something fierce. Like a POINT. There are several great lines on here, but far too often Dennis just repeats the song title over and over or tries so hard to make up rhymes off the top of his head that he neglects to come up with any jokes. But look at the time! Let's sample a few of these 'great lines' I keep harping on and on about.
Incidentally, you can't actually 'look' at time, so don't spend too much time trying to do that.
"John Wayne licked cancer/Beat me off!"
"I'm happy as Hell 'cuz today I got AIDS.... There's a sparrow sitting on a fence/Playing with a worm around his beak/He may eat it eventually/I can't keep anything down."
"Five times two equals ten months to live/After I caught AIDS, that's all I had left - with my pink triangle!"
"Oh, the niggers I've loved and the civil rights marches I've marched in/With Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom"
"Someone's knocking on your heart, Maria/Could it be Old Joe from the war?/Or could it be Joe's brother, whom you're screwing behind your lover's back?"
"The dogs of war came home/And had a celebration inside your big fat whore pussy"
"Dating bitches is wrong/Bathhouses are more my style"
"69 was the temperature/Of the day they got together/For a session of 69/In the year '69"
"I may take a chance with a chick/But I know I'll only end up wanting a dick"
That's my opinion.
My o-pinion and rack steering, that is!!!
Wait, I can't just end it like that. Let's end with a joke. People love jokes. Here you go:
Q. How did Dave Matthews know that his girlfriend was cheating on him?
A. Her pussy smelled like Phish
I totally made that up just now! Is Jimmie "J.J." Walker hiring?
Hey, my wife's dad just came down with some really bad disease so she'll probably be on the computer most of the day. As such, let me make this snappy while she's in the shower.
Don't buy this one. By Frogs standards, it's extremely weak. Three songs were pulled for My Daughter The Broad and one for It's Only Right And Natural, and without these songs, my grade would go down to a low 5. The vocals are far, FAR too loud and irritatingly off-key, and the lyrics aren't funny at all. 7 of the 17 unreleased songs are gay-oriented, 7 are played on electric guitar, 7 on piano and 5 on acoustic guitar (which is goddamned impossible if there are only 17 unreleased songs, but that's what I wrote down), and the only push tracks are the relaxed "Jasmine" ("Her father had the hots for me"), the romantic "I'm A Ghost" ("It's been raining all night in my groin") and the only hilarious song on here, "The Indian Life (Li Die Die)" ("Things look different when we're smoking our pipes, when we're making love with birds"). The rest are just a collection of gay references more than actual jokes, as evidenced by boring song titles like "I'm In Love With A Man," "Get Yourself A Man (If You're A Man)," "Around the World (W/All The Men In My Arms)" and "Jap Boy In Pink." And on the 'waste of a great song title' tip, get a load of the depressingly obnoxious "The Quickest Way To A Man's Heart Is Through His Ass."
Okay, wife's about to come back. Her father may only have eight months to live, so I can't hog up the computer to tell a bunch of dick jokes. Here's hoping your father (and hers) has more than eight months to live!
Heck, here's hoping we ALL have more than eight months to live! Otherwise, how will our babies be born? Babies need nine months! We would have all needed to have sex over a month ago for them to be born before we die. Oh wait - there's always premature birth like I did! Oh hurry babies, hurry!
One other funny line from this record (possibly the ONLY other funny line on this record): "The death rampage we went on ended in love."
Talk about a conundrum! I was taking a shower the other morning, enjoying the womblike heat of the fiery water spray, when suddenly a half hour flew by and the water turned warm, then tepid, then as frigid as your girlfriend when I'm not around, and it reminded me that my wife hadn't taken a shower yet. And I thought to myself, "Boy, I'm in hot water now!" But the thing is -- I wasn't in HOT water. As a matter of fact - and this is gonna kill ya, I was in C
So named for the smooth-skinned web-footed largely aquatic tailless agile leaping amphibians from whence they took their name, The Frogs are a pair of smooth-skinned web-footed largely aquatic tailless agile leaping amphibians owned by Milwaukee-based six-year-old Eddy Flemion. These Frogs (or "Amphibians") wile away their days playing the piano underwater, strumming acoustic guitars on land, and singing all variety of manner. Sometimes Eddy holds Variety Shows for the neighborhood children, and dresses The Frogs up in wings and bald spots to perform their merry melodies of mirth for all to see. Wait - what the hell am I writing here? This isn't TRUE! I pride myself on TRUTH, and this isn't TRUE!
David Bowie has little evident talent. Ah yes, here we go. I'm feeling more truthful already. Even at their best, Weezer was never any good. Excellent! Let's begin.
This particular CD doesn't have a ton of 'hilarious' material on it, but the concepts are interesting and there's a fair amount of actual singing. The deal with the Frogs' made-up songs is that if the music's catchy (which is usually is) and they're SINGING nonsense, I'm okay with that. That's music. It's when Dennis is just talking and not saying anything interesting that I become frustrated with the material. See, when somebody SPEAKS to me, I expect it to be worth my while listening to them, like a George W. Bush speech wherein he says many important and truthful things that will have tremendous effect on the future of our world. Alternately, when Dick Cheney comes on TV and does a little soft-shoe, I just expect musical entertainment. It's an important subtlety, but a different one.
Oh my, I've strayed terribly from my established template. What I meant to say was that 3 of these songs wound up on My Daughter The Broad and 2 on Bananimals, leaving 15 unreleased tracks. 10 are performed on acoustic guitar/drums, 4 on piano, and one on cello. That's right, a cello put in pop -- as promoted by Bill Cosby! HA HAHAH! OH!!! HAAH AHAHAHH! I guess I'd call 4 of them 'gay-themed,' although odd sexual and friendship issues creep into many of the other tracks as well. The disc includes many, many push tracks, including the calm peaceful "The Negro Nun From Alaska," bouncy country "We Are Men (Verse 5, The Gay Bible)," gross goodtime "The Homo Zoo (Oh What Did I See At)," angry strange "I'm Mad At You," hilariously repetitive "Brent The Hairy Bear," dramatic treated piano (I think?) "It's The Rain, It Ain't Like Belgium Or Spain (The Taste Of The Blood)," Russian balalaika "Freak Show," tacky but pretty "The Priest W/Chocolate Diarrhea" and folky murder ballad "G.I. Bill." Though you may not laugh out loud at a plot development like "Man comes home from war/Woman is happy because she doesn't have to masturbate anymore/Man puts grenade in woman's vagina and pulls the pin," certainly you'll at least find it... 'intriguing' somehow. Particularly if you hate women!
Great song titles wasted on go-nowhere lyrics include "Church Or Stay Home And Fuck The Cows?," "The Razor Blade Club" and "Thalid Pajama Party" (though there is something charming about the line "Bring your dog; you're gonna need a way to get home"). Say, speaking of quotes:
"We're gonna have to rename this whole country 'San Francisco'!"
(from "The Homo Zoo"): "There's a handlebar mustache on the water buffalo..."
"When I get mad, that's when I FIST-FUCK!!!"
"Brent my friend the furry bear who killed animal after animal for me and took care of me like a bear does"
"No one will accept wine from a priest with diarrhea, but you'll gladly accept sex from a nun."
So chalk another one up for nature's Frogs, who record more songs in an hour than most bands record breaking home run. Way to go, Sammy Sosa!
God, you know who's so fuckin' funny I can't even shit straight when they're around? Those fuckin' JibJab guys. Remember how they made fun of the President a few years ago? Hilarious! Well, think again because now they've got a real gut-buster called "Farting Elves." I don't want to give away the joke, but let's just say that it gives a whole new meaning to the term "Elf Gas"! Oh sweet sweet JibJab. Remember when they made fun of John Kerry a few years ago? Priceless! They said he was smart and his wife was a Ketchup heiress. Ha ha! Stick it to 'em, JibJab!
This Frogs CD is the home and lending library of most of what was to become It's Only Right And Natural. A full 9 of its 25 tracks wound up on that timeless CD, with an additional 2 being sashayed away to My Daughter The Broad. What's really surprising, however, is that several of the remaining tracks kick some real great ass too! The key here is that while the previous Made-Up discs all sounded like a bunch of one-take deals, these songs are all multi-tracked, with stereo acoustic guitar lines intertwining with each other, electric leads wiggling on top, drums and tambourines takin' care of rhythm, and even a few cello moments because The Frogs are fucking classical music. The neat thing about overdubs is that they make all the music sound more pre-planned - like actual COMPOSITIONS, rather than a guy dicking around while his brother says a bunch of nonsense. After all, if you've taken the time to write counterpoint guitar and/or cello lines, that means you've actually listened to the song before posting it for sale on your web site, and must have liked it enough to both keep it and improve it.
Musical styles herein include minor-key blues, macho driving stomp-rock, nostalgic wistfulness, rockabilly, a racist waltz and, as always, gallons of beautiful acoustic melodies flowing through the strip. For obvious reasons, it's difficult to recommend this particular disc to folks who already own It's Only Right And Natural. However, just so you know, the 26 unreleased minutes of this disc are every bit as melodic and witty as the 22 released minutes. Push tracks include "Don't Close Up The Peepshows," "Love U So Much Monsieur (But I Just Don't Know How To Get The Jam Out Of My Pants)," "The Skunk (I Don't Care If They Call Me A Drunk)," "Prison Days (Were Nice)," "The Last Time I Slipped Into Bed," "Here Comes Santa's Pussy," "Robin At My Feet (Dolled-Up Like A Bitch In Heat)," "Raise Your Mugs (For Old England)" and "Wheely Boy."
If you go back through every page on my site and even the first 14 or so entries on this page, you'll find that not once have I ever quoted a lyric by any artist or band. This is because most rock songs are instrumental (ex. Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein," Boston's "The Journey," Journey's "The Boston"). However, on this strange male occurrence, I've decided that everything in Life has to change. I'M PREGNANT! with possibilities, including the sharing of such lyrics as:
"Why can't we enjoy pornography and sex with the animals? I think I'll take my problems to the president."
"I'm your wheely boy/Fill you with such crippled joy"
"I see something long and furry come through the wall. Sorta greasy, so I figure it's a Mexican."
"Was it a man? Or a woman? I'm pretty sure it wasn't moving like an animal. It could've been a woman. It could've been my grandma."
"The presents come out, Santa comes out. He's got his crazy candy cane/He puts on that old white beard and rams it up the old poopchute train"
(upon seeing a nude woman for the first time): "This is all wrong!"
(following a particularly lousy and offensive set of lyrics): "Raise your mug for Olde England/Raise your songwriting credentials"
And 6 of the 14 unreleased tracks are homosexually inclined. You know what else is gay? Businesses and the president. Fuck you, businesses and the president!
I was reading my web site in its entirety last night when I began noticing a certain coldness to many of the entries. After a bit of reflection on the matter, I realized what was wrong: There simply weren't enough anecdotes about my dog.
Unlike many pet owners, I like my dog quite the large amount. Henry The Dog is a funny little 5-year-old covered in fur whom my wife and I raised from a 7-week-old pup. Let me share with you just a few anecdotes from the past week or so to illustrate the humorous aspect of nature's animals, the dog.
One of Henry's favorite pastimes is to grab an article of clothing (not his, incidentally) and run around the couch shaking it in his mouth like an idiot. Why, just two days ago, I woke up in the morning and went downstairs to find my wife's scarf lying suspiciously on the ground in front of Henry's den (i.e. a foam rubber cushion underneath the living room table). I took a step to retrieve said item when Henry leapt in front of me like Bob Hilarious, grabbed the scarf and started shaking it around like an asshole. I managed to grab it away, returning a sense of calm to our home. But then, not three minutes later, he came running out of the back room with ANOTHER of my wife's scarves in his mouth! So I chased him around the couch for a few minutes, eventually grabbed the scarf and placed it atop the counter alongside the first scarf. So then he tried to grab one of her boots. Thankfully he quickly gave up on that endeavor, and the day progressed as it will. Hours later, my wife arrived home from work and the first thing Henry did after greeting her was stick his head in her purse, grab a THIRD scarf, and run around shaking it in his mouth like a jackass! Bottom line: Why does my wife have so many scarves?
Similarly, three nights ago while sleeping drunkenly on the couch (with wife sleeping drunkenly on floor next to couch), I awoke at about 3 AM to the sights and sounds of Henry jumping around and throwing my wife's wool hat all over creation. At three in the confounded morning! I gave him a treat and told him to stop acting like a nincompoop. Next thing you know, I'm stirred awake at 6 AM by the sensation of somebody trying to remove the sock from my right foot. Usually this would be a terrorist, but on this occasion it was Henry The Dog again! He was just standing next to the couch, casually tugging on my sock with his mouth, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Since such is not the case (he generally sticks to clothes that are OFF a person), I almost woke my wife up to show her this delightful going-on. As it turned out, I need not have even considered doing so, for it was all her doing! Apparently she'd woken up a few minutes earlier to see Henry walking around restlessly. She asked him, "Are you looking for a sock?" He responded by walking over to his patented 'squeaky sock' (an ingenious toy created by my wife, who inserted a 'squeaky' into one of my old socks and tied it closed, thus creating a patented, trademarked, copyrighted 'squeaky sock'). He didn't squeak it though, so my wife said "Get a sock!" He responded by walking over to a pile of filthy sweaty dirty awful Tae Kwon Do clothes that we'd set on the floor earlier to dry out before throwing them in the hamper, and looking for a sock therein. Finding none, he then (because he's brilliant, and a genius) looked around the room until he noticed, "Hey! There are socks on those FEET over there!," walked to the other end of the couch and began tugging on my fairly clean sock that I'd only worn for an hour or so before going to sleep, so don't get all grossed out. And the anecdote has come full-circle!
One more anecdote for you, this one from Monday afternoon. As I mentioned, all of these anecdotes are just from the last few days. It's not like I'm picking out the most exciting things he's ever done and sharing them with you. This kind of silliness is part and parcel of daily life with a doggy pet, which is why they're so popular. They're fun! They each have their own personalities (though they do all share strange traits as well -- for example, many dogs love to run around with articles of clothing in their mouth; it's sort of a puppyish 'predator/prey' game), and they love the Hell out of you as long as you don't get some jerkass self-centered breed. Go mutt; that's my advice. Too much inbreeding in the breeder world - causes diseases and stupidity. Oh, but the anecdote!
At our local tennis court/basketball court/handball court, there is a little wooden playground area affixed atop a bunch of red rubber tiles. I guess they're rubber - I'm not really sure. At any rate, I've noticed in the past that they're very slippery when wet. So Henry and I were walking around the other morning when I suddenly noticed a squirrel sitting on top of a wooden post in this playground area. Because Henry loves to chase squirrels, I pointed it out to him. He stared intently and slowly began stalking it, creeping a little bit forward, a little bit more forward, a liiitttttle more.... Knowing that squirrels don't sit still forever, I nudged him softly with my foot and whispered, "Go get him!"
Now let me pause here to mention that it had snowed the night before.
Being a slow thinker, my thoughts as Henry raced toward the playground area were made up entirely of "Does the squirrel not hear him coming? Why isn't the squirrel moving? Wow, Henry's gonna get really close!" These innocent thoughts were shattered to dust when Henry hit the ice-covered red rubber tiles and suddenly found himself SLIDING at about 75 miles an hour toward his intended squirrel prey. Ice possessing no brake features, he slid right past the wooden post, under a wooden beam, and all the way to the concrete on the other side of the rubber tiles. By this point, the squirrel had gotten his head out of his ass and was running towards a nearby tree, where he belonged (the prick). And by the time Henry was up and running again, the squirrel was nestled high on a branch, where it angrily chittered at its pursuer for about three minutes afterwards. Oh, sweet good times Dogwise.
Just so you don't think he's a monster, I'd like to stress that Henry only likes CHASING squirrels, not catching them. He's never caught one, never killed one, and if he gets really close to one, he just stares at it, like "Why aren't you running? Come on, do something!"
See? Doesn't my web site feel all warm and cozy now that I've added some dog anecdotes? Now I can run through my Frogs Made-Up CD review template and get on with my day. Oooh! Actually it's lunchtime! Ta!
(*eats lunch*)
Darn, that didn't solve anything. Made Up Songs #5,7,9 is another strong entry in the series. Like the last one, it is full of extremely pretty acoustic guitar interplay, as well as a few bouncy piano ditties. Not all of the lyrics have much point, but who cares when the music sounds so darned good? The happy, the sad, the romantic, the eerie, the gorgeous, the somber, the poppy, the energetic - these are the many moods of the many Frogs. Also, the flute in one song.
3 of these tracks are on It's Only Right And Natural, and 2 each have been relegated to My Daughter The Broad and Bananimals, leaving an unreleased 16 or "Baker's Dozen." Push tracks include the Beau Brummelsy "Nigger Where Ya Goin', Nigger Where Ya Been?," cello-enhanced "Party W/Party Without (Shut Up About It Already)," Gary Glittery "Garden Hose (The Nozzle Boys)," sorrowful "Cold Cobra Nebraska Evening," utterly jubilant "So Full Of Shit Boys," inscrutable "The Attack Of The Trees On The Village (Bethlehem Hill)," lovely pop "Love Was The Devil's Idea," bouncy "Cacti Bra Competition (Who's Gonna Be #1?)," delicate "When The Cat Pisses In The Corner Again," funny as hell "I Feel So Good I Could Croak" and darkly amorous "Somewhere In The Hills At Night." And that's a hella lottta push tracks! (particularly since the term 'push track' refers to a song being promoted for airplay by a record label, and none of the Made-Up Songs discs have even been submitted to record labels as far as I know).
Push lyrics include:
"The handlebarred boys strolling through/Oh, they've been to the top and back/Let's all take a crap in their laps"
"The Governor came out and made a speech/He told the trees to go home and wash their teats/Of course these were male trees and being disobedient, they never washed their teats"
"I'm tired of this game/This urine drinking is just plain nuts/I'll take this chalice and shove it up the goat's rump"
"It came as a shock/A lonely jackal-box baby playing with your toy/(pause)/Did you meet my friend Roy?"
"See, I'm really changing. I've got lips like a goddamned grasshopper now."
"The competition is steep/Just like a swollen hardened T-E-A-T"
"I intend to be around for a while/I've got plenty of young boys to seduce still/You can't lock me up and keep me away forever/I'll get out and maybe I'll become President!"
Push ups include:
Lying chest-down with your hands at shoulder level, palms flat on the floor and slightly more than shoulder-width apart, and feet together and parallel to each other.
Looking forward rather than down at the floor. The first contact you make with the floor with any part of the face should be your chin, not your nose.
Keeping your legs straight and your toes tucked under your feet.
There! You've now done 1/3rd of a push up! That's enough for today. Our next exercise will be the "Screw" (if you're a girl).
By the time they rolled around to making this one, years had passed (presumably) and one or both of "Da Bruddahs" from Forest Hills, Queens had hung up his leather jacket and given birth to a child (I assume). Not only this, but a plethora of new effects processors (one, it sounds like) and recording equipment (none, as far as I can tell) have inspired them to bring a whole new experimental bent to their artwerk. No longer content to fash bags and act silly, the Frogs here create intriguing aural collages of looped noise, weird echoey children's laughter/screams, reverbed falsetto backup vocals, pitch-manipulated oddities, and fresh folk guitar stylings. The lyrics have become second-hand citizens indeed in this, the new Frogs Pan-Universe, with much of the vocalsmanship limited to falsetto 'la la la's, 'la da dee da's and 'WAAAAHHHH!'s. I hate titles and categories more than a pencil factory employee hates the jerks over at the pen factory, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and label this effort "Experimental Psychedelic Baby Folk."
3 of these songs are on Banjanibals and 1 is on My Draftcard The Bitch, but a pure 17 remain unreleased unto this very day. It starts a little slow with some old-style stinkers ("Momma, Queen Of The World" = least memorable Frogs song EVER), but of these 17 unreleased tracks, a full ELEVEN were heavily promoted to radio by Capitol Records as "push tracks," including the Beau Brummelsy (seriously! again!) "Paul Hello (To Ireland We Go)," happy acoustic baby thing "Hoot & 1/2," tri-distorted-guitar-toned beast "Pink On Pink (Man Tonight)," adorable loungey children's song "Bring Back The 80's/The 90's Are On The Way," sorrowful crybaby slapback keyboard guitar "How Does Sad Go?," creepy crispy icky squishy heavy avant-garde slow-downer "Adoration," witty blues basser "As Long As No One Gets Hurt," noise loop/acoustic strum/over-chorused electric/viola racket/oozy squoozy/repetitive rocker "Bruce Lee, Heroin & The Punk Scene," warbly dramatic Racially Yours throwback "U Owe Me," mellow jazzy bitterness "Rock Die Rock" and distorted sluggish mess of overdubbed slow riffs "Sad Song." Neat songs, and well worth your hearing dollars!
Regardless of the lyrics playing such a minor role in these songs, it probably won't surprise you to learn that two tracks still focus on gay issues. Unfortunately, with so few lyrics of whimsical interest, my 'quotes' section is going to be teeny!
"I went to confession the next afternoon. Priest said it was okay just as long as nobody got hurt. I said, 'She's dead.' He said, 'Well, nobody got hurt.' I said, 'Yeah!'"
That pretty much covers it. However, it's also ASS-important to point out that I, Mark Prindle, once recorded a cover of one of these songs for Jesse Alora's web site! It was "Rock Die Rock," a brilliantly pissed-off mellow expression of angst regarding a rock star viewed on the singer's television screen. The gentle vocal melody lulls you into thinking it's a touching love ballad of nature, but listen a bit more closely to the murmurs and you'll hear quite a harangue! "Look at you go. Look at you teaching me. Oh, now you're gonna rock. Now you're gonna roll. Now you're gonna do it. Now I'm gonna shoot you, dumbshit.... Holy shit, how many times will I have to look at your nonsense?.... Look at you go, look at you rock, look at you bore me, look at you die." You tell 'em, Kermit! GET IT??? "KERMIT"??? "THE FROGS"??? "KERMIT THE FROG"??!?!! GET IT????
Yes, we all enjoy a good Kermit Schaefer joke from time to time, but once you've pardoned my blooper a few thousand times, where else is there to go from that?
That reminds me of something hilarious. You know that neurologist dude Oliver Sacks that did Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and all that stuff? Well, heh, I wonder if anybody has ever walked into his office with a telephone in their hand and said, "Oliver Sacks, a phone!" (Oliver Saxophone) HA HA! (Ha Ha) HA HEEEEEEEE!
While we're on the topic of laughter, here's a joke you can tell your friends but be sure to give me credit because I made it up:
Q. How many boats does it take to change a lightbulb?
Wait, that wasn't it. I had a really good one. Ah! I remember:
Q. What's the difference between John Lennon and a boat?
Wait, I had a better one. Ah! I remember:
Q. How can you tell when Lindsay Lohan has gotten into your cheese?
What, you want a conclusion? I don't conclude; the world concludes. I just sit back and rake in the conclusion dough.
Also, on a more serious note, 'WHAT YOU BELIEVE' HAS NO IMPACT ON 'WHAT ACTUALLY IS'. The world will continue to do what it does, and whether you believe in ghosts, God, UFOs or a gigantic penis that squirted the universe out in a morning squeeze, your faith is just a hill of imagination beans if there's no observable proof to back it up. So stop trying to legislate your stupid made-up bullshit!
Oh, I forgot. This review goes out to GWB and my Supreme Court Homies - in the heeeyouse!
The second of the Frogs' two bonafide 'kinda stink'-ers, this one travels beyond the experimentation of the last disc to embrace full-scale self-indulgence. Imagine the worst, stupidest early Ween outtakes you can imagine, then add a bunch of screaming children and falsetto-whining adults to the mix. Seriously, I own like three Yoko Ono albums and I STILL think this might be the most annoyingly high-pitched screaming-filled piece of unlistenable shit I've ever heard. There's also a bunch of overdistorted fuzz noise, lots of mostly-instrumental dickfuckery, screwing around with vocal effects, and putting their mouths so close to the mic that the words come out impossibly muffled. The words are mostly pointless anyway, with like two jokes in the entire hour. As such, I give it a 6, only 4 points lower than a perfect 10.
Why the 6? Parodies, parodies, parodies! Funny parodies too. You probably already know the sex-rock parody "Dreambox" and college rock parody "Pay" (also available on My Daughter The Broad and Bananimals, possibly respectively), but do you know the Carribean kettle drum "The Music Business Sucks," hilarious 'big rock star singer' parody "Caged," ridiculous soul-rock parody "Feelin' Good," power ballad parody "Pussy G" and tough macho blues rocker "Free All The Niggers"? Or how about "Banana" and "& Then U Got AIDS," which aren't parodies but are still great? Have you heard those? No? Then how about "Vaahh! (#1) (variation)," "Johnny Get Out Of My Jidge," "Jew-Jew," "Chocolate Pudding Poop" or "Squirrel D C"? Those are terrible! Have you heard those? They're really, really bad! You should hear them!
So out of 22 unreleased tracks, I love 7, tolerate 10, and loathe 5. And lest you know, without "Dreambox" and "Pay," this pizza shit would get a 5 and no 6 at all. I hate little kids; I don't want to hear them screaming for 49 minutes! Had they been dogs instead of children, I'd give it a 9.
Two songs have funny lines. That's it. TWO. Here, take them:
THESE LYRICS ARE FROM "PUSSY G," A FUNNY GOOD SONG OF HILARIOUS:
"Good times with pussy!"
THESE LYRICS ARE FROM "'NAM," A DRAMATIC SAD SYNTHESIZER SONG THAT WOULD RULE BALLS IF IT WASN'T NEARLY NINE MINUTES LONG:
"I said I was sorry for the My Lai massacre"
Richard Pryor died of a heart attack today. Have a good time in Heaven, Mr. Pryor. Enjoy wearing your angel wings and walking along the angel streets and kicking up all the angel dust.
Wait a minute. Are we sure this wasn't a suicidal heart attack?
I'm not sure why anybody would want to buy this. It's a live version of less than half of the Racially Yours album. 12 songs, and not even the BEST 12 songs. Instead, it's just half the album - half the great songs and half the just okay songs. Apparently the album was originally supposed to be only these 12 songs, but when it wasn't picked up by any labels, the fellows wrote an additional 13 songs in 92/93 to fill the thing out like a good album should. As for this live thing, should you care that all the songs are performed on bass, guitar and drums rather than the album's (mainly) keyboards, guitar and drums? Maybe, if you're a huge fan. And in retrospect, it's interesting that they performed half of the album in concert years before the CD actually came out, but at this point it is far, far advisable to buy the real article if you don't already own it.
One thing I'll say in its defense though: the drumming sounds terrific. Dennis is very loud in the mix, his drums sound all crisp and military, and he really kicks some mean ass during the more aggressive songs. The guitar sounds all scraggly and out of tune during the first few numbers, like Jimmy keeps accidentally hitting his tremelo bar or something (or the tape is bad?), but it eventually gets all cleared up. Also, it's a little strange to hear Jimmy's guitar being completely overwhelmed by a distorted bass on a batch of previously quiet, inobtrusive songs, but that's the nature of your live performance I'm guessing. Same reason his voice warbles so badly out of tune at times. But what NYC crowd wouldn't have laughed enjoyably at the lyric "Where's Dinkins when you need him? He's not around - he's underground!" You see, David Dinkins was a black man and former NYC mayor. And (I'm told) a terrible one.
And that's all the Frogs CDs I own, aside from half of CBGayB Live and a terrific compilation disc of solo serious Jimmy material that Mr. JWB made for me. Several other discs are available on their web site (mostly live or solo stuff), and I personally have a ton of songs that don't seem to be for sale anymore -- including (but not limited to) "Have U Met Mr. Love?," "A Portrait In Hell (A Drunk Jagging A Bag Lady)," "All You Need Is A Man Or A Sheep If You're Lonely (If You're Horny Stick W/Sheep)," "You're A Boy, You're A Girl (What's The Difference Anyway)," "Drugs, Witches, Chalices & Love Is Here Now," "It's A Holiday Wedding Anniversary," "Love Grades 'Sexual Miss Conduct'," "The Wild Mouth of the Buck-Toothed Priest," "Dirty Rotten (Stinking) Filthy Love," "Do You Think I'm Coming? (We've Been Loving 25 Hours Straight, I Intend To Cum Any Hour Now)," "Judy Garland Legs All Over My Walls," "The Bitch In Red Was A Man," "Officially Dead (Unofficially Alive On The Other Side)," "The Lollipops Suck Song," "Will The Public Accept My Songs?," "Wild Growing Ass And Pussy On The Seaside," "I'm So Scared Girl (At Last Count I Had AIDS)," "Oh The Men I've Met In This Town & The Life I've Led," "Maureen Gopher (Your Husband Had A Tan Across The Lizard)," "Skindiving 4 Your Love (Diving Down)," "Pattycake Tombstone," "She Was A Pagan Virgin Ape Girl (Shining Like The Sun)," "Well I Looked Good And I Looked God," "Fruits" and "Sodomy: Is It Correct? (A Discussion)" -- but whatcha gone do?
So what's next for The Frogs? Will they ever release another official CD? There are still enough great unreleased tracks on the discs I've reviewed here to fill up another five Bananimals-type CDs if they can find an interested label. Plus I'm sure they've written a kerchillion songs since. So who's to know and who's to say? Probably God.
Speaking of which - if you're bored, check this out. You know that old '60s band The Nova Local that I'm always raving about on my Nova Local review page? Well, it turns out that the singer from that band has turned into a raving Calvinist weirdo! Check out his web site at HERE. Of particular interest is the "Dispute With An Arminian Adversary," which came about due to a former bandmate's attempt to contact him just to say hello. The Larry King interview is also hilarious. The guy's a NUT! He's become a 16th century religious puritan filled with the wrath of God -- who refers to the Pope as "The Anti-Christ!" And this is the same guy who sang "If You Only Had The Time"? What has LSD acid done to our hippie youth generation?
These guys are so great! Their songs remind me of the Kinks - very catchy and clever, and when Jimmy kicks on the distortion box, they can ROCK OUT!! It's easy to lose an appreciation for their true talent in the fog of the fag jokes (which would be a great title for their next album, don't you think?).
They have a 7" on matador the features live versions of "Adam & Steve" and "Now You Know You're Black" that totally rage - very very loud and distorted. Lately they seem to be doing a jazzy version of both.
One of the biggest perks of living in Wisconsin (besides all the free whores) is being able to see these guys live quite often, and sometimes in little coffee shops. But no matter how small the venue, Jimmy always wears the giant glitter-bat costume.
This is seriously a wonderful record to listen to. Hearing all the strong
melodies, smooth production, and soothing tones of the Brothers Flemion you
totally forget they're actually The Frogs. I think there's a lot of
funny/clever stuff on this that's very very subtle ("I'm a Jesus child" for
instance). I really am curious what I would of thought of this if I hadn't
heard their other material.
Girl: What's a 'blog'?
Boy: A 'web log,' you ninny!
(*the next day*)
Girl: Have you checked my plog today?
Boy: What's a plog?
Girl: (*holding out a steaming piece of her own shit*) A 'poop log,' silly!
Boy: It seems okay.
There's urine all over the black guy!
Second Man: I know. What do you think is the problem?
First Man: I don't know.
Second Man: Me neither. It's frustrating.
First Man: Oh, hang on. I figured it out.
Second Man: What's the deal?
First Man: Well, I'm Adam, the first man. And you're my son Cain, the second man. We're the only two men on Earth, and we're both right here. So who would drive the bus?
Second Man: I don't know. Can't you make a bus driver out of your rib or something?
First Man: No. You see... I'm not "Abel"! (able)
Second Man: That would have made more sense as my line.
First Man: Fuck you.
A. Hoe, hoe, hoe!
A. A bunch of gay elves
A. When he told them he was in 'dire straits,' they thought he was just being arrogant!
Who's there?
Stephen Hawking
That's funny; you don't sound like Stephen Hawking.
I know. My voice synthesizer broke so I'm talking through a vacuum cleaner.
I was reading this at work while our accountant was fretfully working on this year's 1099s, and I had to leave the room for fear of disturbing everyone with my uncontrollable convulsions of laughter. Holy crap this is funny stuff - both the lyrics and your own homemade jokes. And I've never heard the Frogs (I've read about em though), but their lyrics look pretty funny too. The one about getting too close to the stroller is still cracking me up.
One classic line Prindle forgot, from "Been A Month Since I Had A Man":
"I talk to mother about it
I can talk to mother about it
When I talk to father about it
He says 'You're a faggot'".
Im gay and I thought this record was funny as shit! Honestly I didn't think they were a real band (my sister sent me a home-burned CD) I thought it was some guys doing voice overs of music from old gay porn. thats what it sounds like-Really! I thought they just took out all the "yeah, boy... Stick it in's and sung- talked over it. Plus "Ive got drugs" is one of the best songs of all time. when playing it for other people. play it someplace where the can't run away- like a car. they will invariably ask "what the fuck is this? did you make it yourself?" not homophobic at all.
Mr. Prindle:
I think Dennis wrote and is singing "Black Man Black Man", "White Guy", "Whitefully Dead", "I Had A Dream," and "Uncle Sam Loves You". Jimmy's voice is thinner, more nasal, and he tends to
project more.
Now now now now now, funny music is alright, but there's a Feinlein between
the joke serving the music, and the music serving the joke. Frank Zappa is
an example of the former. Blondie and the Pixies are an example of the
latter. At least on Parallel Lines, Surfer Rosa, and Doolittle--ick.
Hopefully the Frogs are not Blondie.
I can't believe Prindle likes this one THE BEST. I mean, it mostly is genius
but I find some songs get tiresome on repeated listens (like "I Had The
Change Done At The Shop" pts 1 and 2). A story! Long ago I was making a
tape for my brother and put on about 70 percent of this record. He got very
excited and wanted me to tape him the whole thing. 'No', I said, 'You don't
want the whole thing'. He insisted he did so I gave it all to him and he
agreed with me.
Finally found this one - and wanted to share my personal favorite part:
From "Lifeguard of Love"
(apologies if I didn't get the words exactly right)
Hey
i'm not usually a geek for details, but the frogs' "starjob" was released on scratchy records, which was owned by james iha, d'arcy. other than that you're spot on with all your reviews. keep up the brilliant work.
You mother mother motherfuckers
You' re gonna get yours
Either tomorrow or tonight
Tomorrow morning
You rotten bastards
I don't know if you're gay or straight
And personally i don't care
You just keep making fun of everything
You wasted ten years of my life
I'm not the bastard, it's you
It's you
I told you before, but it's true
And i don't care what you think or what you do
It's all over for you
You wasted a whole decade, you fucks
You missed the whole goddamn thing
And now, now you blame me
Oh you blame me, fuck you
I've nothing to lose
Fuck you, fuck you
This is my favourite from the made-up songs stuff...I don't know why! "Pay"
is amazing, and the music biz mini-suite is cool, but what I love is the
final song, "Sailors Board Me Now", a mainstay of billions of mix tapes I've
made for people since this CD came out. "I was born/to be fucked like a cow"
might be the funniest couplet ever the Frogs came up with.
(Homage to "Let It Be" by Lennon/McCartney)
Homage Lyrics by Al Yankovic
I just turn on my TV
There's my favorite rabbit
Bugs Bunny
Young men dying pointlessly
Who says 'Nyeah, what's up doc?"
Bugs Bunny
Chomping on a carrot
Bugs Bunny
Hurricanes and tsunami
'Duck Season?' 'No, it's Wabbit Season'
Bugs Bunny
And raise their children heartlessly?
And who took the wrong turn at Albuquerque?
Bugs Bunny
Genocide in Rwanda
Bugs Bunny
Israel, get out of Palestine
Bugs Bunny
Jimmy: "I never found out her name/I never found out her game"
Dennis: "Why not?"
Jimmy: "I don't know!"
"Ida Know!"
(*Two snickering ghosts with names printed in thick black ink on their translucent bodies run from the room*)
"Cilla Will Ya" is about Elvis. Note the southern-drawl intonation and
mention of Graceland, as well as the fact that Cilla is probably short for
Priscilla Presley. Which makes the karate instructor line that much more
insane (and hilarious).
'Hilarious' Mark Prindle: Heh! Yeah... (silence)
Old Man: (silence)
Who's there?
Gonnorhea!
Gonnorhea who?
I don't know - let me in and I'll rub around on your genitals so you can find out!
On a high red roof, Don Gato sat
He was there to read a letter (Meow meow meow)
Where the reading light was better (Meow meow meow)
'Twas a love note for Don Gato.
Written for Elmo & Patsy
By Mark Prindle, Top-Selling Online Record Reviewer Of The Day
Grandma's corpse got dug up by an elf
While we were eating egg nog and watching Gidget
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But at very least, I swear it was a midget
And we begged him not to dig
But he hit me with his shovel
And called Martin Luther King 'a lousy nig'
Back behind the men's room lockers
There was elf juice on her forehead!
And incriminating prejac on her knockers
For selling his dick on ebay for $450
A. It depends on how high the urine has gotten!
A. One of them sang "Give Peace A Chance" and the other one floats over urine to change a lightbulb!
A. Because the bottom of your boat is stained yellow and there's a fresh lightbulb!
"Did I tell you about my operation? Did I tell you about colostomy?"
"Times like these are hard for boys to get pussy, so please be sympathetic to my call"
"You know I love you in the summer. Come September? Heh. Good luck."
"Still trying to get over the good times/All the fun in Vietnam"
(the concluding lines) "USA - 0. Vietnam - 1."
Thank you so very, very much for reviewing these guys. No other record
review site has done them justice, and I'm glad to see such an
under-appreciated outfit get the full-discography treatment they deserve.
Hell, I think I may have been one of the people who suggested you do a Frogs
page in the first place!
The first time I saw Lez Frogz live, they kept doing this schtick where Dennis was pissed off at the sound man, and Jimmy, and, well, the whole fucking band (of which I have only left out the bass player). Dennis was obviously the 'boss' that night (I would learn later that this is not always the case) and kept stopping songs to come out from behind the drums to step on Jimmy's effects pedals. No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to get Jimmy's guitar to sound the way he wanted and he just got pissier and pissier throughout the show. Jimmy played a great guitar solo from a chair in the audience during one song.
I know some are expensive, but not all are -- so buy some FROGS here!
Did anything happen? It's rigged up to kill you.