One J. King, Esq. recently returned from an Australian jaunt with his mighty Queers and, as usual, reported in to Weasel Manor. As is often the case, he arrived bearing gifts: t-shirts and CDs offered by people who I suspect in at least some cases might be laboring under the delusion that I am somehow capable of furthering their careers in the music industry. Or maybe they're just being nice. Either way, I always appreciate the goods.
Anyhoo, with no disrespect to the rest of the booty (!), one disc in particular stands out - Aloha! Go Bananas by the Spazzys. The results of their shot at that rare trick of taking Ramones-worship somewhere beyond Z-grade tribute band territory are surprisingly and consistently original, listenable and just plain fun; they even reach a few heights of the sort seldom attempted by the Joey/Dee Dee tandem or that duo's musical offspring. With this record, the Spazzys strut confidently down the line between pop and punk so often ignored by alleged pop-punk bands who seem to understand very little about pop or punk.
Most pop-punk bands are generic, boring clones of each other. They use the sounds, chord progressions and lyrical subject matter of the Ramones and their brethren as a template to be Xeroxed, each subsequent copy coming out duller and more blurry until the whole thing is revealed as utterly pointless. The Spazzys' "Zombie Girl" is about as good an example as I can peel off the top of my head of the kind of inspired, loony punk rock that can result when the templates as well as what inspires them are understood well enough to be warped and mutated by a trio of outcasts into a joyous Teenage Loser Freak anthem that can stand alone proudly on its own three feet. Toss in "Hey Hey Baby," "Steal A Kiss," "Shake And Twist" - all of which employ some of the better vocal production ideas of the bubblegum era over a loud, insistent backbeat - and a killer version of "My Boyfriend's Back" - not an easy tune to manage to cover in a legitimate sounding fashion - and you've got one of the best melodic rock records that these old ears have been subjected to in quite a few moons. Until Avril Lavigne and the All-American Rejects start returning my calls offering to write some songs for them, I should probably just set my sights on the Spazzys.