The Ren & Stimpy Show

I found this single for $0.99 at my local Salvation Army store. That’s cheaper than iTunes. Of course the Salvation Army is — for all the good it apparently does — a rabidly anti gay evangelical church that operates a slick PR and advertising machine. I guess that’s a discussion for another time… probably in relation to the number of concerts that have been cancelled in recent months due to organised religious lobbying. For now, here’s something less religiousy, namely…

I Wanna Be A DJ [click to see the Discogs.com release info]

A radio DJ!

This two-track single appears to be part of what looks loosely like a 1995 concept album released by the voices of cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy, along with a backing band. The title track on this single, which refers to the traditional radio announcer DJ, is a three and a half something ditty straight out of a musical, orated by Stimpy. At one time he even refers to himself as DJ Stimpy.

It’s a quirky tune where he keeps repeating the title words, then on each hook he is accompanied by an over-the-top male radio voice exclaiming the same. The lyrics deal with Stimpy’s desire to announce, interview, and in particular his wish to give things away on air.

This CD reminded me of the cartoon (funny that). While I confess that I never watched enough of The Ren & Stimpy Show to call myself a real fan, I did catch enough to appreciate its warped humour — a hard to define mix of the very funny yet the somehow tasteless and gross. Indeed, the “earwax” or “nostril hair” humour of this show went on to embody the neurotic style of so many Nickelodeon shows after it.

And that’s what this CD has even though I feel it’s kind of toned down. The first lines detail how Stimpy was born inside an old tube-radio, followed by how his mother licked him clean while he slept (complete with slurping sound effect). There’s the juvenile humour — he refers to “breaking news” and how he’s going to “glue it together again”. And there’s much of the dumb innocence of Ren’s character.

This last point, I feel, may go a long way to explaining why some people just don’t get Ren & Stimpy. They see the grossness and the earwax, the close-ups, and the neurosis-induced bloodshot eyes. Yet the characters were exceedingly well refined and developed (at least based on what I saw). They might constantly act in a way that would get the writers in trouble with the Nickelodeon producers; but if it was shocking it wasn’t merely for the sake of it. As I said, its influence was quite something. There’d certainly be no SpongeBob SquarePants or Invader Zim if it weren’t for The Ren & Stimpy Show.

So maybe get this if you’re a fan? Or maybe get it if you just want something that gives the appearance of being clean and innocent, but which you know, just under the surface, harbours something hilariously unspeakable.

Act On Instinct

Josh (aka Sirus — he’s got an EP out by the way which I recommend you check out) and I were having a rather nerdy conversation at Cabaret Nocturne nightclub last week. It was early in the night and serious dancing was yet to begin (the EBM / industrial room hadn’t opened), so naturally the conversation steered to video games, specifically video game soundtracks.

As we talked, this nice chap whose name I forget was sort of on the periphery of our conversation, kind of just politely listening as one does when one isn’t quite involved in a conversation but is still signalling one’s intent to join in. Then Josh happened to mention how much he liked the soundtrack from Command & Conquer —the classic PC game that essentially invented top-down view, real-time strategy shooters upon its release all the way back in 1995, and which kicked off a franchise that is still making lots of money today.

Suddenly this chap’s eyes lit up and he mentioned that he was a fan. “Oh yeah, cool,” I said. “Which one’s your favourite,” I asked.

“All of them,” he said.

Then he showed us his Brotherhood Of Nod shoulder tattoo — they’re the bad guys from Command & Conquer and its many sequels.

This guy is serious about playing Command & Conquer.
Damn serious, son, damn serious.

A momentary silence followed as we suddenly came to the realisation that we’d been thoroughly out-nerded. “Respect!” I think was our immediate response.

Anyway, Josh had mentioned how much he liked the original Command & Conquer soundtrack, and then he said that it happens to be free to listen to (but not download) on the composer’s webpage, a guy called Frank Klepacki.

I’m told that being a video game programmer is a thankless, poorly paid, horrendously competitive profession, especially for the legions of entry-levels who hope to make it big some day.

So I imagine that being a video game soundtrack programmer is even more cutthroat. Frank Klepacki has, by the looks of it, made a serious career out of it (though I can’t tell you if he also has a Brotherhood Of Nod tattoo). Among his achievements he lists beating Trent Reznor in the PC Gamer Best Game Soundtrack award, going up against Quake, another classic videogame; being a session drummer for funk legends The Family Stone; and a producer in Las Vegas music studios, which I’m guessing is probably both far more profitable and also far less glamorous than being a video games music composer.

Trent Reznor finds out he didn’t win the PC Gamer award for Best Game Soundtrack.

Anyway, upon visiting his site my personal highlight was finding the music for the track Act On Instinct. For some reason I always thought it was called The Command & Conquer Theme or something.

To get to it, scroll down to the bottom of the page, scroll through the ‘music’ tab and find Command & Conquer, then scroll down in ‘track list’.

When you click on it the description reads: “The track that kicked off the game and made history!”

That statement can be taken literally, as this track was indeed the opening music to the first mission on the original Command & Conquer game.

It’s an instantly recognisable tune — its menacing, militant, industrial theme is unmistakable to anyone who ever played, or should I say, became hopelessly addicted to, the original Command & Conquer game.

The funniest part (to me anyway), however, is the fact that I found it impossible to listen to the first minute or two of that track without also imagining the automatic gunfire and cheesy screams of dying soldiers that occurred within the first 30 seconds of playing the first mission.

Seriously, if you’ve ever played this game at any length do me a favour and play Act On Instinct and try telling me you don’t imagine those very same sound effects.

You can buy Frank Klepacki’s music on iTunes where I notice the track Hell March, which featured in Red Alert, the Command & Conquer sequel, is by far the most popular track. Sadly, I recall how back in the day, my PC didn’t have the specs for Red Alert, so I never quite got into it as others evidently did. Clearly, Hell March, a metal-guitar driven industrial stomper (yeah it’s a good track but it didn’t quite do it for me) is for many more people what Act On Instinct is for me.

So please, one of you clever EBM / industrial DJ types… I urge you to unleash the inner nerdy brotherhood on the dancefloor and mix this track into your next set. The intro will go beautifully with lots of dancey industrial stuff. Maybe even loop that intro once or twice if you’re really clever.

Please do it. It’ll go off like a GDI ion cannon.

Heavy metal and Eurovision rarely get along

I occasionally like to write Top 7 music lists that consist of artists and tunes that I’ve recently played on high rotation. You should so totally read it and comment because it’s like totally awesome.

7) Strapping Young Lad – The New Black
Canadians SYL put the heavy in heavy metal. They occupy a special place in my heart following their 1997 all ages gig at Melbourne’s Hi-Fi Bar, which ranks as one of my favourite gigs. It got even more awesomer when that gig, as well as the “piss heads” over-18 gig on the night before, was turned into a live EP. I’m sure if you listen closely to the crowd noises you’ll hear a muffled voice shouting “Oooooooooooooooh yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh aaaaggggggg my back!” as I attempted my first and last ever stage dive.

It totally wasn't like this at all.

The tour was in support of SYL’s angst-ridden City album which I seem to recall kind of stormed out of nowhere with its vague wisps of industrial music and white hot intensity. It’s an album that somehow manages to sound immensely heavy without coming off as unnecessarily extreme or over the top for the sake of extremeness.

For whatever reason I kind of lost track of SYL and main man Devin Townsend’s bazillion other side projects after that but I must say I was delighted when I “re-discovered” him when I came across The New Black from 2006 in a JB Hi-Fi discount bin.

It may not have the cold neon blue teen angst that I’ll always associate with ‘City’ but it’s got the heavyness and some brilliant tongue in cheek moments to match. This is an intense album, that totally rocks out and which is made even more enjoyable by the fact that it doesn’t take itself painfully seriously. Check out tracks like You Suck and Far Beyond Metal to see what I mean.

6) Daft Punk – Homework
Released in 1996, this is a definitive moment in “French house” or “Euro disco” or “repetitive bleep noises” or whatever you want to call it. It had no bearing on anything I was into back then but it’s another JB Hi-Fi discount bin item that probably feels like it deserved a couple of listens.

I heard an unconfirmed story that Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter (whose surname sounds like a German precision hi-fi company) spent something like a week perfecting a three second hook for one song. Whether this is true or not, either way the result of this extraordinary production effort is a minimal, bleeping, grating and yet somehow insidiously catchy electronic album about which your mates and parents will say (to quote a friend here) “I could have made that.” But seriously, apart from the battle robot space costumes, you know that, deep down in your heart, you are but like a rat to the piper of Hamelin once confronted by the ridiculously catchy strains of ‘Da Funk’.

"Do you have any idea how hot it gets in this helmet!?"

5) Danzig – Dirty Black Summer
Former Misfits frontman turned blues metal master, Glenn Danzig, is like a hybrid between an undead Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison if he was more of a headbanger. His first three or four albums rocked but then he lost the plot a bit and started making dubious industrial music. Sadly he was never as good when he returned to rocking blues metal. That, and he also epitomises small-man syndrome and is something of a douche.

Nom nom nom.

‘Dirty Black Summer’ was the lead single from the ‘Danzig III: How The Gods Kill’ album. Glenn manages to appear shirtless in almost every promo photo for this album, and the one before that too, and the one before that too (hell, the previous album, ‘Danzig II: Lucifuge’, is my favourite of all time, even if the artwork is a close-up of an occult cross… resting on Glenn’s manly naked hairy chest.

Everybody knows black t-shirts absorb uncomfortable amounts of heat.

The music from the ‘Danzig III’ era has special significance for me because I remember it being played an awful lot by my older sister when I was like 11. I recently dug out ‘Dirty Black Summer’ after years in storage and after one play it all came flooding back… the seemingly unnecessary minute of silence at the start of the song… the rather memorable but eventually jarring lead riff… the black and white mid 90s video clip … and yes, he’s missing his shirt in this video too. In fact, he’s got his shirt on and off at the same time!


4) The Anti-Nowhere League – Best Of
Filthy, in your face bri’ish punk rockers who put the “cunt” into “you’re a dirty cuntfaced cuntfucking cuntfucker fucking cunt.” They’re best known for their 1981 song ‘So What’ which contained such fabulous lyrics as “I fucked a sheep / I fucked a goat / I rammed my cock right down its throat” and “I’ve had crabs / I’ve had lice / I’ve had the clap and that ain’t nice”. For some strange reason, English authorities, using harsh Obscene Publications laws, seized copies of this song after it came out in 1981.

What a nice bunch of chaps.

But apart from ‘So What’, which years later enjoyed further exposure thanks to Metallica covering it, The Anti-Nowhere League produced a stack of other rockin’ punk tracks with brilliant titles like 'I Hate People', 'Rocker' (“The clothes that I wear / are the colour of my hair / I’m a rocker”), and one of my favourites… 'Woman' a song that espouses the joys of marriage and companionship like nothing else. Seriously, listen to this heartfelt ballad. This is getting played at my wedding (yeah sorry about the lousy fan vid).



3) Lordi – Hard Rock Hallelulja (from the European song contest)
Everyone has a guilty pleasure and Eurovision song contest is one of the few I’ll admit to without killing you in your sleep later. Everyone knows this annual circus show as a celebration of outrageous campyness and awesomely bad pop schmaltz, but once in a blue moon, Eurovision produces something brilliant.
In 2006 it was Greece's turn to host Eurovision and poor old Finnland, which hadn’t won a top spot in like 800 years, had as its entrant an obscure band called Lordi.
But not just any band. Lordi was a waning hard rock /cheesier heavy metal outfit with a gravelly-voiced vocalist who, along with the rest of the band, took to the stage in absurd latex horror masks and ridiculous gridiron battle orc giant spiked shoulder pad monster costumes. Seriously, check out the video! You'd be hard pressed to imagine something more diametrically opposed to everything Eurovision had ever stood for, right down to lead singer “Mr Lordi” who wielded a battle axe for a microphone.
During the lead up to the finals, Lordi were ridiculed by horrified onlookers who feared that such a bizarre act would result in Finland not only losing (which was kind of expected at the time) but actually taking out the humiliating last spot. Greek religious figures demanded that Lordi be banned from the contest and there was even a goddamned personal appeal to the Finnish Prime Minister, urging him to intervene.
So what happened? Well not only did Lordi storm through the finals with a huge score, they ended up winning the contest… by the largest friggin’ margin ever recorded up until that point in the whole goddamn history of Eurovision!
Seriously, a bunch of guys in monster costumes singing about the Arockalypse – with, and I’d really like to emphasise this… a lead singer wielding a battle axe for a microphone – took out pole position in the same cheesy pop contest that had previously spawned Abba.

Now THIS is how you win Eurovision BIATCH. Suck my battle axe.

The Rock Gods were proud that day – especially when these costumed freaks accepted their flowers and trophies and inadvertently got monster dirt on the glitzy TV presenters who dared go in for a hug and kiss.



2) Beastie Boys – Intergalactic
Back in the 90s, community radio stations like 106.7 PBS FM were for many people a genuine (and often the only) source of alternative or underground music. A 56k internet dialup connection was fast, kids would chat on a thing called ICQ rather than Facebook or Gchat, and it would be several years before pedo bear reared his handsome face.
This Beastie Boys single was released at the latter part of this period, when as a pimply teenager I did my community service (the “good” kind where your school forces you to help old ladies or disabled children for two weeks) at PBS FM. My day began with a tour by one of the station managers, a hip hop enthusiast called Nick Tripp. He showed me around the building, demonstrated production techniques, and got me to help record a cart promo (i.e. 30 second pre-recorded announcements that would promote the station – this was before MP3s), for which he sampled part of this newly-released Beastie Boys single.
The coolest part, however, was when he pulled an LP from his record crate – I distinctly remember it consisted entirely of crackly spoken word recordings from the Salvation Army – and gave me a hands-on turntablism DJ demonstration.
Then a hot girl walked into the building and since she obviously needed the “grand tour” I was left for like an hour by myself, cutting between ‘Intergalactic’ by the Beastie Boys and helping the homeless at Christmas time. I wish I’d recorded it.

One half of the Beastie Boys.

I rediscovered this single last week when I paid $1.99 for it at an op shop. That’s cheaper than iTunes you know. So check this track out if you’ve never heard it, and try and tell me you don’t love that cheesy vocoder. Oh, and the video clip is loads of fun with its take on Japanese monster films.



1) Destroyer 666 – Unchain The Wolves
Unchain The Wolves by Destroyer 666 is one of my top five favourite releases of all time that I’m currently reliving after I thought I’d lost my copy when in fact I’d leant it to a mate (for like four years). Which just proves that re-discovering CDs you thought you’d lost is just like buying it new, but even more awesomer because there’s no risk of unexpected disappointment.
Destroyer 666 are Australia’s most successful extreme metal export, playing a growly brand of ‘blackened thrash’ as it’s called that has evolved over several albums. They recently toured Australia after a 10 year absence and they retain a global following, much of it derived from the 1997 release of Unchain The Wolves.
I had the incredible privilege of seeing Destroyer when I was 15 (at an 18+ gig), at a time when I knew every word and every riff from this album – backwards.
This came about after main man Keith Warslut – yes, that really is his stage name – and a bloke from a supporting band were guests on a community radio heavy metal show called The Hard Report, hosted on RRR 102.7FM. They were nominally there to promote the imminent gig but effectively spent their air time talking shit and swearing liberally. I recorded this interview on tape and the most "memorable" moment was when the announcer, clearly trying to keep his cool in the presence of these two (possibly drunk) headbangers, asked Keith what the wolf on the album cover symbolised to him. Snapping out of the stupor, he cooly replied that it represented “Strength and independence. Spirit of the white man” (more on this below) – which was promptly followed by an agonizing pause, before the announcer nervously laughed that he wasn’t quite sure what was meant by that.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, they gave away two free passes on the show, but only if you called in and told them the full name and nickname of the lead singer from an obscure thrash metal band from the eighties. Now as I’ve mentioned previously, before there was the internet, people didn’t look it up on Wikipedia and pretend to have the answer. Phone-in contests were generally based on, like, general knowledge, but because I owned a thing called the ‘Encyclopedia Of Rock And Metal’ I managed to phone in and get it right. Of course, I was technically not allowed to go because it was an 18+ gig, but then the most awesome thing imaginable happened (at least when you’re a pimply hadbanging 15-year old who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow) – Keith’s mate said on air: “I’ll get him in, I’ll pretend he’s my roadie.”
So I went to the gig, sat in a corner when bands weren't playing, and to this day I can’t recall ever suffering from a more severe case of extreme headbanging-induced whiplash. No shit, I couldn’t hold my head up for three days.
But this brings me to another point about this band, and that is that, for all their music awesomeness and thrashing headbanging glory, they also appear to be major douche bags. This is evident in, for example, the hand-written letters that I received from Keith after I’d written to the band, heavy metal fan club style. I’ve still got them somewhere, and while it was totally awesome to get personal correspondence, the bit where he mentions the virtues of the white man or how Pauline Hanson is a “media heretic” were a little bit dubious. The music is also filled with thinly veiled lyrical references to “certain” beliefs which at one time attracted the ire of Jewish groups. There’s even an apocryphal tale of Keith allegedly getting seven shades of shit kicked out of him, or so the story goes, after he allegedly approached an American death metal band and apparently asked why they’ve got "a nigger playing with them". Members of Destroyer have also recorded music or otherwise been associated with bands that are less guarded about their political beliefs. Vomitor was one of them, which they brought with them on their 2010 Australian tour. I like to consider myself fairly open-minded about extreme music, and in many years of seeing live bands I’ve never really understood why people throw bottles at bands. Then I saw Vomitor and I finally understood what brought on this urge. And so on and so on.
Incidentally, Richard Wagner, who gets regular air time on tweed jacket-wearing classical music radio stations, was rabidly anti-Semitic, which just goes to show that while you may think that some music is awesome, you may not necessarily think the same about the people making it.

Wagner was a dick.

Unchain The Wolves came out in the same year that Strapping Young Lad played Melbourne. Aside from the dubious lyrics and the sheer dumbassery of its creators at the time, it is in my view, the most perfect album in this genre that I’ve ever heard. It has the intensity, it has the epicness, and it's got the balance right. It's an irresistible album that needs to be heard in full to be fully appreciated, and which urges you to listen to it again and again and again. Check it out.