Saturday, June 4, 2011

Saturday, I'm in Love

I recently rediscovered The Fontanelles, and damn it, they're awesome.

For those of you who missed the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where the 'bots skewed Rick Sloane's Hobgoblins (more on this on Monday) there's a scene where our heroes go into Club Scum and listen to The Fontanelles play "Kiss Kicker 99" ("Love Me Not," my favorite, plays when they're just outside).  I always liked "Kiss Kicker 99," and it wasn't until the magical invention of The Internet that I even had a chance to dream of getting it.  My friend Chris managed to find it for me, and I played it over and over and over, but it was the only song of theirs I could find, and this made me sad.




(And for those of you familiar with the MST3K treatment of it, well, we did call a guy I went to grad school with "Pig Liquor," after Mike Nelson's mis-heard lyric and declaration, "I would not want Pig Liquor"--in all fairness, his last name sounded, well, like Pig Liquor if you said it fast enough, and although Pig Liquor wanted me, I did not want Pig Liquor)

BadCultMovies is selling copies of the soundtrack on ebay, and seeing as how my chances of getting their original 45 are pretty slim, I went ahead and bought the 7-song EP as a little treat to myself.  I almost never buy CDs anymore, but this was too good to pass up. 

Holy Crow, is it good.  Even better than I expected.

It's very Cure-esq on the guitars (think "Killing an Arab" or "The Lovecats") and lyrically, there are a lot of cool fairy tale/nursery rhyme allusions, (especially on "Love Me Nots" and "ShooFly") but not in a weird lame way.  And as for the jangly melodies, well, they ultimately lack the Cure's melodramatic silliness and keep with in the originally intended punk spirit.  This is probably because Spit Spingola is a much cooler name than Robert Smith. 

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