Fatal Charm

The Mumps | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 5, 1995)
• Original Release Date: 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Eggbert Records
• ASIN: B000008N57
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,979 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. I Like To Be Clean

2. Crocodile Tear

3. Rock And Roll This, Rock And Roll That

4. Muscleboys

5. Fatal Charm

6. Brain Massage

7. Scream And Scream Again

8. Just Look, Don't Touch

9. Did You Get The Girl?

10. Anyone But You

11. Not Again

12. Awkward Age

13. Before The Accident

14. Forget Me Not

15. Teach Me

16. S.O.S.

17. We Ended Up

18. Dutch Boy

19. Stupid

20. Dance Tunes For The Underdogs

See all 23 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 70s NYC Alternative Music -- Obscure but Powerful, September 25, 2001

By 

Georgia D. Gavric (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fatal Charm (Audio CD)

As of two weeks post WTC bombing, this is the ONLY music I can bear to listen to. Please trust me. This is a riveting album. Although most of the tracks were recorded during the late seventies, they prefigure the next two decades of popular music and cultural change. Brilliant songwriting. Performances that creep under your skin. Maybe because Lance Loud was the key character in "An American Family" -- the first "reality" show in 1973. Lance (lead singer) and Kristian Hoffman (songwriter) wrote this stuff when they were in their late teens/early 20s and amazingly, they were really THAT prescient. Anyway, if you're my age (42) and feeling as lost and isolated as you ever have in your life, please give these guys a chance to keep you company. It's like the world has just taken a sharp turn into a parallel universe and they somehow got here 25 years ago. Here's hoping more people find them...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'd forgotten how good these guys were!, March 7, 2005

By 

Avenell Road (GA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fatal Charm (Audio CD)

It's really a shame how the very active NY power pop scene, which ran concurrently with late '70s punk, has been completely written out of history. Since I believe discerning listeners CAN eat more than one kind of ice cream at once, permit me to present... THE MUMPS!!

I'd forgotten how good these guys were. The late, beloved, sorely-missed Lance Loud was an absolutely delightful frontman - always stylish, always witty, always hyperkinetic, and not entirely above the odd Very Dramatic Pratfall - which, unfortunately, sometimes involved spilling booze and broken glass all over the most august record company exec or music writer in the room.

Kristian Hoffman wrote most of the songs - and they were just as elegant and meticulously crafted as the stuff he's doing now. There is much, much more to his lyrics than meets the eye: check out "Crocodile Tears", a refreshingly stomping ode to apathy - or "Dutch Boy", an utterly perfect demolition derby addressing what certain cynics might term "Cameron Crowe-ism" - the dumbed-down, cleaned-up white-bread California liberalism creeping all over both the political and musical scenes at the time. Genius at work!

I was a little worried that the production here might render a lot of the stuff unlistenable, but it doesn't. While it's definitely low-fi, you really *do* get a sense of what the Mumps were about.

Hearing the remastered versions (and seeing the DVD) will be exciting too, but this CD should tide you over until that version comes out, hopefully in April 2005.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 70s NYC Alternative Music -- Obscure but Powerful, September 25, 2001

By 

Georgia D. Gavric - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fatal Charm (Audio CD)

As of two weeks post WTC bombing, this is the ONLY music I can bear to listen to. Please trust me. This is a riveting album. Although most of the tracks were recorded during the late seventies, they prefigure the next two decades of popular music and cultural change. Brilliant songwriting. Performances that creep under your skin. Maybe because Lance Loud was the key character in "An American Family" -- the first "reality" show in 1973. Lance (lead singer) and Kristian Hoffman (songwriter) wrote this stuff when they were in their late teens/early 20s and amazingly, they were really THAT prescient. Anyway, if you're my age (42) and feeling as lost and isolated as you ever have in your life, please give these guys a chance to keep you company. It's like the world has just taken a sharp turn into a parallel universe and they somehow got here 25 years ago. Here's hoping more people find them...