Customer Reviews

No More Mr Nice Girl

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This review is long overdue. I discovered Maggie Estep when I became intrigued by the title of this cd. I never would have imagined that it would have the impact on me that it did. There is no self-deprecation or self-effacement going on here. It's pure self-examination and sharing of a pride in one's own neuroses. In the tracks "Stupid Jerk...", "Scarification" & "My Life of Gardening", Maggie gives us insight into how many women deal, at least mentally, with the men in their lives when things go "wrong." Her self-dissertation, "I'm Not a Normal Girl" is a testament to her acceptance of herself and a dare to anyone to accept her "as-is". The tracks "Hey Baby", "Paradise Lost", "Car Guy" & "Pee Lady" are Maggie's expressions of dealing with the everyday people in our lives that we must share this planet with. This is all culminated in the track "Vegetable Omelet" which asks only that we each be allowed at least some of the things we truly desire, while eliminating the things that we may all find intolerable. With the exception of "Rip Trip Strip", a retro-punk anthem which longs for uncontrolled freedom to act on one's deep-seated desires, the rest of the tracks are a melange of perspectives and experiences that Maggie shares with us to make us feel that we are not alone in our daily, torturous grind. In conclusion, this is a superb collection of works that are destined to help us change the way we observe our seemingly onerous lives. I heartily recommend this cd and it's follow-up "Love Is a Dog From Hell" and Maggie's first novel "Diary of an Emotional Idiot".

Mix some deep-seated weirdness, too much time trapped in New York city, and a rock-and-roll band on the edge, and you've got Maggie. The album's a trip and should have been called "Not a Normal Girl." The music rocks pretty hard, and is an appropriate backdrop for Maggie's NYC tone/atonal poems. Not for the faint-of-heart. Cynical, but never a down moment.

This cd is an amazing example of the power and the flexibility of spoken word. Maggie Estep goes through the gamut of emotion on this release, slamming sexist street harassers on HEY BABY, flaunting her quirks on NOT A NORMAL GIRL, and showing a softer side on SCARIFICATION. I just adore the whole cd. The way she puts words together, her use of metaphor and imagery, the way she pokes fun at the culture...it's all good. I definitely recommend this cd.

You know there's got to be something good here with such widely divergent opinions of the album. I, however, am somewhere in the middle. I love the spoken word genre, and I think Estep has captured in on record better than anyone else with her two recordings. However, there's so much filler on both of her albums that it's hard to give a 5-star review. If she had made an album with some of the highlights of "No More Mr. Nice Girl," such as the hilarious "Hey Baby," "Bad Day at the Beauty Salon," and the album's best track, "The Stupid Jerk I'm Obsessed With," with some of the highlights from Love is a Dog From Hell (the Lou Reed cover, "Scab Maids on Speed"), then she could have been in the middle of a classic album. As it is, she released two albums, a pretty good one, and an okay one. Neither stand up to repeated listenings, but both are worth pulling off the shelf every six months while you await another Estep novel.

I officially decided that this is the worst album ever, but for that, it must be heard! There is nothing amusing about it, as with some albums where it's so bad it's funny, or so bad, but reminiscent of something... nope. With this... we have just flat out, the worst thing ever recorded. There's no artistic, humorous or musical justification for any of it. And I kinda like Estep's writing.

But, definitely give this a listen and tell me I'm not right.

Ok, if you actually spend human currency on this CD, you deserve what you get. In fact, I have a CD of Milli Vanilli doing Karaoke as teenagers if you'd like to bid on it on eBay. Then your collection of pure D garbage would be complete. I don't even own this CD, but just listening to the excerpts on this site is enough to force me to try to dissuade any rational human being from purchasing this CD, accepting it from strangers, digging it out of the trash, whatever. The only "song" worth listening to is the 1st - "Hey Baby", which I only found out about thanks to Beavis and Butthead. And it's in tribute to them, and the fact that the guy spoken of in the song says, "Don't miss THIS" while he emotes with his crotch, that I continue listening to it to this day. Please don't listen to the bitter young women that have "found themselves" in the content of this CD. It's just sad - if you're so affected by a guy's breaking things off with you, that you can actually appreciate anything this CD has to offer (minus what I mentioned previously), take your currency, add more to it, and see a therapist. :)

Listen to fifteen seconds of any track from this CD. It's Ani DiFranco after her weight in amphetamines. And prozac. Maggie Estep is not good music, for lesbians or anyone else.