Customer Reviews

Prairie Home Invasion

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Imagine two 18 wheelers colliding head-on, at speeds no sober southern sherriff would ever approve of. Imagine that one of these semis was carrying a full load of The Nashville Sound. Imagine the other was loaded beyond what the truck scales will accept with punk lyrics. You've pretty much imagined this CD!

(Parenthetical note)

The liner notes alone are worth the price of the CD. They're sprinkled with odds & ends of quotes & photos in a marvelous non sequiter. Bill Clinton boring Jesse Jackson. "The findings determined that more of the young scholars aspired to become pimps than members of Congress." "AFRO Country Club, where only the BALL is white!" Dear Abbey I ran over a raccoon. Don't Even THINK of Parking Here.

My favorite numbers (besides 23 & 42) are:

2. Where are we gonna work when the trees are gone? A good ole boy honky tonk number where the lumberjacks wonder what happens when corporate mergers & clearcutting leave us without any trees left to fell.

4. Atomic Power - a wonderful satire, done as a honky tonk slide guitar hymn. "Atomic Power, given by the mighty power of God" & "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, paid a big price for their sins"

5. Are You Drinking with Me Jesus - A bluesy, down-in-your-cups number: "Are you drinking with me Jesus, I can't see you very clear. Are you drinkin with me Jesus, Would you buy a friend a beer?" ["Ban the Bible, too much sex" & a fish shaped National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame are just two of the items which adorn this page of the liner notes] "I know you can walk on water, but can you walk on this much beer?"

6. Love Me, I'm a Liberal - A yuppie remake of the Phil Ochs song. This song was my undoing. It pegged me. The satire was too close to my own life. This song & Pacifica Radio made the center too uncomfortable (read my other reviews--perhaps you'll get the picture).

9. Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster - Bluegrassy number, a tribute to the workers incinerated at the Hamlet, NC chicken processing plant, when management chained the doors shut and a fire broke out. The contrast between the lightness of the music & the heaviness of the subject matter cuts deep.

11. Let's Go Burn Ole Nashville Down - Solid bluegrass tune. Musical revolutionaries wish to put the Nashville moguls up against the wall & pull the trigger.

12. Will the Fetus be Aborted? Sounds like Johnny Cash doing "Will the Circle be Unbroken" until you listen to the lyrics...

13. Plastic Jesus - Slide guitar number. Great satire about some ignoramus driving around with his "plastic Jesus" on his dashboard. Without him & his ilk, Oral Roberts would go broke!

Ohmigawd! I'ts aginst nature!

You betcha! That's why I like it.

Music by Mojo and the Toadliquors, lyrics (mostly) by Jello - put them together and you get one of the most unlikely albums ever. The most surprising thing is that it works brilliantly!

The highlights have got to be "Love me, I'm a liberal", a re-write of the old Phil Ochs tune for modern-day Clinton yuppies; "Will the Fetus be Aborted?", a hilarious send-up of fundamentalist pro-lifers to the tune of the old gospel standard "Will the Circle be Unbroken"; and the opening "Buy My Snake Oil", which contains some priceless jabs at Nirvana et al ("Punk without rebellion / we'll call it Grunge(TM) for you / I'll dress just like Don Henley / and sing just like him too").

The Mojo-esque bits are great too, especially "Let's go Burn Old Nashiville Down", which savages C+W sellouts. Above all this is a FUN album, with Jello's usual bile tempered for once by a sense of the absurdity of his targets. Buy it now!

This is one of the best things that Jello has ever been involved in. It combines the best of both worlds. It has all of Jello's classic social commentary and old Dead Kennedy's antics, along with the great bluegrass feel of Mojo and the 'liquors. Kicks major ass.

This album is brilliant. I had no prior exposure to Mojo Nixon and limited Jello Biafra time, and this album has me hooked on both. One of the beatiful things about this album is that, unlike in Biafra's punk work, you can actually understand a lot of the lyrics (well, I can actually understand them, which means most people probably could). It fills my need for twangy, made for singing music and anti-authroitarian lyrics.

Aside from being an amazing truck crash of style, the ideas the album expresses are consistently thought-provoking every time I listen to it. The general theme is the experiences and ideas of the working class, but Mojo and Jello are not to be pined down. The album is a remarkable balance of songs critiquing hegemonic middle class American society (ie, Love me I'm a liberal), mocking fundtamentalist thinking (Atomic Power), pointing out problematic working class cultural experiences (Mascot Mania), and honoring the experiences and ideas of working class people (Hamlet Chicken Plant Diasaster, Plastic Jesus).

Since we're playing the favorites game in these reviews, and because the music is wonderful both individually and as a wholeconcept, I'll wax musical on a few tracks (though nothing beats numbers 23 and 42):

1) Will the Fetus Be Aborted? (on my burned copy, this is the first track, and so it will always be in my mind) is such a catchy tune that it makes you want to sing with glee. My favorite verse is about the revolutionary woman having fifteen commie babies - Phyllis Schafley, ain't that great? (If you don't know if you're ready to hear this album, listen to this one first. It's an easy, biting, funny satire.)

4 (on my cd)) Atomic Power - The deadpan arrogance with which this song is mockingly sung makes me think of Stephen Colbert. I sometimes sing the refrain when I'm walking around empty streets at night - it's resounding.

8) Nostalgia for an Age that Never Existed - I think this is the best song on the album. It is such a spot-on critique of the total disregard and abuse of history in our society that it gives me goosebumps. The genre is perfectly Jonathan Swift-y - a fifties do-wop song. And it makes it clear that nobody is safe from Jello Biafra. From the use of the 50s as a heteronormative patriarchal utopia for the conservative right to the hypocrisy of the moderate left who played at the 60s and then forgot everything they learned, Biafra cuts through the fat and hits the bone of our historical myopia. He is at his most disgutedly dersisive, though, when talking about his own ilk, former punks who exaggerate their rebelious experiences and have become clsoed to the basic tenets of punk. This song is high social critique. It is a piece of art.

9) Hamlet Chicken Plant Diasaster - Eloquent and full of suppressed rage, this song shows the dragon created by the abuse of the laboring classes that is just waiting to be unleashed. It is also a fitting tribute to the victims of exploitative labor practices.

I don't know why these two didn't get together before this. As this album points out, Mojo and Jello are a perfect match, displaying their talents best on "Will The Fetus Be Aborted?". I hope these two get together again to give us another dose of bizarre hillbilly fun.

Jello making a country record to show all those non conformist punk rockers a thing or two, is the most punk thing I've ever seen. And the music is good too.

Great Great Great !!!!! I loved it right off. Go onto www.alternativetentacles.com and buy it direct. Support your independent record label. YeeHaw !!!!!!!!!

but think peanut butter and jelly. Ain't they an unlikely pair... but they work! So does this. And neither overshadows the other on this release. Jello does most of the singing, yeah, but there's Mojo attitude in the tunes. Classics? "Are You Drinkin' with Me," "Will the Fetus Be Aborted," "When the Trees Are Gone," and "Let's Burn Nashville." Yes. sir... superb!!!!!!

This is just beautiful. Admittedly, I'm incredibly biased; I love Jello, his political views and the fact that he used such a traditionally "God, Apple Pie and the U S of A" genre to get them across. It's difficult for me to pick a favorite off this cd because everything is just great. I initially wanted the CD for "Will the Fetus be Aborted?" and was so pleasantly suprised.

I normally have a really difficult time getting past country's twang, but if you enjoy the majority of Jello's work, just give this one a chance.