Novelty items?

Bloodhound's a dog; 10¢ hit paydirt

by Matt Ashare

There's something to offend just about everyone on Bloodhound Gang's One Fierce Beer Coaster (Geffen). You've got your thinly veiled locker-room misogyny ("Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny") and lesbian baiting ("Shut Up"), your blatant homophobia ("I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks"), and, yikes, even a suicide ode for the pimply losers of the world titled "Lift Your Head Up High (and Blow Your Brains Out)." It's enough to put a big fat smile on Rush Limbaugh's big fat face and make William Bennett and Robert Bork worry even more about the moral health of our country. Of course, it's all just a big, fat, willfully moronic, musically simplistic joke -- as it says in the fine print right above the lyrics inside the CD jacket: "If you find the contents of these lyrics offensive, you're not cool."

So, basically, you're a sucker if you laugh along with the recycled jokes and a sucker if you don't. The brainchild of one Jimmy Pop Ali, a mischievous, rapping honky from Philly whose salient points of reference include the Star Wars trilogy, '70s sitcoms like One Day at a Time, and the Beastie Boys' decade-old breakthrough License To Ill (Def Jam), the Bloodhound Gang are poised for their 120 minutes of Modern Rock fame. Their mix of deadpan hip-hop parody, cheap irreverence, and just-plain-dumb heavy-metal guitars, topped off with silly stage names like Lupus (guitar), Evil Jared (bass), DJ Q-Ball (turntables), and Spanky G (drums), has put them in the right place at the right time. "Fire Water Burn," One Fierce Beer Coaster's first break-out novelty single, fits perfectly into the void created by the Presidents of the USA's sophomore slump, the absence of a new Beasties disc (although they gave up the junior-high shenanigans a long time ago), and the fact that, despite all the critics' kudos, Beck is still a bit too edgy for the mainstream consumer.

With its flashes of simple, yet witty, name-checking sub-brilliance -- "I'm not black like Barry White no I am white like Frank Black is" -- and its hip-pop chant-along melody, "Fire Water Burn" is definitely more filling than, say, "Scooby Snacks." But when Jimmy Pop Ali hits the song's final punchline, a monotone call-and-response parody of "C'mon party people/throw your hands in the air," he sounds an awful lot like "Weird Al" Yankovic. And, at the risk of sinking to Ali's level, he may be sharper than Wisconsin cheddar, but his shtick is still pretty cheesy. Besides, wasn't political incorrectitude last year's trend? Or was that in '95?

Thankfully, Bloodhound Gang aren't the last great white hip-pop hope for '97. On Tuesday, January 14, a group from Beck's neck of the woods -- Silver Lake, California's 10cents -- will make their CD debut with Everybody Wins (Angel Dust). If Bloodhound Gang are a retro trip back to the early illing days of the Beastie Boys, then 10cents represent one of the first promising signs that Beck isn't the only one out there trying to push the musical vocabulary of pomo pop further toward the language of hip-hop.

With understated, cocktail-hour cool, a supple foundation of organic, lite-funk guitar/bass/drums, and artful, jazzy keyboard embellishments, 10cents rely more on groove and finesse than hooks and muscle. The innocent simplicity and low-tech charm of Everybody Wins' catchy opening track, "Redrubberballs," is buoyed by some of the same fresh, winsome appeal that the Presidents of the USA had their first time around. "Chocolatechipking" may be another candidate for novelty hitdom, with singer/guitarist Shon R. delivering lyrics like "Hell of a lot of cookies up in my belly/My entire body feels like melted jelly" as a deadpan, Beck-style rap. But 10cents add up to more than just the sum of a few borrowed gimmicks. Shon R. balances the silliness of "Chocolatechipking" with art-damaged, free-associative talk-soup that has a sharp, aftertaste of existential awareness -- "Twitching and hitching a ride down to the corner store/to buy a pack of cigarettes and a pen to write a poetic pathetic song," is one of the lines that jumps out of the funky flow of "Bottles."

Just like Beck's "Loser" and, come to think of it, Bloodhound Gang's One Fierce Beer Coaster, which was originally released on Cheese Factory, Everybody Wins is getting its first exposure on an indie label. It only took Geffen a couple months to sign and re-release "Loser" and One Fierce Beer Coaster, both of which were already getting major alternative-radio airplay. 10cents could very easily be in line for similar treatment.