5ingles

Big Spider's Back
"Megazone"

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More About

• The Ramones
• Phil Spector
• Punk Rock
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

A seltzer-driven guided tour of the stratosphere, just south of Heaven proper and just north of the land of Care-a-Lot. If you can't feel your face or seem to be missing your limbs and torso, the animal tranquilizers are kicking in nicely.

This is kind of like the punk-rock equivalent of head-butting your encyclopedia shelf over and over again in the desperate hope that repetitive cerebral blows will alter reality such that "A" really does stand for "elephant." Gnarly!

The theft, here, from the Ramones' "Judy Is a Punk" feels wholesale enough to be wanton, overpowering even. Why not just buy matching leather jackets? Why not pay Phil Spector a conjugal visit? Please.

This grim, warped tale of a father and son reunited then sundered isn't exactly "Cat's in the Cradle," and Serengeti cuts things short before it can really go anywhere; he gives the listener just enough to spark our imaginations, to send us tripping down dark avenues.

Somehow this brand of strangulated tunelessness isn't quite crazy enough to be convincing; I think of this, not necessarily unkindly, as "Olde Time Relijun Lite."