Biafra, Nixon & Toadliquors - Prairie Home Invasion
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Biafra, Nixon & ToadliquorsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1994-03-24
Music Label: Alternative Tentacles
Soundtracks:
- But My Snake Oil
- Where Are We Gonna Work (When The Trees Are Gone?)
- Convoy In The Sky
- Atomic Power
- Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus
- Love Me, I'm A Liberal
- Burgers Of Wrath
- Nostalgia For An Age That Never Existed
- Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster
- Mascot Mania
- Let's Go Burn Old Nashville Down
- Will The Fetus Be Aborted
- Plastic Jesus
Free Music Notes for Prairie Home Invasion
Free Music Review: can't get enough
Hit: 5 Stars
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.
Prairie Home Invasion Poster
Putting two legends of truly countercultural spirit together simply had to produce something of genius, and though Mojo Nixon's dropped a couple of hints since then that things weren't as cool as they could be, Invasion is nonetheless a fine fusion of Jello's deranged nerviness and Nixon's rootsy attitude. With Nixon's backing band, the Toadliquors, on hand to provide the rest of the cowpunk, honky tonk music, the two come out fighting with "Buy My Snake Oil," Jello's rip into early-'90s alternative culture, and don't let up. Pete "Wet Dawg" Gordon's piano work definitely deserves to be singled out -- check the opening break on "Where Are We Gonna Work" -- and Mike "Wild" Middleton's drumming doesn't let up once. One of the sharper things about Invasion is its sense of protest roots; almost half the songs are from earlier musicians or public domain folk songs, sometimes more picturesque, like "Convoy in the Sky," but other times slotting alongside Jello and Nixon's work perfectly. Phil Ochs' brilliant slam on fuzzy left-leaners, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," gets a topically updated revamp, while the album's lead single revamps an old standard into "Will the Fetus Be Aborted?." As for the lead performers' own work, ultimately this is more Nixon's show than Biafra's. The latter definitely has the spirit for this effort, taking the majority of the lead vocals, but Nixon has the better voice for the proceedings, while his guitar kicks butt and takes names. The artwork for Invasion deserves special mention, too: besides a hilarious back photo of Jello and Nixon re-enacting Grant Wood's "American Gothic," the veritable explosion of news stories detailing business and government idiocies, random ad images, and snippets of Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World" comic strip, is enough to make anyone reject mass culture in a second. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music GuideAlternative Rock Music CDs
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