Klaus Flouride

The Bassist For The Dead Kennedys - Gone Kooky!
*special introductory paragraph!
*Cha Cha Cha With Mr. Flouride EP
*Because I Say So
*The Light Is Flickering

Klaus Flouride (or "Geoffrey Lyall") is of course best known as the long-running bass player of the Dead Kennedys, the seminal punk rock band led by controversial spoken word artist/free speech advocate Jeff Penalty. But little do America's positive youth know that he also has a solo discography that reveals him to be a strange, quirky man with odd bizarre ideas of weird soundtasm. You might say he takes a stereo blender and makes a milkshake out of spaghetti western music, happy keyboard jingles, normal radio pop/rock and industrial sludge.

Not that you'd want to eat a spaghetti milkshake filled with industrial sludge, but wouldn't it be neat to pour one into your ear? See, that's where Klaus Flouride comes in.


Cha Cha Cha With Mr. Flouride EP - Alternative Tentacles 1985
Rating = 8

Klaus actually began his solo career with the 1982 12" "Shortnin' Bread"/"The Drowning Cowboy," but that record must have totally stunk dick because I sold my copy years ago and don't even remember what it sounds like. So let's start here in 1985, when the Dead Kennedys were still an active musical unit (barely). This eccentric, eclectic 7-song EP features a veritable Jukebox Salad of musical styles, including industrial new wave punk, moody Dire Straits guitar plucking, Western prairie horseclop music, boogie woogie rockabilly, avant-garde tape manipulation and fuzz-synth prog rock. The instrumental tones vary all over creation too, from unlistenably ugly cacophony racket and muffled reverbed guitars to corny '70s love keyboards and Hi-Fi radio-ready rock'n'roll. No two songs sound even the slightest bit alike (although "Dead Prairie Dogs" and the cover of "Ghost Riders" at least fit into the same spaghetti Western genre), and most people will come away from the record thinking to themselves, "What the fuck was that guy doing in the Dead Kennedys!?" Talk about repressing your true musical interests! Talk about dumbing down your ideas to fit somebody else's vision! Talk about how fucking great the Dead Kennedys were!

Okay, I guess we have an answer. I'm glad we talked about it.

This is a strange, insular record showcasing the unique vision of a gifted, clever and slightly off-kilter musician and songwriter. The music is not entirely without its predecessors -- "Gruesome Stains"' cut-up pastiche of radio advertising outtakes is totally Negativland, the wildly exuberant rockabilly "My Linda" sounds a lot like John Entwistle's similar experiments with the genre, and if a group of mobsters bashed Devo's brains in with aluminum bats, "Fear Most" might come out -- but the fact that all of these different musics emerged fully-formed from the brain of one man is pretty inspiring. As is the gleeful singalong chorus "I don't know why they never clean them up/There's nothing worse than a rotten prairie pup/Lying there in a heap - dead."

It's just an EP though, and everywhere it go, people know the part that it's playing. Paid for every dance, selling each romance - every night some heart betraynig. But there will come a day, when youth will pass away. What will they say about it? When the end comes it know, that as just an EP though, life goes on without clit.

That's a little jingle I wrote for Liberia's Female Genital Mutilation Action League. Pretty good, eh? I also came up with a great bumper sticker - check this out:

"My son is an honor role student, and my daughter has undergone pricking, piercing or incision of clitoris and/or labia; stretching of clitoris and/or labia; cauterisation by burning of clitoris and surrounding tissues; scraping of the vaginal orifice or cutting of the vagina; introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding or herbs into the vagina with the aim of tightening or narrowing the vagina!"

Good old clitoridectomy. Keepin' it real.

Add your thoughts?


* Because I Say So - Alternative Tentacles 1988 *
Rating = 10

Do you have any friends who record homemade music, with their guitar, keyboard or whatever else they have lying around, the silver spoon trust fund pricks? I know lots of people are boring, but if you make enough friends, you'll eventually find one that composes and records wonderful little songs that you can enjoy singing in your head for the rest of your days, and SCREW the rest of the world who will never get to hear them. I am blessed with two such friends: Christian "Christian Religion" Smith and Chris "Chowderhead" Crowson. And if I had a third friend who fit into this category of "genius lo-fidelity home recording savant," and he was the bassist for the Dead Kennedys, then he would be Klaus Flouride. But people would hear his, because they were released on a popular independent record label. Look, fuckin' never mind if you're just gonna analyze everything.

"Santa Klaus" Flouride's first full-length release is a mastertape of abnormal idiosyncracy. Every bit as unconventional and heterogenous as CCCWMF, this unpredictable 16-song jalopy car drives you away to such vibrant and fun-filled destination points (beep beep!) as (a) simultaneously evil and hilarious sampling keyboard jingles, (b) Tex-Mex acoustic melancholia, (c) uproariously energetic rockabilly gobbledygook, (d) Beatles piano balladry, (e) hippy folk, (f) clangy industrial clitter-clatter, and (g) Leon Redbone scat (meow!). In this way, it's very similar to the Dead Kennedys' Bedtime For Democracy LP, in that it has a guitar on it.

'Tis a rare peculiarity, the cruddy unrecognizable musical tones one can create by sampling random noise into a really, really cheap Casio keyboard. And in such brusque, fuzzed-out, rinky-dink ditties as "Door Slammer," "Desert Ships," "Born Again Dentistry" and "The Final Word," Klaus is determined to share this charming peccadillo with you! "What the hell is that?" you'll ask yourself. "Is that a dang turd or somethin'?" Well, it's more likely a distorted guitar, bass or factory noise, but because it was recorded with a piece of shit Casio, you'll never goddamned know! Having owned one of these very same cut-rate keyboards in my youthtime, I can vouch for me when I say, "That's my Mama!"

And hay all you Dead Kennedys political punker fans, don't be lookin' to K-Flour for anti-Reagan propaghandi; half of this album is instrumental, and even the half that isn't is wasted on a Monopoly(TM) of Trivial Pursuit(TM)s including spoken credits ("Bruce Slesinger on traps, Corrine Pepperell, and Dan Dudzo Wortman, Dot Fisher and Jim Hoadley. Akko Tsuzuki, Tom Freeman, Craig Big Daddy Ranft....."), a single nonsensical couplet sung over and over and over for a literal year ("We'll take the bus through the barrier/All the way home through the barrier"), and a robot computer machine spouting repetitive verbal abuse at an anonymous victim ("How could you? You knew better. How could you be so worthless? You're about as sharp as a bunch of bowling balls. You stupid fool!"). But the K-Man F-Dog's voice isn't that great anyway (kind of a weak, scratchy guy next door type deal), so the less the merrier.

This would be a great time to mention my startling revelation that the Rutle-tastic McCartney-style piano pop tune "Keep On Walking" incorporates musical elements pulled directly from "A Day In The Life," "Maybe I'm Amazed," "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," "Let It Be" and "Hey Jude."

Yes, Because I Say So truly is a magical little ride through the genres and sounds of one man's zany kookymind. Perhaps it's not a perfect 10, but it's a near-perfect 8.51 so I'll round it up to 10 in tribute to today's finest mathematical minds. That guy in Good Will Hunting and stuff.

Incidentally, did you catch that "Leon Redbone scat (meow!)" joke? That was good stuff. I'm really branching out.

In conclusion, (*takes a dump*)

Reader Comments

Chris Gibson
Kinda like a mix of Skip Spence's Oar and the first Silver Apples album

Add your thoughts?


The Light Is Flickering - Alternative Tentacles 1991
Rating = 7

Check out this email I just got from ieiiiiikznaouaee@usarmy.com:

"Watch and verse and dark iron and basket. Maybe and growth is brush angry is approval. They or reading too exchange disgust and fork."

Now does that make any sense at all? I've a mind to register a complaint to Mr. Eiiiiikznaouaee's supervisor! Today's spammers better get on the stick and cut out the lazybones or I'm going to stop purchasing their penis growth formula altogether.

This album reeks of somebody telling Klaus his music was too incomprehensible. Either that or he got a wild butt in his hair to become Mr. Serious Singer-Songwriter/Interpreter Of Others' Straightforward Material, because this LP can basically be split into a mere TWO types of music: Narrative Songs and Casio Instrumentals. The Casio instrumentals are just as oddly-toned and enjoyably frizzed-out as before (and to be fair, one is actually a dark new wavey guitar track -- just with pippity Casio drums), but 3/4ths of the narrative material takes itself far too seriously and ultimately collapses under the weight of its forced drama and tiring repetition. Plus it only has 9 songs, and 3 are COVERS!

Well okay, only one is a "cover" in the traditional sense -- the 1940s folksy tune "Scarlet Ribbons," recreated here on deranged 'portamento' Casio, meaning that when you push one key and then a second, you hear every single note between the two, in a continual - and VERY DISTRACTING - swoop/slide. But 2 of the remaining 8 were certainly written by people not named Klaus Flouride and that's a JACT, fack. San Francisco record producer Robert Bob Geller contributes the hokey commercial pop shit opener "Dancing With Shauna Grant" (an absolutely godawful song with vocals as weak as its melody -- Shauna must be rolling in her grave! With her jiggly dead boobs getting all splintery!), and Klaus Only Knows where he found the Bodeansy alt-rock peoples' revolution anthem "My Town." Who in the hell is this 'Michael Davis'? Do you think he means 'Miles Davis'? Because Miles Davis is awesome.

Wait that's not the word - what's the...

Ah! I remember - "A Giant Brapping Turd In A Hat."

So that's your album. It's a little disappointing to hear Klaus reign in his exciting excesses to make room for overlong 'normal' material, but there's still enough personality and melody on here to warrant a purchase or three. To sum: 3 covers (described above - PAY ATTENTION!), 3 original narrative tracks (a dark "Kashmir"y rocker, a tedious mellow mood piece, and a very pretty Smiths-esque acoustic strummer) and 3 original Casio instrumentals (the guitar one I mentioned earlier - though I'm still unbelievably referring to it as a 'Casio instrumental,' a lopey-dopey novelty funk failure, and a classic piece of pseudo-exotica hilariously rendered ugly-as-shit by gross, hard sampled tones).

God it rules to just describe every song on an album. Here's my review of the first Ramones album: "Blitzkrieg Bop" is a great fast catchy punker, then "Beat On The Brat" is a slower but still catchy punker, then "Judy Is A Punk" is a REALLY fast and also great catchy punker, then "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" brings it down a little for a boring 60s-ish ballad, but then "Chainsaw" whips into a fury of great fast catchy punk, followed by the fast yet catchy and great punker "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" before the side ends with the catchy punk song that's also fast (and great) "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement." But that's just the preface for side two, which starts with the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Loudmouth" before whipping into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Listen To My Heart" before whipping into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Havana Affair" before whipping into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar brooder "53rd & 3rd" before whipping into a fury of great fast catchy cover tune punk with "Let's Dance" before winding down with the catchy fast punk song "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" and the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World."

Awesome! Now here's my review of my review of the first Ramones album: First I described "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a great fast catchy punker, then I described "Beat On The Brat" as a slower but still catchy punker, then I described "Judy Is A Punk" as a REALLY fast and also great catchy punker, then I brought it down a little for a boring AMG-ish description by mentioning how "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" brings it down a little for a boring 60s-ish ballad, but then I whipped into a fury of great fast record reviewing as I decribed how "Chainsaw" whips into a fury of great fast catchy punk, before pointing out the fast yet catchy and great punker "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" and then completing the first half of the review by mentioning that the side ends with the catchy punk song that's also fast (and great) "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement." But that was just the preface for the second half of the review, which I began by pointing out that side one of the album was just the preface for side two, which I described as starting with the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Loudmouth" before I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Listen To My Heart" before I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Havana Affair" before I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar brooder "53rd & 3rd" before I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into a fury of great fast catchy cover tune punk with "Let's Dance" before I began winding down by pointing out that the album then begins winding down with the catchy fast punk song "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" before closing the review by describing the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" as a hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker called "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" that follows a catchy fast punk song that I called a catchy fast punk song because it's a catchy fast punk song so I called it a catchy fast punk song in tribute to its being a catchy fast punk song although it's also a hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker, but who wants to be redundant?

Awesome! Now here's my review of my review of my review of the first Ramones album: First I decribed how first I described "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a great fast catchy punker, then I described how I described "Beat On The Brat" as a slower but still catchy punker, then I described how I described "Judy Is A Punk" as a REALLY fast and also great catchy punker, then I brought it down a little for a boring WASP-ish description of how I brought it down a little for a boring AMG-ish description of how "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" brings it down a little for a boring 60s-ish ballad, but then I whipped into a fury of great fast literary critiquing by describing how I whipped into a fury of great fast record reviewing as I decribed how "Chainsaw" whips into a fury of great fast catchy punk, before pointing out that I then pointed out the fast yet catchy and great punker "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," and then completing the first half of the review review by describing my completion of the first half of the review, wherein I mentioned that the side ends with the catchy punk song that's also fast (and great) "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement." But that was just the preface for the second half of the review review, which I began by pointing out that the first half of the review was just the preface for the second half of the review, which I began by pointing out that side one of the album was just the preface for side two, which I went on to describe as described as starting with the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Loudmouth" before whipping into mentioning that I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Listen To My Heart" before whipping into mentioning that I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Havana Affair" before whipping into mentioning that I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into the hilarious buzzsaw guitar brooder "53rd & 3rd" before whipping into mentioning that I whipped into mentioning that the album then whips into a fury of great fast catchy cover tune punk with "Let's Dance" before I wound down the review review by describing how I began winding down the review by pointing out that the album then begins winding down with the catchy fast punk song "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" before closing the review review by describing the closing of the review as the describing of the hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" as a hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker called "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" that the review review states follows a catchy fast punk song that the review review states that the review called a catchy fast punk song because it's a catchy fast punk song so the review review states that the review called it a catchy fast punk song in tribute to its being a catchy fast punk song although the review review adds a piece of information previously unavailable in the review - that it's also a hilarious buzzsaw guitar punker, now who wants to be Rapunzel?

Some girl with long hair: "Me!"

Some guy with a big dick: "Feel that tapping on the roof of your mouth? That's us fuckin'."

Reader Comments

esgoodfield@yahoo.com
Hey Mark, just read your Klaus solo albums review page. Is the Kashmir-like rocker the song "Uncle Bill"? I'm obsessed with that song, although I can't pinpoint precisely why. I happened to hear it a few times at a friend's house back in the mid 90's, when i was tween. My friend had an older brother who listened to all sorts of weird music that I couldn't begin to describe. At the time I had no idea who or what the Dead Kennedys were, much less household name punk bands such as the Sex Pistols (my mom knows who they are; hence, they must be a household name).

I remember this song emanating from that older brother's bedroom on a regular basis, accompanied by all these weird smells and smoke (at the time I thought the dude really loved crappy candles). I was mesmerised by the way the song flowed so slowly, yet had a grim intensity. And when the bass went a little nuts about a minute in, and again about three minutes in, I was so drawn in. That song stayed somewhere in the remote corners of my mind for the next decade.

About four years after my brush with that as-yet-unnamed oddity, I asked my parents to buy me a bass-a decision, I believe, was influenced to some degree by this very song. The sound I've always gravitated toward is rather like the tone on this song, although I didn't realize it till much later.

About six years after that, I got into punk, rather later than in the typical snotty teenage years. I certainly loved the Dead Kennedys, and learned to play many of their songs. Then, about two months ago, I stumbled across an upolad of the music video for "Uncle Bill" on Youtube. Perhaps you can grasp what it was like to experience that very song for the first time in well over a decade, and to finally know its name, and to learn that the bass player from the DKs was responsible. I imagine its a little like if John Peel had heard "Teenage Kicks" when he was 11 and then plum forgot aobut it until he was an adult, and was reminded of how superb it was.

It feels like the perfect song to me. To be honest, I intended this to be a witty correspondence that would perhaps make you grin and maybe even chuckle. I couldn't do it. This one oddball song has had such a powerful, ass-backwards effect on my life that I can't joke aobut it. So why send this email? I know only a handful of people who would recognize the name Klaus Flouride. None of them would know squat about his solo material; none of them would ever really care. Today I was screwing around on your site, killing time, when I just happened upon the Klaus page. You may be one of only a handful of people in the universe who at least knows what I'm talking about, what has been a minor obsession for years.

Anyway, this email might be a good excuse to listen to that song again, even if the album isn't the strongest. Maybe I'm ascribing too much to four and a half minutes of music, but I don't think so.

Thanks for your reviews. They're excellent.

Add your thoughts?


Buy some Klaus Flouride CDs by clicking here. And brush your teeth, Stinky!


Click here for more misspelled dental terms. Don't miss out on 'flsos' or 'dantel dam'!