special introductory paragraph!
Sing And Play The Three Doctors
The Man Can't Bust Our Music! EP
Sing And Play The Madator Records Catalog EP
94124 EP
Live "In Competence"
Here At Last... Live!!!
Hi! Gregg Turkington is a special fellow who gave me a Kinks book and
a shitty CD by the Phantom Surfers, so I told him I'd review his ablums.
This band here, the Zip Code Rapists, features Greggggg and his friend from
work John Singer. Their live shows were noisy yellfests that often resulted
in Greggggggg throwing something at somebody in the crowd and hurting
them. But in a Funny Way! For, as violent and threatening as this ridiculous
duo tried to be, at the end of the day, all they succeeded in doing was
making us laugh.
They didn't even die of a heroin overdose like Mr. GG Allin!
Typically hilarious Turkington packaging - this album is packaged in a
disgusting orange cover featuring a really odd black and white photo of
an ice skating ballerina and a guy dressed in a bear suit with a hat on.
Inside the album cover, you'll find a little slip of paper advertising
other Zip Code Rapists products, including a video, a baseball cap, "bumber
stickers - Put them on your bumber" and the notorious product Zip Code
Rapists "Fuck You" -- "This product varies from day-to-day, but you can
be assured it will be both foul and disappointing." Which brings up an
interesting point -- Gregg Turkington has always been obsessed with
stupidity and failure. Is it irony? Admittance of creative
bankruptcy? Or just humor? Probably more humor than anything else, but it's obvious
that he's had enough of shitty music, comedy and bigshot attitudes and is
poking fun at them by... oh who gives a fuck. It's funny by being pathetic.
That's all you need to know. The album itself is pretty great for the
first 7/12ths of the way through. Hilarious, underwritten and
under-produced originals and a couple of ugly-as-shit covers (including
a Ford Truck commercial jingle) present this get-up-and-go gang as a
guitar-driven noise-loving screaming funny dumbass bizarre bunch of two
cretins. The humor is strange and sometimes really obscure, but always
entertaining. Unfortunately, the last five songs are recorded-live,
non-produced, shittily-performed, drag-on-and-on covers that I
personally can't bear to sit through (although the guitar sounds pretty nice in
"Wicked Game," I must admit). Mister, when you can ruin a song from the first
Circle Jerks album, what kind of mister are you? Mister, you're a
Turkington.
And in case you were wondering - there is a "bumber
sticker" included in the pakckage - it features a sliced ham, an American flag
and the slogan, "If you must drink and drive, please run over the Zip Code
Rapists." Ha, I must suggest in my own inimitable way!
In my opinion, this is the best ZCR release. It's a teeny little
7-inch with ten studio songs crammed onto it. VERY diverse and never gets
boring -- from your screaming shit-filled Monkees cover to your ridiculous
stupid voice-effect driven John Lennon cover to your "moving instrumental
piano solo" by Gregg Turkington, who can't play the piano (listen close for
his angry cry of "Shit!" when he messes up) to your Nesmith-style
commercial jingle to your offensive nursery rhyme tale of "Darn It Duck" to your
musical celebration of "Che'" to your weird record cover of kids in
happy masks to your blatant alcoholism to your cement truck coming down the
street to your Guess Who's Power In The Music LP which isn't nearly as bad as
I'd originally thought - in fact, I must say I find it fairly entertaining
at this point. I know that certain people consider Burton Cummings to
have a silly voice, but I personally enjoy it. He hits high notes screamingly
and sings ballads gentily - his only faults are when he tries to imitate
Jim Morrison too closely, like in that "Friends Of Mine" song on Wheatfield
Soul. I love the Guess Who. Share The Land is probably my favorite
album by them, but that may be because it was the first one I ever had. I
loved it when I was like 6 years old, and stuff like that doesn't leave you
too easily, no matter how excellent a record like So Long Bannatyne might
be. Hell, even #10 and Artificial Paradise are fucking great records. And
Flavours is really underrated. I'm not all that fond of Burton's solo
albums, but Stand Tall is a great tune. Honestly the only Guess Who
album (with Burton, that is) that I don't much care for is Rockin'. It just
seems really underwritten. I like "Guns Guns Guns" though. It's not a
HIDEOUS record - just too generically rocka rolla for my tastes. Road Food is
pretty good too, and don't even get me STARTED on Canned Wheat or
American Woman. "When Friends Fall Out"? You don't have to tell me twice!
Fuck Jim Kale's hack version of the band though. Who needs that nonsense. If
you ain't got Burton, your Guess Who is hurtin'.
Another 7-inch, this shoddily packaged shitbag features the Rapists
doing versions of popular tunes by Liz Phair, Thinking Fellers Union Local
282, Pavement and Bettie Serveert. The Bettie tune is pretty, the Liz Phair
one is just Gregg screaming, which is funny for about one minute, the
Pavement one is funny as shit (great stupid hick tuneless vocals by ol' Turk)
and finally a beautiful, beautiful acoustic version of the Thinking
Fellers' already beautiful "Hurricane." Cute record - not their best, but cute.
A low 8, mind you, but the record is too short to get disappointing.
Best production values yet on the dance sensation "Zip Code Gentlemen" and
gorgeously bizarre cover tune "Happy Like Larry (He Taught Me How To
Die)". Apparently the CD version has a bonus track or two, which undoubtedly
would bring the grade down to a 7 or so, judging by the screaming, worthless
throwaway quality of most of their cover tunes ("Beautiful Dreamer"?
More like "Pitiful Screamer"! Oh! Too obvious a joke to not make! Sure,
it wasn't funny, but neither is ZCR's cover of "Beautiful Dreamer" so 35th
Street, Fuck You!!!!!!!).
In conclusion, the Zip Code Rapists were never interested in being a
good band. They pissed on music. Even when they were good, the purposely
ruined their goodness with annoying noise or tuneless vocals. But they
weren't really trying to be FUNNY either. They just turned out that way
because Gregg and John are naturally funny people. It's a different sort of
music. The kind of stuff that your friends down the street would record if
they had any ideas in their head. Buy it all and now, my gentle gang!
I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm just drunk enough to say some things that are deep inside that I wouldn't say if I was completely sober because I'm not a fag, but
it's amazing how normal human emotions can get mixed up into other people calling you a fag even if you've never wanted a guy's dick up your ass. I honestly haven't. If I
was gay, I'd let you know and we could hang out. But let me get to my point: Years ago I worked at this college radio station entitled WXYC-Chapel Hill. At this time, I was
really enamored with The Cows and stuff, and this guy Jeff Robins brought in an album of prank phone calls that I thought were really funny. Then this band put out this
single of really noisy, stupid covers of songs on Matador Records. That band was the Zip Code Rapists. In all honesty, I can't remember why I KNEW I had to go see the
band perform at the Duke Coffeehouse in like 93, but I did. Maybe someone had told me that Gregg Turkington was both the guy who made the phone calls and the guy who
yelled the songs on the record. I have no idea. All I know is that I got there and found a tall guy playing a guitar and a shorter guy wearing dark sunglasses and screaming at the
top of his lungs into the microphone while jerking his body around confrontationally and yelling funny things at the audience. I loved it! So go forward several years to
where I run a stupidass web site and I'm all into Neil Hamburger. I email his record label and who responds but Mr. Gregg Turkington? And we developed one of this "pen
pal" things via email. And there was always this little part of me that was all like, "I hope I doesn't think I'm an obsessive fan," but the thing is -- I WAS. I was an obsessive
fan of EVERYBODY I got into. The Cows' guitarist probably thought I was a nutjob, as did the bassist in CCR and the singer for DRI and all sorts and sundry of other
semi-celebrities whose work as "ARTISTS" brought out this incredibly depressing sense of "fandom" in me, Mark Prindle. It's not like I'm a fame sucker. It's just that -- and I
know you can vouch for me on this because you're a big music fan -- when I am astounded and blown away and made happy by somebody's work while listening to it at home,
but then I end up meeting the Creator in PERSON, I feel like a lameass. (You should have seen me the two times I met Joey Ramone -- the second time, I said this to him --
"Thanks for saving rock and roll." He was dying of cancer, though, and didn't respond. Interestingly, Gregg Turkington was with me at the time. SEE, EVERYTHING
COMES BACK TO BITE YOU IN THE ASS). When I meet one of my preferred entertainers in person, I feel inferior, I feel like I want to hang out with them and learn as
much about their creative process as I can and, worst of all, they're always GUYS so I probably look like I'm FAGGIN' it! And again, I'm not anti-homosexuality, but I AM
anti-stalker, so I don't want to come across as one. Nevertheless, because I am obsessive by nature, I ALWAYS found myself sitting there going "Why didn't that Lemonheads
guy email me back? And what about that Alice Donut guitarist? Do they think I'm a weirdo? I'm not a weirdo, am I? OH GOD, I'M A WEIRDO!!!!" This is why it's so
much easier to be honest with somebody who is not at all a "celebrity." Like my friends Rich Bunnell and Christian Smith - I have NO problem saying to them, "I greatly
admire you as a person, you constantly impress me with your sense of humor and intelligence, and thanks for being such a good friend." But, even after a billion emails back
and forth and appearances and thanks on each others' CDs and whatnot, I STILL don't feel comfortable saying something like that to Gregg Turkington. Because I didn't know
him BEFORE he was an underground micro-semi-celebrity, see. So I feel like a fanboy ANYWAY, or rather I still fear that I come across that way! But then, I guess I AM a
fanboy so maybe it's okay. My point is this: Gregg sent me a CDR of a rare Japan-only live cassette by his old duo the Zip Code Rapists and I'm giving it an 8. It's mostly
cover tunes, but they have a knack for covering just incredibly great songs -- Black Flag's "Police Story" (which Gregg claims is from Cats), the classic spiritual "He's
Got The Whole World In His Hands" (which somehow ends up with Gregg screaming "He's got the little baby Jesus FUCKIN' HIM UP HIS ASS!"), the Bee Gees' "I Started
A Joke (Gregg loves the Bee Gees, and even reviewed them for this site, much to regular reader Roland Fratzl's chagrin!) and all kinds of crap. So the songs are already good,
even though it's just a guy with a noisy guitar and a yelling, drunk man performing them. And then there's the stage patter, which ranges from the sublime and brilliant ("Can
you do something about these lights please? They're shining on my vocal cords.") to the inane ("We're not playing another song until we get a hackysack on stage!") to the
violent ("Turn off the lights so we can have our pickpockets roam the audience - before they kill you all") to the trivial ("If anyone in this room can name one song on the
album Face Dances other than "You Better You Bet," you'll win a hundred dollars) to the just plain untrue ("We're a hip-hop band from the Bronx!"). If I have any
complaint, it's that Gregg relies a bit too much on obscenity (foreshadowing Tenacious D's biggest weakness), but a lot of people accuse me of doing the same thing, so how
much can I complain without my pot meeting his kettle, as fellow record reviewer Brian Burks might say even though it doesn't make any sense. So my point is that I still
greatly enjoy the work of Gregg Turkington (his damn projects are reviewed all over my site - you can't throw a damn horseshoe at your computer without hitting one of
them), but I want him -- and YOU -- to know that I also think he's a supernice guy AS A PERSON AND HUMAN BEING (He even concernedly emailed me on September
11th to make sure I wasn't dead! You don't see the singer from the Crucifucks doing that!!!) and eventually here I'll find cheap tickets to Australia and pay he and his lovely
wife Simone a visit. And presumably buy a lot of cheap records and drink tequila, national drink of "Australia." And hang out with that bald guy who sings for Midnight Oil,
plays drums in AC/DC and stars in those Hills Have Eyes movies. For some reason when I was a kid, I thought The Who were from Australia - that turned out not to
be the truth. Just another lie they tell you to shut you up. I think the whole goddamn thing needs some fine-tuning. The Easybeats are from Australia but how many
goddamn hits did they have? ONE. "Friday On My Mind." Other than that, they're best known for having guitarist George Young, brother of AC/DC's Angus and Malcolm,
in the band. But they had a LOT of great songs! So did the Beatles, whose song "Your Mother Should Know" is covered on this CD by the Zip Code Rapists. And the
ending has an uproarious fade-out of Gregg screaming phleghmingly "YOUR MOTHER SHOULD
KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." You'll laugh so hard you'll swallow your
chewing tobacco. I also think it's neat that there are now three girls on the Music Babble message board I frequent. Jen Jen, Sophie and Amanda K. It's kinda strange because
it used to be a boys' club, but it's nice because girls are good people and bring a different viewpoint to everything (not to mention a vagina, which often shows up in their posts
unbeknownst to them). And what's up with Tom Joyce? The guy acts like he loves me, then goes out of his way to make me hate him so I DO, then he gets pissed and says
all sorts of bad things about me? What's up with that shit? But my point here is that I've never met Zip Code Rapists guitarist John Singer, but one thing is for certain - it's
GODDAMNED ironic that he's not the singer (check out his last name!) and also ironic that he's never used a toilet (check out his ooooooooo). I also think it's ironic that
every popular band in the world is made up of morons. See, if Gregg Turkington were in Limp Bizkit, all the chicks would go wild about him. Unfortunately, he's too smart
and cynical to do such a horrible horrible thing, so chicks don't dig him. Actually they probably do. I may be thinking of me. I never made love until I was 21 because I was
such a fucking dork with long hair and tight blue jeans with holes in the knees. I LIKED GIRLS TOO! But I didn't have a girl to tell me what girls liked in guys. So I looked
like what GUYS like in guys (guys that age anyway) - COOl long messy hair, skinny heroin chic, I was a goof. I even shaved my hair on the sides just cuz I saw Mike Patton
do it. (Interesting sidenote: Mike Patton is a friend of Gregg Turkington's - SEE, IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU IN THE END. YOU CAN'T FUCKING ESCAPE IT).
Sometimes people tell me that they really like my reviews and I wonder if they feel like a big dork like I do when I tell musicians how much I like them. I assume they don't
since I'm a nonentity but what if they did? I mean, MY music is good, if you ask me! Especially now that I remastered all of it and it actually doesn't sound like absolute shit
on my shoe! Have I reached my point yet? Ah yes! My point is that I'm drunk. And I truly respect originality, sense of humor and intelligence. Hence my true and ongoing
respect for Elton John.
If you care about such things, these guys in Brooklyn are selling what I'm guessing is the original version of the Zip Code Rapists' live cassette. First time I've ever come across it, and I've done plenty o' lookin.
http://www.fusetronsound.com/label.php?whomart=ZIPCODERAPISTS
Your reviews are great, by the way.
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun and all you ever dreamt of was raping a zip code? Believe me, we've all experienced the heartbreak of learning that a zip code is merely a series of numbers. And sure, you could theoretically write that series of numbers on a piece of paper and attack it brutally with your sex, but that wouldn't make you a Zip Code Rapist -- you'd just be a Paper Raper. Ha! "Paper Raper," that's good; let me write that down.
(*writes down "Paper Raper"; types '(*writes down "Paper Raper"'*)
Actually, if you picked a small enough town and your penis were sufficiently big, you could quite literally be a Zip Code Rapist, although not literally. Either way, thank god we have Gregg Turkington and John Singer around to perform their own original material as well as that of Greg Ginn, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit, George Michael, Stephen Malkmus, Pete Townshend, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Stephen Foster, John Densmore, Robby Kreiger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John McVie, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Barry Gibb, Roger Waters, Mark Eitzel, James Pierpont, Steve Barri, P.F. Sloan and Public Domain. Or HAD, I guess, since this material is from 1993-1996.
If you never had a chance to see ZCR live in their heyday, you missed a good laugh. However, it's never too late to pick up a live CD compilation such as this one, especially now that it's available. I'll warn you - the Zip Code Rapists were a duo featuring one guy on guitar and one guy screaming, so it's not the most "musical" CD in the world. However, if you like to laugh and have a poor sense of humor, you can't go wrong! It's essentially like listening to two drunk funnymen entertaining you in your living room (as you and your friends hold a '70s-style orgy). And best of all, the Zip Code Rapists actually make all of these classic oldtimey songs BETTER with their modern humor ways!
Here, let me give a few examples. Don't you agree, for my first example, that The Beatles' "Your Mother Should Know" would have moved many more copies in the marketplace had it included the line, "Mother! You fuckin' SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"? And wouldn't John Lennon's heartbreaking "Mother" have made much less - and therefore better - sense if the first line were rearranged to "Mother, you needed me, but I didn't need you"? And just think of how many units Fleetwood Mac's failed Rumours LP might have sold had "Don't Stop" been prefaced by the intro, "This one's for our new fuckin' president - ALBERT GORE!!!!" It's sad to think of so much wasted talent gone to pot like this, and upsetting.
But it's not just weak, boring songs like "Touch Me" and "The Bear Went Over The Mountain" that are improved by the Zip Code Rapists; it's the very idea of musician/audience interaction. During their short but purple reign, Gregg and John broke down all barriers between genius and punter, leaving behind such recorded bonding moments as "If you want some smart drinks, come over here and I'll piss in a cup" and "Oh, we got some fuckin' comedians in here. We've got room on this stage for fifteen heads. Fifteen of you come up here and put your heads on the stage. Then I'm gonna go to the back of the stage, and I'm gonna run up, and I'm gonna kick your fuckin' heads in."
So whether you want to hear a vocalist dedicate "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" to himself, you think it would be hilarious to hear somebody introduce "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" as "The Theme From Fame," or you just 'get off' on the idea of a singer continuously decrying his choice of cover material with the bitter refrain, "This song STINKS!," Here At Last... Zip Code Rapists Live!!! is the perfect way to introduce the joy of music to your infant.
Fans, please note: This CD features 31 live performances - three of songs from The Man Can't Bust Your Music, one from Matador Records Catalog, 2 from 94124 and a mindblasting FOUR from Sing And Play The Three Doctors. Beyond that, you get an extra version of "Touch Me" and 20 BRAND! NEW! COVERS! But don't take it from me - take it from the very last spoken words on this delightful comedy-rock CD along the lines of Martin Mull:
Gregg: "That was our last song unless somebody out there says 'Yay.' If one person says 'Yay,' we'll play for another two hours."
Audience member: "Yay!"
Gregg: "Alright!"
You just completely ruined the Zip Code Rapists for me by calling them a Ween tribute band. Ah well...
I could only find a few songs from this band on Napster, several
months ago, and the only one worth keeping was the cover of "Riders on
the Storm" (which I still love). I want to find that damn John Lennon
cover.
I have a remotely funny story about how I finally found this album. I basically got into Amarillo Records just as they were closing up shop (I still remember the shitty aol site), I bought a few things on mailorder but for some reason I never picked up any Zip Code Rapists albums. Then Amarillo closed and I really wanted to find a copy of this record but never had any luck. Any time I would ask about this record at a record store just seemed to look at me weird and say, "I have no idea what you are talking about." Flash forward to about a year and a half ago, I was in Calgary in a small, dusty punk store. I walked in and started to converse with the guy behind the counter, somehow the conversation turned towards one Neil Hamburgler. I brought up the Amarillo/Zip Code Rapists connection, he had no clue about what the hell I was talking about. A few minutes later, while going through a huge box of dusty discounted LP's, I found it! The 94124 EP! THE VERY SAME RECORD I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT! Thrilled, I plopped down my $3.50 in change and bought THE VERY SAME RECORD I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT! I then walked downtown and was approached by two Jehova's Witnesses, who in trying to convert me, played it all cool and asked me what record I had just bought. I then took out the 94124 EP and said, "THE ZIP CODE RAPISTS... THEY LOVE JESUS TOO!!!!" The Jehova's then looked at me weird and walked away and I screamed, "HORRAY FOR THE RAPISTS!!!" Simply put, this record saved my life. It's pretty decent too, I really like "Henderson", even though I shouldn't, because it is terrible.
cheeky! thats why you swapped the cd of it with me!! oh well, its pretty cool. um....i really want to contact Greg Turkington about Flipper and some other shit i wanna know..so drop me a line if you read this!!!
I too have recieved an email or three from Mr. Gregg Turkington. But unlike you, I never really had that much to say to him. In fact while replying to his email I had to fight the urge to say, "YOU FUCKING BASTARD! I KNOW YOUR NEIL HAMBURGER!!! WHY DON'T YOU JUST COME OUT AND ADMIT IT YOU FUCKING PUSSY!!!@!!! WHATS THE BIG FUCKING DEAL, MAN??? I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!" Anyways, he seems like a nice enough guy. I am still waiting for a Zip Code Rapists discography box set. It should be noted that I am the only awaiting such a thing.
Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington.Gregg Turkington. EMAIL ME - armlesspete@hotmail.com
Hey Mark,
I've felt incredibly stupid and useless when I've met 'heroes' too. I met Jennifer Herrema from Royal Trux (and she's a girl... but a really tough one) and all I could do was utter some bollocks about 'great show bye' or something.
I enjoy your site and find it musically informative and humorous. I like boys. Do you know where I can find anything by the Zip Code Rapists?
Click here to purchase the 94124 EP on CD!