Has a single interesting thing ever happened in the state of Virginia? Sure, my old friend Steds broke his jaw after falling flat on his drunken face in a McDonalds’ bathroom during Spring Break at Virginia Beach, but hundreds of people must break their jaws every year after falling flat on their drunken faces in McDonalds’ bathrooms at Virginia Beach during Spring Break.
And then there’s the mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke Island in Virginia, but that cryptic message they left behind (“Croatan”) tells me everything I need to know—Croatan was obviously the name of a doom metal band, and the entire colony got lost on their way to see them at Virginia Beach during Spring Break.
But to answer my own question, one interesting thing has happened in the state of Virginia, and that’s Happy Flowers, the lower-than-lo-fi duo of cheerful chaos agents Mr. Happily Charred Infant (aka John Beers) and Mr. Anus (aka Charlie Kramer). Happy Flowers got their start at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and quickly established their signature shtick—primitivist songs about childhood that are as amusing as they’re hard to listen to unless you’re an aficionado of cheerful caterwaul. These guys make the Butthole Surfers sound like Steely Dan.
The 1987 compilation Making the Bunny Pay (which has a simply wonderful cover) comprises the band’s first two releases: the 1984 EP “Songs for Children” and the 1986 EP “Now We Are Six.” It includes their first and possibly greatest song, “Mom, I Gave the Cat Some Acid,” which makes the EP worth owning all by itself. (Sonic Youth did a cover, but their version is but a shadow of the original.) Happy Flowers would release four subsequent full-lengths before breaking up, although they’ve briefly reunited to enthralled listeners on several occasions, reminding us that horrible noise is its own reward.
Singing songs from the perspective of a child isn’t as ubiquitous as you’d think. I racked my brain, and all I could come up with was Allen Sherman’s 1963 classic “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)”, Killdozer’s 1985 smash hit in Albania, “Going to the Beach,” and Cows’ as hilarious as it is terrifying 1990 smash hit in Moldavia, “Put Me Down.”
I’m betting Jonathan Richman has written some, but I can’t be bothered to check because I don’t care. (The same goes for Half Japanese.) The great Angry Samoans (to say nothing of the Beastie Boys) have written very funny songs from the perspective of adolescence, but then again, so have (I’m betting) thousands of other artists.
Mr. Horribly Charred Infant (from hereon to be called Mr. HCI) and Mr. Anus both play a variety of instruments. They switch between guitar and bass and both play drums and a variety of common household objects, including cookie tins and vacuum cleaners. They share vocal duties.
“Mom, I Gave The Cat Some Acid” isn’t just their best song—it’s a template. It opens with some serious noise and deafening feedback, then both Mr. Anus and Mr. HCI commence to scream out the lyrics. Mostly, they scream the title over fractured and repellent guitar noise, and that’s a compliment. This is free jazz noise sans the jazz, a derangement of all the senses, and it goes on for almost five minutes. I not only survived it, I fell in love with it.
“Meadowlands” opens with some folk-rock guitar, interrupted by some awful noise that could be a guitar or could be a guy screaming or could be a guitar made to sound like a guy screaming. Mostly it’s a rumbling foray into inchoate noise and feedback. It’s highly unpleasant in a good way. I guess you could call it an instrumental.
“Requests” begins with one of the guys singing like a psycho killer, then this monumental squall of feedback causes him to start shrieking and shouting. This is some very high-class unlistenable noise, people; at one point, they take feedback further than anyone I’ve ever heard—it’s downright industrial.
“Mom and Dad Like the Baby More Than Me” sounds downright traditional, by which I mean it has a melody and sounds like an actual song and boasts a great heavy metal riff that goes on until Mr. Anus plays this great guitar solo. And all the while, Mr. HCI is shrieking “I hate the baby!” like a petulant four-year-old whose role as center of the universe has been usurped by a little bundle of parental betrayal.
“All My Toys Hate Me” is all tape (as in adhesive tape) unwind sizzle, cookie tin bash, and guitar noise over which Mr. HCI screams the song title and some other stuff it’s impossible to make out. Then things get really chaotic—Mr. Anus freaks out on guitar, and if you’re the right, or perhaps I should say wrong kind of person, the din is positively enthralling.
“Razors in My Apple” opens with some “Sister Ray” bass and cookie tin percussion over which Mr. HCI sings what sounds like gibberish but is probably English, that is, when he isn’t screaming. The song stops, starts, and almost sounds like a real song before coming to an abrupt end. Not their best, but like we used to say during my tenure in the federal workforce, close enough for government work.
“Hush Little Baby” is a short but wonderfully deranged cover of the very annoying nursery rhyme featuring a zither and the vocals of Mr. HCI, whose final words are “And if you die out in the cold, daddy’s not gonna mumble mumble mumble.” What I would give for a lyric sheet.
“The Vacuum Ate Timmy” features guitar, bass, and (naturally) a vacuum cleaner and begins on a jaunty note, interrupted by the Hoover and lots of screaming and shouting by the duo. It’s your typical noise rock song done atypically, and features some truly unhinged guitar by Mr. HCI, who also does the vacuuming. I would like to think he was actually vacuuming during the recording, because making music and doing household chores have traditionally been mutually exclusive activities.
“Daddy Melted” is all cookie tin, squalls of guitar feedback and squeal, and anarchy, over which the duo screams indecipherably. After a fadeout, the band comes back, and you’d almost swear they were copping Led Zeppelin’s freakout in “Whole Lotta Love.” For a second or two. The song takes a long time to breathe its last.
It’s a pity Making the Bunny Pay doesn’t include the brilliant “I Said I Wanna Watch Cartoons,” or the high-velocity shredfest “We Rock,” or the very Oedipus-wrecked “If This Gun Were Real (I Could Shoot You and Sleep in the Big Bed with Mommy),” which brings to mind later Black Flag. But you can’t have everything in this life, although you can steal most of it if you’re crafty about it.
Depending on how you feel about hideous noise, you may come to the conclusion that Happy Flowers had more fun making these songs than you’re having listening to them. And depending on how you feel about Happy Flowers’ particular brand of hideous noise, you may not want this album in your house. You may not even want it in your zip code.
But if you’re honest with yourself, and not caught up in the risible delusion that childhood was a happy time instead of an almost non-stop series of helpless and traumatically frustrating episodes, you’ll applaud these guys for speaking truth to power hilariously. And look on the bright side—their music is not as annoying as the buzz of a fly who simply won’t be dissuaded from trying to get into your ear.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
