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First thing that jumps out at me is a mad decent sense of humor. The cover takes a party time template and colors it in with a sparsely populated rural lake, one guy who should be in a gay disco and another guy dressed like what we'd now consider a stereotypical neckbeard/incel but at the time--1998--most closely approximated John Popper. And speaking of it being 1998, Popper dude's drinking a Zima. Holy shit I'd forgotten about Zima. Their ads are now flooding back into my head. I haven't seen one since I was a teenager. I wasn't old enough to drink. I didn't even want to drink at that point. I was writing an email to a friend just now and blanked on something I wanted to tell her. I regularly forget about projects I need to do at work if they're not right in front of me. I just realized I forgot to call a lawyer today. Zima ads? Instant recall upon triggering.
Anyways, the cover's an amusing parody of booze ads from the time, and then on the back we get 8 track tapes, which are inherently funny, of what I assume are Fizzbin's previous albums, one of which is called Banned From Nantucket, which is also inherently funny. Put it all together and it screams third wave ska, as do at least half those song titles. Trampoline, Lemonade, Supermarket Tabloid Sunday, X-Girlfriend? Totally ska-worthy. There's just one problem.
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No horn section.
Now, ska does not require a horn section. When you play ska it sounds like ska, with or without the horns. And in fact Operation Ivy, the band that kicked off third wave ska, didn't have any. On the other hand, Op Ivy and a Canadian group called Bedouin Soundclash are the only two hornless third wave ska bands I can think of. Not great odds.
Speaking of not great odds though, multi-racial bands are, to be perfectly frank, only common in three genres. The why of that is long, complex, depressing, and horrible, plus I'm not the best person to get into it for a variety of reasons, so I won't attempt to do so here. The point is that despite the existence of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Gories/Dirtbombs, Dehd, and others, a mixed black and white band is almost certainly either jazz, funk, or ska. This is clearly not a jazz album, and while it's technically possible to play funk with a trio I've never seen it. So while Fizzbin could be any kind of music and my initial guess in the store based on the front and back covers was amusingly bratty rock, my money's now on ska. Let me state again that it's depressing I can narrow that down based on skin color.
Lastly, there are two songs I want to give particular mention. I'm a little worried about She's "Ms." Perfect; the scare quotes around "Ms." (mine aren't scare quotes, they're quote quotes) shows potential for some sexist bullshit. The other song I'll draw attention to is Then The Cake Came Out of the Girl.
When I was coming up with how I wanted to do this blog, I didn't give any thought to lyric sheets. They're part of the album package so they should be fair game, but lyrics can tell you a lot about a band, so they arguably interfere with the no research part of the guessing protocol.
I mention this because I started scanning the lyric sheet thinking I might see what was going on with Ms., but my eye snagged on Then The Cake instead, and it's about bulimia. So the packaging has some laughs, but now I don't know if the music will have any. Then I decided the lyrics might reveal too much, and stopped looking.
So, reading the lyrics as an overall policy TBD, report on the album coming Monday.
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