The Frogs “I Don’t Care If U Disrespect Me (Just So You Love Me)”

The cliche applied with grating consistency to the Velvet Underground’s first record is that only a thousand were sold, but everyone who bought one went and formed a band. The Frogs’ first record, 1989’s It’s Only Right and Natural, is subject to an updated version of that folktale—it would easily be considered one of the most controversial records in the annals of rock if only it were heard outside of a select, elite coterie in the early Nineties that managed to get a copy of the self-distributed cassette. This privileged group of music geeks, however, happened to have already formed bands—variously dubbed The Blake Babies, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beck, and Smashing Pumpkins—and embraced the faux-controversy and avant-garde humor of brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion as an outsider curio that worked well as opening PA music and uber-hip name-drop material.

Natural is, um, a singularly memorable listening experience, let’s say that. It’s homo-satirical (with one of the all-time great shocking album covers), but without a drop of progressive ideal to be found. It thus finds tongue-in-cheek peers among Randy Newman’s “Short People” and “Sail Away,” Steely Dan’s “Show-Biz Kids” and most anything by Sparks, but crosses over into the avant-garde by refusing to even remotely concern itself with traditional songcraft, and demonstrating pride in its sheer amateurishness. “The song titles themselves (”Someone’s Pinning Me to the Ground”, “Been A Month Since I Had A Man”, “Hot Cock Annie”) are purposeful button-pushers, attempting to provoke sanctimonious outrage while simultaneously disallowing it. The lyrics, sung in a faux-British-folk style (think about an even fey-er Donovan), are so bizarrely literal and matter-of-factly presented that they eerily border on diary entries—the kind of stuff that foundmagazine would put on a mix CD. The brilliance of the record is that its content very specifically addresses its listenership—those predetermined to expect a wallop of irony and so much camp that it hurts. Listen to “I Don’t Care If U Disrespect Me (Just So You Love Me)” (mp3), if only to finally discover both the origin of the sample for Beck’s “Loser” and, well, the entire purpose for the Hidden Cameras.

Buy It’s Only Right and Natural from Amazon here.

Filed under: Beck  The Frogs