album of the week: 2.2

The Mr. T Experience

...And The Women Who Love Them

Lookout (1994)

why you'll love it: Dr. Frank is the Woody Allen of punk

why you'll hate it: The last 10 years of mainstream pop-punk have jaded you.

I want to spend some more time with the new Hot Chip before I review it, so here is an old classic. I'm pretty sure Valentine's Day is coming up, so I can't think of a better band to represent than The Mr. T Experience. MTX is a band I have quite often considered writing up a huge multi-post love-letter to, spanning their entire discography. Though, for a blog I don't even keep comments open, or log traffic for (if there is any at all); I always put it off and pretended I have more constructive things to do. But my opinion still stands - The Mr. T Experience is still the most underrated band in American history.

I can't think of a better introduction to MTX than the 1995 ...And The Women ho Love Them EP. It was the first MTX album I ever bought, and the very first song, "Tapin' Up My Heart", is a perfect introduction to their sound. It's an intelligent and creative blend of vintage west coast punk and 60's bubblegum pop, with clever lyrics that never get old. From there the EP continues on, citing apocryphal stories, Richard Nixon, weltschmerz, and heroin.

Pop-punk has been wildly over-exploited for the past fifteen years, and while MTX certainly falls into the "songs about girls" category, I've always been convinced that their intentions were entirely different than a Sum 41 or Blink 182. Dropping cheesy-ass positive vibes guitar pop into the punk formula was basically pissing in the eye of the punk community (known for pissing in the eye of the general community). Just a few weeks ago, MTX songwriter, Dr. Frank, did an interview with The Huffington Post about his 2007 novel, King Dork, in which he lays into obsessive Catcher in The Rye fans.

"Desecrating this fetish can drive a certain sort of person wild with fury, which is kind of funny because it is, after all, supposed to be an icon of rebellion. Maybe it's my punk rock background or my Bay Area upbringing that make me think that the thing to do with a monument is to try to smash it up, even if it happens to be a monument to smashing up monuments"

Replace thoughts of Catcher with the punk scene, and that is what I've always seen MTX doing. As someone who has loved punk rock, yet always felt ostracized from the community for not being single-mindedly loud, tough, or angry enough; MTX goes right up there with my counter-culture heros like Jonathan Richman and Devo. Nobody should be safe when it comes to music. If young Spike is gonna piss of dad by blasting Sex Pistols, Dad should get just as much enjoyment out of piping Brian Wilson into the little brat's ears.

This is starting to turn into my epic MTX rant, so I'll wrap this up. ...And The Women Who Love Them is the beginning of a golden era for MTX; where they came the closest to fame they'll ever be. Their pop-punk experiments finally hit a consistent stride at this release, continuing with the following two albums. Not only does it have all that anti-anti-establishment jazz I keep going on about; it's a genuinely catchy and often hilarious EP. It's a normal guy observing his boring normal life. Even the honestly written "I Believe in You" is well done through its use of fumbling lyrics until finally resorting to "I don't really know the best way to convey it. / I'm just gonna say it"

It's a perfect formula that became so well loved, Dr. Frank himself had to pull the brakes on it years later. In 1999, pop-punk had become so accepted, that MTX would next have to undergo alterations to make pop-punk push boundaries of alternative-taste yet again. But I'll save that bit for my review of Alcatraz...