NOTHING SHOW

For its second act as IDIOT FLESH, Nils Frykdahl, Dan Rathbun, Gene Jun and their crazed lunacy brigade took everything from the Acid Rain demos and debut "Tales of Instant Knowledge and Sure Death" and simply made it all weirder, wilder and avant-garde. The result was the second IDIOT FLESH album THE NOTHING SHOW which came out in 1994. This is when the band embarked on an extensive tour with the Czech avant-punk band U? Jsme Doma. The band not only upped their weirdness factor on their albums but the already crazed live shows followed suit. The band dressed in cartoonish costumes with exaggerated heads and hands, would interrupt the music in order to host an impromptu game show which featured the prize of a frozen eel that was handed to members of the audience or whatever suited them for the time and place they were performing.

Yeah, the crazed antics excelled big time and it's not hard to imagine why once you experience the leap in ingenuity crafted on the band's second album THE NOTHING SHOW. While the funk rock is still a key ingredient in crafting the basis of many of the 13 tracks, the band feels less compelled to stick to any particular anchoring protocol and pretty much cut their ties to reality and like a helium balloon drifted into a world of its own making. Clearly inspired by the freedom seeking artists ranging from Frank Zappa to Primus, IDIOT FLESH was more akin to the zany antics of Mr Bungle however this band preceded them by several years but due to the greater success of the Bunglers often gets accused of ripping them off. But the music of IDIOT FLESH is nothing like Mr Bungle save the use of funk rock as heard on the Bungler's first album.

The music of IDIOT FLESH is more akin to a schizoid Vaudville show gone very, very wrong. In fact the music itself sounds like an exaggerated form of the most crazed moments of Tom Waits than anything Mike Patton and company pulled out of their hats. While the album may sound a bit unfocused and rampantly meandering from one corner of the music world to the next, that is both its boon and its bane. This is psycho music and it may require some reorienting your expectations and comfort zone to really let it sink in. In fact the first couple of times i've experienced THE NOTHING SHOW i didn't really like it at all. It's all so convoluted with Broadway-like tunes one moment, funk metal the next and then off to some bizarre musical expressions that defy all classification. It's a lot to take in which was indeed the point of these musical maestros. They simply wanted to bombard you with so many unexpected stimuli that you could not help but react.

The album does come off as some kind of stage musical with an army of musicians to indulge every whimsy that fancied the creative fertile minds involved. Everything about THE NOTHING SHOW is absolutely nuts. Absolutely nothing is even remotely commercial or digestible for that matter. This album was designed to be abrasive and alienating however if you crave some the most daring and outlandish musical expressions to be heard, then this is definitely your ticket to insane asylum music! Not quite to the level of refinement of the future Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, THE NOTHING SHOW is several steps up from its predecessor. Here at least ideas are organized into recognizable patterns even if improv liberties are strewn about willy nilly. The avant-funk-punk with elements of circus music and marching band antics showcase an entirely new style of taking the funk rock / metal craze of the 1980s and torpedoing it into the world of unhinged avant-garde.

The tracks are just tighter and the confidence level is so high that everyone involved poured their heart and soul into the freakfest that was THE NOTHING SHOW. In addition to the now familiar guitar, bass, drums and occasional saxophone sounds, IDIOT FLESH had uncovered an arsenal of alternative instruments in the form of not only a slew of percussion but by adding yellow, trombone, flute and other sounds such as the saw blade. The progressive time signature weirdness was had also become more demented with brutal prog outbursts carpet bombing the soundscape. As far as the psycho troupe's motto "Rock Against Rock" in that aspect they're totally killing it here almost single handedly crafting a new branch of avant-garde extremism with this single album.

Probably way too weird for many and also most likely more effective with the live props however THE NOTHING SHOW is more like "Everything And The Kitchen Sink" which in that regard was a very Bungle-esque thing to entertain however IDIOT FLESH was its own artistic entity having a history of excess to draw upon. This Oakland based outfit had a history of California craziness to draw upon whether it be the crazed live shows of The Tubes and early Oingo Boingo, the avant-funk rule breakers Primus or the unclassifiable Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention. Part funk rock, part math rock, part psycho punk, part circus barker and 100% nuts, IDIOT FLESH certainly delivered an album nobody was expecting. Overall a really good if difficult listening experience however one of my major gripes about some of these psycho albums of the 90s was that they liked to insert long pauses and silence between tracks and i absolutely hate that! Otherwise, a triumph of freedom at all expenses avant-garde madness here.