JUST ANOTHER BAND FROM L.A.

Too much musicality is sacrificed here in favour of nonsense stories, inside jokes and just plain screwing around. Frank's trademark absurdity and witticisms can't help but get stale when you're subjected to them with only the most rudimentary of musical accompaniments for three quarters of an hour. The pièce de résistance "Billy The Mountain" has exactly one interesting musical phrase (the Studebaker Hoch theme) that lasts for only two out of its twenty-four minutes, the rest being drawn-out idiocy. Maybe with a visual component this stuff might have been more entertaining, but without it this mostly just strikes me as a big waste of time. Listen to "Greggery Peccary" if you want to hear Frank tell an absurdist fable that's actually funny and musically interesting. This album's version of "Dog Breath" goes off well enough and is about the only spot on the album where Frank really lets loose with his guitar, but I think I'd prefer just about any version of the song that doesn't have Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan warbling over it with their abrasive high-pitched voices. Also, good lord... Did Frank really need to stretch out his ugly Freudian tale "Magdalena" to over six minutes? Stupid.