Published on Sep 9, 1999
This album is a casualty of one of those Columbia House
blackouts I had in college. You know, where you somehow convince
your better judgement $13.99 a CD is a good deal (always forgetting
for one critical moment that shipping is the great equalizer). I
don’t recall whether I completely lost it and actually chose Saigon
Kick’s
The Lizard as one of my ten free CDs for a penny, or
received it in the mail as a result of lapsing on the old “if you
want the featured CD simply do not return the monthly mailer”
game.
So you buy your six CDs in three years meeting your “club”
obligations, a jaded mail order consumer exhausted by two years of
both sending back Columbia House mailers and returning damnable
featured CDs to sender…and they’ll still track you down like the
IRS promising not to use the mandatory send-back mailers if you
rejoin! I don’t know…that first experience was enough. I’ll let
Saigon Kick along with some other regrettable Columbia House CDs
stand as a monument to my gullibility.
I’d say
The Lizard was Saigon Kick’s attempted artistic tour de
force. Unfortunately it’s anything but, and it takes only a glance
at the back cover to see these guys were proud members of the
poseur all-star team. It’s really too bad their craptacular single
“Love Is On The Way” allowed them to remain on MTV long after they
were blackened and bruised like a 3-week old banana. In other
words, they were around long after everyone left them behind with
the other confused bands that were obviously mystified by Jane’s
Addiction’s legit arena rock. Where Jane’s had the air of
knowledgeable junkies with style and originality, bands like Saigon
Kick came across as manufactured stopgaps spanning from Warrant to
Nirvana. In short, Saigon Kick is but a thankfully long forgotten
pop thing.
I still possess
The Lizard only because the used-record stores I visited
with this vivid green CD clutched in my paws (for a hopeful two
dollars) already had at least three of the beauties in the racks.
Thus I have owned the awful document Saigon Kick left for posterity
over a number of years now. And I’ll tell you this: it still sucks.
In fact, it sucks almost as much as N’Sync and The Backstreet Boys
combined. Saigon Kick established a standard for sucking long
before our current crop of mainstream fashion victims arrived to
carry the torch.
The first track is aptly titled “Cruelty.” You can tell from the
outset guitarist Jason Bieler is the mackdaddy of this group, what
with the mammoth guitar part that swells out of the mix to dominate
even the huge, Bonham-wannabe drum sound. Sadly it’s a poor
rendition of another quasi-instrumental song. I’ll let you guess
what band that song might be from. Plagiarism must be why Bieler
looks so pained in a publicity picture from that time.
In fact, much of the album is made up of derivative,
direction-less spasms on guitar and vocals. Those spasms, however,
do not even compare to the band’s incredibly lame attempts at
dramatic song titles. The following are a lasting testament to
being out of touch:
“Hostile Youth.” You know; it’s what the docile youth became
after they spent their allowance on this album.
“Feel The Same Way.” As who? You’ll never know because you
already hit the fast forward button.
“All Alright.” This name obviously took a while.
“Freedom.” You’ll free yourself of this track quickly. Only to
run into the “God Of 42nd Street”. Talk about some paint-by-numbers
crap.
“Chanel.” Like the perfume? The Kick boys play at their most
artsy on this tune, and (dare I say it) it’s probably the only
interesting tune on the album (of course it’s a Beatles
rip-off).
Did I mention the photo on the back cover? The picture of
guitarist Bieler is one of the funnier bits of Spinal Tap
serendipity I’ve seen in a while.
I gotta jump back to “Feel The Same Way” for a minute. I didn’t
make it very far into this track before wanting to put a .38 in my
mouth, but it has one bit of lyrical honesty that caught my eye in
the CD booklet: “call me a man with a view that’s wild / call me a
man with a mind like a child,”…I mean, that really says it
all.
But this review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the epic
“Peppermint Tribe”. Who came up with that trifling title? Never
mind the music, because honestly, I can’t remember if it’s the song
that starts with really distorted guitar chords or the song that
starts with heavily distorted guitar chords.
“All I Want” is pretty scary too, what with its European
travelogue themes. And if you’re a dumb ass like me you’ll remember
“Love Is On The Way.” LIOTW (as I fantasize the song might be
called on some Saigon Kick fan page), you might recall, was the
“big hit” off the album and is very mellow in contrast to the rest
of
The Lizard. And it uses some interesting note and chord
choices, so naturally the band did not write the original. The
bottom line is it still sucks.
Then there is “Body Bags”. Obviously a political statement
right? Possibly, but see if you can decipher these sophisticated
lyrics: “Marilyn was the finest sleeper / J.F.K. was the youngest
bleeder / Luther died the bravest dreamer.” I really can’t dig up a
better gem of generic fluff than that to describe the whole gestalt
that is Saigon Kick.
Obviously this was a ripe target. I don’t know what record
company executive thought they could get away with this insult to
rock and roll – but they did. I’m guessing there are still hundreds
if not thousands of copies of this album available at your used
record shops – especially if your local store is run by a lazy old
hippie who doesn’t purge his inventory very often. You can probably
check out this laugher for under five bucks if you’re into
torturous self-abuse.
Interestingly enough, Saigon Kick may still be kicking even in
1999. BEWARE! (Oh, and as for the grade – they had a hit single, so
they deserve the plus!)