admin
22 December 2023
The cover of Take One For the Team is from some 8-bit video baseball game. Appropriately, the image is of an 8-bit batter being beaned in the head with a baseball. Tough break. But, he took one for the team. Clever, eh? Yeah. Well, can someone do that to me while this record is playing? I’d love a little industrial strength pain right about now.
Take One For the Team is hard for me to digest. It’s most definitely not original or innovative. And it’s not pure old fun, which I was kinda hoping, what with the cover and all. It sounds like a lo-tech emo band, musically. Lyrically, it’s just confusing to me.
The one thing I will hand them is naming themselves after what they do best. This kind of music does not rock. It does not make young girls with low self-esteem want to sleep with you. It does not make young men practice air guitar in front of their bedroom mirror to your wily licks. It makes people hold their arm like they're hugging themselves, throw away their hairbrush (because messy hair makes the Eurotrash grow fonder), and keep a journal full of diary entry-level poems and drawings that make kindergarten art classes look like the Louvre.
Tom Foolery and the Mistakes have a name that could have spelled good-time mayhem. Instead, it spells musically wimpy, run-of-the-mill college radio fodder.
I mean, listen guys: If you’re gonna start a band, think about it. So many bands have come and gone over the years. But the ones who get remembered are the ones who do something substantial. Something of quality. The shit that sells and covers every magazine at every newsstand-- that shit is worthless. Don’t do that. And don’t do what you’re doing. Pay attention to the world around you, and the world before you. Don’t just start a band and make crap. Make something interesting.
And if any of you chumps out there say, “Oh, Vinnie. You talk a great game, but you’re just a writer,” know that I’d gladly play and write half these lame bands out there under the fucking table. Give me the equipment, and I’ll bury your challenge like Gacy buried pretty boys.
Take One For the Team is hard for me to digest. It’s most definitely not original or innovative. And it’s not pure old fun, which I was kinda hoping, what with the cover and all. It sounds like a lo-tech emo band, musically. Lyrically, it’s just confusing to me.
The one thing I will hand them is naming themselves after what they do best. This kind of music does not rock. It does not make young girls with low self-esteem want to sleep with you. It does not make young men practice air guitar in front of their bedroom mirror to your wily licks. It makes people hold their arm like they're hugging themselves, throw away their hairbrush (because messy hair makes the Eurotrash grow fonder), and keep a journal full of diary entry-level poems and drawings that make kindergarten art classes look like the Louvre.
Tom Foolery and the Mistakes have a name that could have spelled good-time mayhem. Instead, it spells musically wimpy, run-of-the-mill college radio fodder.
I mean, listen guys: If you’re gonna start a band, think about it. So many bands have come and gone over the years. But the ones who get remembered are the ones who do something substantial. Something of quality. The shit that sells and covers every magazine at every newsstand-- that shit is worthless. Don’t do that. And don’t do what you’re doing. Pay attention to the world around you, and the world before you. Don’t just start a band and make crap. Make something interesting.
And if any of you chumps out there say, “Oh, Vinnie. You talk a great game, but you’re just a writer,” know that I’d gladly play and write half these lame bands out there under the fucking table. Give me the equipment, and I’ll bury your challenge like Gacy buried pretty boys.
artid
1540
Old Image
5_12_tomfoolery.jpg
issue
vol 5 - issue 12 (aug 2003)
section
entertainmental