SHIT YOU NEED

Author\'s note: I started writing my contribution for this section many months ago, and decided that one of the things I would cover would be The Dead Milkmen. With the world so serious a place as of late, the Milkmen seemed the logical choice to help release the tension and let the people laugh. Two or so weeks later, I woke up to my girlfriend telling me, \"It sucks about that guy from The Dead Milkmen.\" In a haze of hangover, I said, \"What do you mean?\" Sadly, Dave Blood, the bass player, took his own life earlier that week. Here\'s what I wrote before that tragic day.
1. The Dead Milkmen
It seems these days every band either has something sickeningly poetic and self-important to say, or they are too uptight about their \"artistic integrity\" to let go and do something silly. I tell you, it is a pox, and the best cure for this plague of stickuptheassitus is the one and only Dead Milkmen. What do they sound like? Pop-punk, sans all that needless distortion on the guitars, plus one guy yelling funny things, another guy singing funny things, accordions, and everything else that makes the world a great place to live in. And since there is a rapidly growing epidemic of sad bastard nonsense out there, I\'m gonna prescribe not one, but multiple albums: Big Lizard In My Backyard; Beelzebubba; Bucky Fellini; and whatever you can get your hands on. No other band has the gusto to write songs like \"Takin\' Retards To The Zoo\". If there is, they\'re probably just ripping off The Dead Milkmen, and they probably suck.
2. No Parade - Ceaseless Fire
Oh, okay-- you\'re not in the mood to laugh. You\'re too angry with the state of things under Dubya\'s regime to settle down with simple tongue-in-cheek enjoyment. I hear you, comrade. You say you need to fuel that fire for chuckin\' bricks at the pigs who enjoy beatin\' the shit out of the proletariat? Well, let No Parade\'s Ceaseless Fire be the kindling of revolution! No Parade gives hardcore punk what it has been desperately needing: a vicious beating, stripping it back down to a no-frills sound. Chunky, dark, yet seemingly simplified guitars and bass lines over pounding drums (with none of that annoying double bass pedal shit), combined with vocals that sound like, well, like he removed his vocal chords, stomped on them in a yard of glass shards and coarse gravel, and stuck them back in, shrapnel and all. The only downside is that, as far as I know, this is only available on vinyl. If you don\'t have a record player, you\'re shit out of luck.
3. Tim Curry - Fearless
So, this is my take on how this album came to life:
After the filming of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, they had a cast party filled with an overabundance of hard drugs and booze that went on late into the night. Around 2:00 AM-- when the bars let out-- Journey and... let\'s say... Night Ranger decided to have themselves a bit of fun and crash the party. Tempers and egos flared like Judd Nelson\'s nostrils as the booze was running full steam ahead, when Journey attacked with progressive guitars and repetitive keyboards. The cast countered with awful \"city sax\" licks, and Tim\'s I\'ll-swallow-you-whole vocals. Drums kept time, choruses arose, the battle raged on, and a young Susan Sarandon kept record of it all with her handy 24-track, two-inch reel-to-reel, which she kept in her purse.
The sun rose, illuminating the new day with stellar tracks like \"Right On The Money\" and \"Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire\", and it was later released as the album Fearless, as a gift to the birth of a blessed child (me) who would go on to tell the tale of the magnificent adventure you have just read. Everyone in the world joined hands and was happy... except for Steve Perry, of course.