Reviews We Like, But In A Different Way...
(...that way being that these are reviews
which don't like US, but which we think are kind of funny in their
partial-to-complete misunderstanding of the band.)
| From the Canadian punkrock zine Caustic Truths Keith Carmen January 1999 |
[Neditor: this review receives pride of place because it ACTUALLY CALLS FOR OUR DEATH!]Anyone who thanks Satan on their sleeve has gotta be cool, right? RIGHT? Exceptions to the rule are getting to be too frequent. This band should either be entertaining children, or have a shitty comedy show on public television-- whichever would make them die first. Pop music that tries way to (sic) hard to be wacky and out there, so that it just comes off lame and pointless. Pat Boone's metal album had more balls than this. !! |
| From the hep indierock webzine Pitchforkmedia.com Spencer Owen July 2001 |
[Neditor: Well, PopCanon is only mentioned briefly, and ludicrously, but the whole review drips with so much caustic bile that I wanted to include it in its entirety.] There were already too
many Police tribute albums when Virgin released Reggatta Mondatta:
A Reggae Tribute to the Police in 1997. Then there were twice too
many when Ark 21 released Reggatta Mondatta: A Reggae Tribute to the
Police, Volume II in 1998. And now, with the straightforwardly titled
A Tribute to the Police coming out on Big Eye this year, the numbers
seem to be increasing exponentially. When will Sting make it stop? Oh,
but it's too late already. Aswad, Shinehead and Maxi Priest have had their
way with the classics. |
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From the terminally hip ezine
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[Neditor: The tagline from the front of their Reviews section reads 'This is the most pretentious thing I've EVER heard. You must know, so you can hate.' I twice sent Mr. Stirling the following point-by-point deconstruction of his error-riddled review, but he never responded.]I make careful use of the 'Insert: Symbol' command in my word processor typing out the name of this album, as the pretension involved is absolutely necessary, but unfortunately, it gets lost in transition to HTML. It's not just naming your album The Art. It's doing it like this that really screams of unadulterated pretension. [For those of you who read French--or have even a highschool education--you know that the phrase d'art would translate more as 'of art' or 'about art', NOT 'The Art'. Since our first album had a lot of songs about our favorite authors, and this one was a bit more about art and artists, we thought it would be funny--funny!--to say the album was About Art = d'art. And, to us, the title has always been pronounced simply 'dart'--the apostrophe was more of a graphic element, not meant to be taken seriously as French, for fuckssake. The photos inside the album in which each band member is represented by a Playmobil doll *should* give an alert reviewer a clue that none of this is meant to be taken too seriously....]This is just the start of it, people. Their press release describes them as 'a 6-piece nonska band with horns, attitude and a Master's degree in English,' which is funny, since there should be a hyphen between non and ska and a comma after attitude. Why am I such a tightwad about this? If you're going to market yourself as such an intellectual band, you should at least have nominal editorial skills. [The prefix 'non' NEVER requires a hyphen; feel free to consult a dictionary. And according to the 1998 AP stylebook and wizened, freakish language maven William Safire, terminal commas in lists are NOT required and are in fact rather stodgy. So, if you're going to market yourself as such an intellectual music reviewer, you should at least have nominal editorial skills, right?]Perhaps I'm also a little bitter that I've had to listen to all of this. Yes, that's part of the case. I try to be nice to every album that comes my way, but this crosses the line. It views referencing John Milton's Paradise Lost as a good thing. It tries to be humorous, in that oh-so-knee-slapping intellectual way. It has horns, and it's not ska, which you'd think would be a good thing, but no. I've listened to all of it. I'm not a better person for it, either. [Although there are indeed many references to--gasp!--books in the lyrics, there are NO references to John Milton or Paradise Lost anywhere on the album. We didn't ask you to be nice, but at least attack the references that ARE there.]It's not that they're poor musicians. It's not that their lyrics are overly trite or that their music is overly generic. It's that they somehow make the would-be-humorous chorus of 'I'm an artist and you're an asshole' into something that I'd think was an honest assertion. [As noted philosopher Foghorn Leghorn remarked, 'That's a joke, son.' Perhaps, Mr. Stirling, you failed to notice every single other chorus in the song which inverts the phrase, e.g., 'You're an artist and I'm an asshole,' 'You're an artist and you're an asshole' and 'I'm an artist and I'm an asshole.' Crikey, it's not a very low-fi record--you can hear the words just fine.]'We're so freakin' post-modern, baby / We don't even try, dear' is another example of this. They are pretension in its purest form since Billy Corgan shaved his head. I loathe ska with a mouth-foaming passion, but at the very least it lacks pretension almost entirely. This is like getting slapped in the face with someone's Master's degree for a lengthy period of time. You're smart. We know. [Yes, things don't get much more intellectual than the chorus of track #8, Hey Hey Hey, do they? Sample chorus: 'Hey! Hey! Hey!' But I suspect you didn't bother listening much further than the first few songs, despite your complaints to the contrary. Mr. Stirling, I'm sorry we went to graduate school and dare to have interests in--and an ability to write songs about--things outside typical 'punk' or 'emo' or 'indie rock' subjects. You certainly don't have to like it, but it's a little surprising--given how much of the same dull and generic music you must have to wade through as a reviewer--that you HATE it so much. And your vitriol is doubly surprising given that you're getting a degree in English yourself. Why such acid contempt for songs in which people love books, and share that?]In approximately four years, I'll have a Master's degree in English, just like PopCanon. Will I spend my time making music like this and using the degree to validate it? I hope not. If you're a Beowulf scholar and you want to 'get down,' you'll probably eat this up, but for the rest of us, hunt down these people in secondhand book stores and throw first editions of Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation at them until they know better. [Now THAT'S a good sentence! Would that they were all that clever.] |
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From the dull ezine |
The promo stuff for this CD keeps mentioning two things again and again: [Neditor: Which is to say, TWICE...] 1) Their first record was done by some guy who dealt with Zappa, who
swears "Zappa would have liked this." My response: 1) I won't speak for a dead Zappa, but I hope he had better
taste. [It's hard to reply to that--really, can YOU figure out why we're not being marketed by Sony? And Mark Pinske, Zappa's recording engineer for about 20 years, really DID say 'Frank would like this' about PopCanon. There's nothing we can do about it--it's just true.] |
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From the So. Cal
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Pop cannon [sic]
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From FolioWeekly
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[This is not really a BAD review... not even much of a review at all, really.] The record is called The Kingdom of
Idiot Rock. The band is called PopCanon. The music is quirky. The
album was mastered by Mark Pinske, who worked live and studio sound for
Frank Zappa in the '80s. The comparisons to Zappa should end there, but
inevitably will continue. Sure, a few odd-time signatures bop around the
CD, and yes, the band crosses genre lines, often in the same song, but
the thrust of PopCanon is far from Zappa, Primus, They Might Be Giants
and other names bandied about the band's promo pack. |
| From the pro-bees, anti-Sting zine Temple of Sting Janine Papp Winter 1999 |
[This is also not really a BAD review, and Janine IS a pretty cool bassplaying zinester: still...]** (two bees out of five) = droneThis is one of those albums where the musicianship is really pretty good, but it's just not my cup of tea. There are some elements of ska here, such a horn section, and funky, sometimes reggae-ish basslines. The singer isn't too bad, either. All in all, I would have to say that if this sounds like the type of music you like then you probably wouldn't be disappointed, but it's really not for me. |
| A well-written pan from Milk Magazine of Milwaukee Jeffrey Norman May 1998 |
[This webpage was wittily titled 'Help Me Wanda' --but it's downhill from there.]First impressions: deduct one point for the trendy, corporate-like intercapitalization; add one point for clever Thomas Pynchon allusion in the song title Wanda Tinasky ('Wanda Tinasky' wrote several letters to a Northern California newspaper in the late '80s; she was supposedly a bag lady, but her prose style bore a striking resemblance to that of the reclusive Pynchon); deduct several points for overdoing the literary references (in addition to Tinasky, we have Bloomsday referencing James Joyce, Robert Coover referring to that writer, Labyrinths about Jorge Borges, and if I bothered to listen to the lyrics more closely, René René would probably be about Magritte or someone): one must wear one's studies gracefully, not beat others about the head with them.The music show the unmistakable influence of Frank Zappa: the band consists of two guitarists, bass, drums, trombone, sax and violin. Such a collection of instruments could be intriguing if it's not dreadful, but instead it's mostly tedious. PopCanon's odd-metered, angular repetition is another Zappa hallmark - but whereas Zappa at his best infused those riffs with inspired musicality and his lyrics displayed mordant social wit, PopCanon's music instead merely calls attention to the fact that its players can play these riffs, can compose them in all their oddness--but to no particular end. PopCanon isn't aggressively awful or anything-- but I'm not particularly inspired to listen to them again, either. [So of course I emailed this guy to give him the whatfor. Here's our errespondence.] |
| A (literally) painful review from Pennsylvania ezine LoveJunkie 514 K. Margiotta |
Did ya ever find yourself utilizing a toothpick,
only to poke further into your gums than intended, only to find sick pleasure
in stabbing yourself? Yes?! Thank God, then you can understand how
I felt when listening to Florida's PopCanon, and their aptly titled CD The
Kingdom of Idiot Rock. Call me crazy, but I can't stand when a band mentions their own name in a song. It's rather pretentious, but when Pop Canon does it within the first 60 seconds of the first track, I'm taken by surprise. What? How dare they! Needless to say, confusion was the state of mind I found myself in while listening. The one name that keeps coming into my blurred mind is Frank Zappa. It seems these disciples of Joe's Garage revel in Zappa-esque horn arrangements, off the cuff rhythm, and inside-joke lyrics. Too bad Frank Zappa is dead. There I said it. Take it how you wish. I find The Kingdom of Idiot Rock exactly that, Idiot Rock. I can't quite seem to groove to any of the beats. I can't quite help but feel like an outsider on the lyrical content. Sad thing is this--Great horn arrangements, fun sense of playful timing, all in all GREAT musicianship, just doesn't quite make the whole package good. In this case, the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole. Good luck to whatever you do. [Our own Don Undeen wrote to these people and offered to correct the typos in their last graf--Should have read: "Bad-ass thing this is! Great horn arrangements, fun sense of playful timing, all in all GREAT musicianship, just doesn't quit! Makes the whole package GOD. In this case are some of the greater parts of the whole world." But they never responded...] |
A superconcise pan from  Savannah, GA |
Funkless art-dross that made new wave eggheads
like Oingo Boingo, or maybe Gleaming Spires, quickly tiresome.
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| From the Angry Thoreauan, #21 Rev. Randall Tinear May 1998 |
A truly awful attempt to mix AC/DC and seminal punk rock band BIG BOYS that wishes it were CAPTAIN BEEFHEART or Frank Zappa. Avoid.[Dammit, I DO wish i were Captain Beefheart--I mean CAPTAIN BEEFHEART. And I would have thought Thoreau might have appreciated us a little more...] |
A weird semi-pan from  Magazine NOT ed. by Richard Proplesch February 1998 |
*** (3 out of 4 stars) Okay. Besides the basic guitars, bass and drums, this band also utilizes trombone, coronet [sic], tuba and violin; the male sax player is pictured playing live in women's lingerie; they say thanks to Eugene Chadbourne, among others; the songs are full of lotsa quirky herky jerks; they're from Gainesville... Conclusion? These people took themselves way too seriously as 'artists.' Big points added for excellent playing, big points subtracted for severe pretentiousness. [Yeah, nothing's more serious or pretentious than including a picture of Don in a cow teddy, plus: we're 'from Gainesville' --what the hell does THAT mean? 'Gainesville' is now synonymous with 'pretentious artfucks'? Somehow our review got printed under the Noah's Red Tattoo review in the same issue: 'Clever and with tongues planted firmly in cheek, the music benefits from obviously experienced players...worth checking out, and probably a barrel of fun in concert.'] |
| Another weird pan, from Aiding & Abetting #152 an online zine by Jon Worley 9 Feb. 1998
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As the note sez, seven folks in a band with horns, and it's not
ska. Not at all. A lot more like Billy Goat. People that try really
hard to make amusing music. Trying too hard, really. For such simple music, this stuff sounds way too calculated. The lyrics call upon a wide load of references (when's the last time you heard Uri Geller mentioned in a song?), but there's so much overload that whatever clever bits exist (and there are quite a few) get lost in the general morass. The sound is just overbearing. Too many instruments playing the same lines, lines which aren't that convoluted to begin with. And way too many musical cliches are used to get out of songwriting jams. This sounds like what it is: a local band that packs them in at the bar with spirited performances. The problem with a disc is that you haven't downed a couple pitchers and worked yourself into a sexual frenzy every time you hear it. And when sober, the stuff just isn't nearly as cool. [Yes, such a common complaint about PopCanon, bar band of the people--the music's way too SIMPLE!] |
| From MOON Magazine's Music Scale by JD Rigby 19 June 1996 |
[And an old review for our first tape, made when we were called The Semantics:]Some Antics by the Semantics (self-produced)Annoyingly catchy. Some Antics by the Semantics is a collection of singalong tunes bordering on 'bubble gum' rock. Fortunately the Semantics play with conviction and are surprisingly fun to listen to.Highlights include I Stole A Mantra and Little Green Men. The Semantics have a good sense of humor, but as I alluded to earlier, many of the songs on Some Antics... sound as if they've been heard before, and no amount of conviction can gloss over that. Overall, it is a strong enough effort. The songs on the tape are well written, the production is good and band plays well, so if you're into happy kinda songs with a bunch of hooks, it's probably [for] you. If you're as prone to cavities as I am, you should think about [something] a bit less sweet.[Neditor: I almost put this in the Reviews We Like section, because dammit! we are annoyingly catchy...] |
Last modified: Monday, 23-July-2001 18:03:13 EST
