#62: It's not you, it's pee
Dead Bundy; Bob Vylan; Babe Ruthless; The Jaggernauts; Unkenny Valleys
We’re getting punny this month.
Dead Bundy
Dead Bundy feels something we should’ve seen before. It also sounds like a member of Marilyn Manson who didn’t quite grasp that group’s naming convention. But the name suits the brazen shallowness of this Ohio pop-punk band, which self-describes as “a fart at the dinner table” in its Spotify bio.
How many words does the bio go before invoking political correctness? Let’s see… 13. “In a world of politically correct music, they are an absolute outlier,” it says, adding their style hearkens “back to a time when music could be a little irreverent and fun.”
When was that? The turn of the millennium. Dead Bundy infuse their “classic pop punk and modern rock” with “a love for the frat boy humor and debauchery of the early 2000s,” as espoused by “timeless bands like Blink-182, Sum 41, and the Offspring.”
Their Instagram bio puts it more succinctly: “If Chad was a band.” And if Dead Bundy were a refrigerator, it’d look like this:
So you know what to expect on the track list for (Still) Not Sorry: “She Fucks Me,” “Duct Taped to a 40,” “Get Over It (Psycho),” “My Mom’s on Onlyfans,” “It’s Not You, It’s Pee,” “When I’m High,” and released this past July, “Drunk for the Summer.”
That YouTube thumbnail really captures the spirit of Ted Bundy frontman Rick (or maybe it’s Jordan or Brian—there are no credits online other than first names). That’s basically the expression he wears at all times:
If you detect traces of irony in Dead Bundy’s shtick, you’re giving them too much credit. Something called Ghost Killer Entertainment asked the band about “people not getting the satire,” and Rick or Brian or Jordan replied:
For sure, they’re out there, but none of it’s satire…for the record. Every song has a story behind it. Personally, we don’t understand how others don’t want to listen to songs about squirting, selling our moms on OnlyFans, and watch videos of us hooking up with sex dolls but whatever man. To each their own!
Bob Vylan
This UK grime/punk act has some thoughts on the debauched nostalgia embraced by bands like Dead Bundy:
I don’t see [current punk music] as being very challenging to listen to. I almost feel like punk music should make you feel somewhat uncomfortable because the topics that are being discussed in a lot of it.
To be fair, the topics discussed in Dead Bundy’s lyrics make me uncomfortable, but not in the way Bob Vylan has in mind. The duo aims to be “as confrontational as possible” while taking on racism, colonialism, income inequality, and a laundry list of topics that would harsh the vibe at Dead Bundy’s next butt-chugging party.
My favorite thing about grime is how impenetrably British it can be. Check out this sentence from a Bob Vylan interview with Rolling Stone UK.
It was the life of poor estate kids who would play knock down ginger and then go on to rob the offy.
Wait, what? As serious as it sounds, my brain reflexively responds with my Simpsons-informed cockney: “Oy, guv!” I texted my friend from London to translate:
Don’t know knock down ginger… a game involving knocking on someone’s door… (to knock down = call over for) Offy = off license = liquor store.
The council estate is government housing, but I knew that part, probably from watching Attack the Block.
Anyway, Bob Vylan is the ultra-serious yang to Dead Bundy’s jizz-cover yin, but I know which one I fancy, bruv.
Babe Ruthless
Babe Ruthless is another obvious-sounding name, and some quick googling turns up other examples. There’s the hardcore band from Canada self-identifying as “The real Babe Ruthless” on Soundcloud, though they haven’t been active in more than a decade. Then there’s…this:
Apparently this Babe Ruthless teased their hair in the New Mexico rock scene in the ’80s. Amazingly, there’s a live video of them covering Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” on YouTube. It begins with the scantily clad singer being wheeled out on stage in a shopping cart, ostensibly too drunk to perform. But it’s all a rock ’n’ roll ruse!
Dying to know more, I found an interview with Lorraine Lewis, the titular “babe” in Babe Ruthless. The band became Femme Fatale, then relocated to LA, where it did fairly well in the ’80s hard-rock scene. Lewis now fronts Vixen, one of Femme Fatale’s more successful contemporaries, and works in casting. Bizarre!
To bring it full circle, the Babe Ruthless that sent me down this rabbit hole also hails from LA. Their ’60s-style garage rock is a far cry from what Babe Ruthless rocked in New Mexico, but I bet Lorraine Lewis would be into it.
The Jaggernauts
My Chicago roots make me go all-in when I find a band that incorporates “jag” in its name. Along with the related “jagoff,” it’s the classic insult of northern Illinois and Wisconsin. And let there be no doubt which state the Jaggernauts call home:
All that’s missing is a Packers jacket. They even have a track called “Oshkosh Fight Song”!
It’s about how Oshkosh landed at No. 2 for 24/7 Wall Street’s list of the nation’s 20 drunkest cities in 2016, losing only to Appleton, Wisconsin. The state claimed 12—12!—of the 20 cities on the list, because Wisconsin throws down, y’all.
To wit, the Jaggernauts played a show in September with a thrash band called Malignant Hangover.
Unkenny Valleys
In an era when it’s common for bands not to have a website, Berlin’s Unkenny Valleys not only has one, but stuffs five auto-playing videos at the top of it. Five! It all but DEFIES you to close the tab immediately before your browser crashes. That’s a transparent ploy to goose Unkenny Valleys’ YouTube plays, but even then it’s not doing much—the videos average less 4,000.
Before we go any further, you’ll want to take out your Band Bio Bingo cards. First up, mark the “interminable bio” square, because Unkenny Valleys’ goes on for nearly 400 words. Then go ahead a check off “the made-up genre” one, because sole member Kenneth Estrada y Santiago describes his music as “cybergaze”—combining “blissfully fuzzed-out guitar noise with modern EDM elements.” You’ll also want to mark the “concept album” square, as the yet-to-be-released Giant-Yellow-Eyes “deals with mental health, childhood nightmares, and conspiracy myths.”
Go ahead a check the “self-aggrandizement” square too, because “Kenneth freely bends the music world to suit his will.” He also “creates every aspect of Unkenny Valleys himself,” including “songwriting, recording, production, marketing, and most of the artwork” (and I’m guessing bio-writing, too).
Then, the pièce de résistance: “Forward-thinking fans seeking new sounds to obsess over need to hear these songs tonight.”
TONIGHT! Cancel your plans, everybody—but only if you’re forward-thinking.
POST-SCRIPTS
Thanks (?) to BNB Enabler Eric Grubbs for the Dead Bundy “recommendation.”
That random Blogspot with the Babe Ruthless pic also had a newspaper ad from a venue called the Diamond J in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And now I wonder: Whither Sassy Jones?
I doubt even members of Blink-182, Sum 41, and the Offspring would call their music “timeless.” Well, no, Tom DeLonge definitely would.
I could never get behind “Everybody Wants Some!!” because it stops Better Off Dead in its tracks with that stupid stop-motion sequence.