Tony Mentzer

Smell My Finger
by Clarendon Lavorich

The bio for this one included the quote “Heavy smoking and casual drinking/drug usage a must.” So I started with a bottle of Jim Beam and a pack of Dunhills. Then I smoked some crack, downed some Quaaludes, epinephrine and Valium, and chased that with a couple of huge bong hits. To top it all off, I shot up heroin, with a dirty needle, no less (just to get that death/adrenalin rush, too). And, y’know, even after all of that, this CD still isn’t very much fun. (The rest of this is being transcribed by faithful office interns with considerable medical experience.) No matter how much my limbs are twitching, or how hard it may be to get oxygen to my brain, this just seems like an amateurish and juvenile attempt at humor. Zappa for the Butthead generation? Beefheart toned down to the Beavis level? Even turning Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” into a reggae song is overly contrived (and so Zappa-derivative it’s offensive). I’m sorry, with a CD as lame as this, I’d have to OD before it became interesting, and that would only be because I’d be dying, and that, at least, would be interesting. Please note: The adjectives “different,” “unusual,” and “off-center,” are usually, but not always synonymous with “interesting,” as this CD clearly shows.
(Bakery Records, PO Box 1996, Hoboken, NJ 07030)