Randy

You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down (G-7 Welcoming Committee)
by Scott Hefflon

Damn! Ever gotten whacked in the head by “just another punk band” that blindsides your jaded ass and has you dancing dorkily around your room so much you skip the CD player? Well, Randy did that to me, and I’m prone to fits of wanton dancing about as often as, um, [insert obscenely clever example of thing I almost never do]. With the jumpy thing Green Day had on Kerplunk! and Dookie (get over it, those are great records), and best-of-the-best pop punk anthems like Bad Religion did when they mattered, Randy is the cross between the most consistent poppy punk songwriters you’ve heard in a long, long time, and the “quirkiest” buncha funny dipshits.

Randy is a Swedish band thrown into the same sentence as Millencolin and No Fun at All, but far better than either. And they aren’t slouches. The drummer was one of the founders of Farside, and with the guitarist, was in an early line-up of Starmarket. They’ve been called the Refused of punk, and if you know what that means, you get what’s going on here. They’re buds with all those bands, so it’s not like I pulled them outta my ass. (Actually, I read them in the bio, but let’s pretend I thought it up on my own, K?) There’s some politics here, but it’s not annoying. Lyrics are included so you can sing along and really be a dork. Especially “The Exorcist,” the tale of being young and watching The Exorcist and not being able to sleep for days even though you know it’s not real. Oh yeah, You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down is going to be on repeat in my CD player for quite some time.
(PO Box 3-905 Corydon Ave. Winnipeg, CANADA R3M 3S3)