Screeching Weasel

Thank You Very Little (Panic Button)
by Scott Hefflon

Much like ’95’s Kill the Musicians (which had my fave version of “Hey Suburbia” and a few other rarities I actually wanted and a lot I didn’t), Thank You Very Little is a 50-song collection of demos, outtakes, covers, comp and EP tracks, b-sides, and live shit you may’ve never heard. It covers ’86-99 and most of the Screeching Weasel line-ups and offers up such cool shit as “Amy Saw Me Looking at her Boobs,” written by Ben Weasel and Joe King/Queer, and is basically the same song as The Queers’ “Fuck the World” (you know the song, “Fuck the world I’m hangin’ out with you tonight”) from Love Songs for the Retarded. There are other great SW-geek pleasures, the rough equivalent of Trekkies creaming their pants over “Ooooh, it’s the episode where Kirk [add obscure action/comment here], which provided foreshadowing for when he [add another useless bit of trivia here].” Seeing as there are 50 tracks, end-to-end listening is only recommended to the complete die-hards who, ya know, really need to get a little more fresh air, but there’s so much stuff, everyone is bound to find a few things they’ve never heard that really make it worth the price of a double-fuckin’-CD. A monstrous essay/rant from Ben is, of course, included, as are a bunch of photos and a “complete” discography. One coulda-been fave is a cover of “You are My Sunshine,” which, unfortunately is pretty damn dull – the first half being kinda low for Weasel’s voice and thus sounding like a bad Mike Ness imitation, the second half being traditional Weasel-whine yelping, cool whistling, a nice solo, and an unnecessarily long extro that shoulda either been faded out or had something else going on to make it interesting. Not as great as BoodadaBoodadaBoodada‘s “Sunshine” (you know, “Let the sunshine in/And chase away your blues…”) but that’s probably why it never went anywhere.
(www.panicbuttonrecords.com)