Dwarves – How to Win Friends and Influence People – Review

Dwarves

How to Win Friends and Influence People (Reptilian)
by Scott Hefflon

Perhaps it helps that these 17 songs race by in a rather dangerous 27 minutes, but I’ve been playing this sucker two or three times through rather than getting up to switch CDs. These are supposedly all new recordings of faves, though my crudely-cut color copy version of this bitch doesn’t exactly have helpful liner notes or nuthing’… For those who missed out on the Dwarves, they’re kind of a catch-all for delinquents of punk, psychobilly, and real rock. Like Reverend Horton Heat? Try this. Into GG and early Iggy and destructive, crass baby-raping punk fuckin’ rock? Try this. Like the Misfits, the more “Warthog”-style Ramones, and various Kiss/Cheap Trick cheese slathered on pierced nipples and licked off by your worst enemy’s slutty little sister on camera? Try this (and email me jpgs of the pix). And then we get to the swagger of neo-glam and neo-classic rock (Backyard Babies and the Hellacopters, just to getcha started) and where it meets the good Reverend playing strip clubs and busting heads as often as cherries.

If you’ve heard a band like Scissorfight say shit like “We do [covers of] The Dwarves’ ‘Fuck ’em All,’ Dead Kennedys’ ‘Too Drunk to Fuck,’ and GG Allin’s ‘Drink Fight & Fuck'” and knew your collection didn’t have those bases well-covered, uh, do you get it yet? You’re missing the roots, how this connects to that, and therefore everything’s just kinda floating, and that’s no good, kid.

If you think Texas-style punk filled with tits’n’beer sounds like a fun night out (fuck designated driver, who’s designated bailer-out?), ya really gotta get this life-altering slab of sonic mayhem. There’s a song called “Fuck You Up and Get High.” The closing “song,” the gonzo spoken noir thing “Surfing the Intercourse Barn” (from Blag’s book, Armed to the Teeth with Lipstick), makes this thing worth the asking price. It sounds like The Rock narrating a Hunter S. narrative of a decadent & depraved night crawling the dirty whorehouses of The Big City, filled with violence, delusion, and descriptions only the perpetually drunk and mad will appreciate.
(403 S. Broadway Baltimore, MD 21231)