Sweatpant Boners – Cruisin’ With the Masters
At parties, I’m usually known as “the funny guy”. I was voted “best sense of humor” in my high school class. I own every album Weird Al has ever put out, including compilation albums filled with tracks I already own AND his 4 CD box set. This is why I was totally caught off guard and honestly a little offended when a certain band I recently reviewed (whose name I refuse to mention any longer) said I had “no sense of humor”. I know funny when I hear it. They just weren’t funny.
The Sweatpant Boners are funny. Not in a juvenile, 1st grader “poo-poo pee-pee” kind of way, but in a Tenacious D, Bloodhound Gang, Dead Milkmen kind of way.
The opening track, “Save Your Virginity (Til We Get To Your Town)”, sets the pace for the entire album. “It doesn’t matter if you got braces, just don’t smile when the cops are around, save that virginity ’til we come to your town.” That’s comedy. Most of the songs on the album are one joke wonders, but the jokes work and the songs have enough funny lines to keep everything moving along nicely.
“Her Respectable Holes” is about a chick who lets guys fill her “respectable holes” when the world gets mean and cold. Her “respectable holes”, according to the song, are “her mouth, down south, but not in that garbage hole”. Each song has subtle little lines thrown in that made me laugh out loud. The line in this song was, “she … loves me. I … know her name.”
“Number 2” talks about a special little rumbling in the tummy the Sweatpant Boners experienced shortly after eating Chinese food. A more serious family bonding issue is explored in “Pee With Your Father”. “Shower Games” covers the many games most guys play in the shower but few would admit to. (Squeezing your nutsack to make it look like a little brain is just one of the many activities discussed.)
Obviously fans of the genre, the Sweatpant Boners poke fun at music itself in several songs. “Fire! (Acoustic Death Metal)” is a hilarious poke at black metal lyrics (“Wizards, up in castles, casting spooooky spells …”). “Singing Heavy Metal With A Mouth Full Of Cereal” is fairly self-explanitory. More wizardry is discussed in the closing track, “The Label Wanted 11 Tracks”.
The final two songs are hilarious reworkings of classic tunes. The first is “Always A Woman” by Billy Joel — you remember, “… she lies like a thief, but she’s always a woman to me.” Here are the first two verses, as redone by the Sweatpant Boners:
“She’ll call you Enrique when you’re under the covers,
She’ll grab your crotch in front of your mother,
and her red rapid river seems to last for weeks,
Yeah she might be your sister but she’s always a woman to me.”
“She’ll get you real drunk and put fruit up your ass,
She’ll make you go down on her even if it’s not a rash,
She’ll start making out with you in the middle of mass, Christ, Jesus,
Yeah she’s only thirteen but she’s always a woman to me.”
I laughed when I heard it, I laughed when I typed it, and I’m laughing again now.
The other send up on the disc is a reworking of the classic Gloria Gaynor song, “I Will Survive.” I won’t give away the whole song, but one of my favorite lines is, “… And I spent oh so many nights, wacking off to animal porn, I used to wack … but now I’m gonna get you back.”
Musically, the Sweatpant Boners play hard. Ok, I just couldn’t avoid that joke. Seriously though, these guys deliver the package. Hah, get it? Their package? God, I kill me. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that these guys back up their funny songs with some decent music. The songs are written poppy with good hooks, and you’ll soon find yourself wandering around the office humming the tune to “Pee With Your Father”. I know I did. Production on the album is surprisingly well done as well. Normally you wouldn’t expect a lot of quality from a band like this, but they did a nice job on the recording. Many of the songs have acoustic guitars in them which sound really clean in the recording. The bass has nice tone, the non-distorted electric guitars are clean, and the distorted ones hit with a good punch. The drums have a bit of direction in the cymbals and just enough “oomph”. All of this comes together in the song “Shower Games”. I can’t believe I’m discussing the quality of the music in a song that contains the line, “I’ll take the shampoo and I’ll lather up my pubes and I’ll pretend it’s snowing in my forest.” Musically, the songs range back and forth between acoustic numbers and rockin’ performances.
The band sounds like they had a good time recording this. (Although not too good of a time, apparently. Since the recording of the disc, the band has kicked out the guitarist … and the bassist, and the drummer.) But, it SOUNDS like they had fun, I had fun listening to it, and you will too. Head over to the band’s website and listen to a couple of sample tracks, then buy this shit. It’s $9 well spent, and a nice break from all the gloom and doom we subject ourselves to around here on a regular basis.
Plus, it’s funny.
01. Save Your Virginity (Til We Get To Your Town)
02. Banana
03. Her Respectable Holes
04. Number 2
05. Pee With Your Father
06. Shower Games
07. Fire! (Acoustical Death Metal)
08. Singing Heavy Metal With A Mouth Full Of Cereal
09. Always A Woman
10. I Will Survive
11. The Label Wanted 11 Tracks