Thee Makeout Party!

This post was going to be about the Jacuzzi Boys and how their album Glazin' was the first record of theirs I'd bought in four years. I got to thinking about how the Jacuzzi Boys had changed from superior garage rock to punchy bubblegum pop, and how I'd pretty much ignored them in the meantime.

Why? Well, the amount of good music being released is always outweighed by the amount of time and money I have. Some things slip by the wayside. I think I get most of the great stuff and some of the good stuff. Glazin' is a good bubblegum album.

Then I got to thinking how Glazin' has got absolutely nothing on Play Pretend by Thee Makeout Party!, a bubblegum punk masterpiece that sounds like the Ramones' End of the Century if it had been produced by Kasenatz and Katz instead of Phil Spector.

Thee Makeout Party! are pretty low on most people's radars. Compared to them, Jacuzzi Boys are in the rock'n'roll hall of fame. The low profile could be explained by a few factors. There's the slow release schedule (about four records in 10 years). The Billy Childish-influenced band name is a red herring. Image-wise, they might look like paid-up members of the Carnaby Street Historical Reenactment Society, but they're finding their way via UK post-punk and AM radio rock and bubblegum pop. Their one album, 2007's Play Pretend, has songs on it called Raspberries and Wreckless Epic. You get the idea.

You know as well as I do that some great bands get overlooked. This isn't me griping about how Thee Makeout Party! are unjustly ignored. Bands like that are never going to be big. They could be bigger, for sure, but most importantly they could make another record.

Which reminds me: what the fuck are Skipper up to? It's been too long. Skipper are fantastic.