This album is a casualty of one of those Columbia House
\nblackouts I had in college. You know, where you somehow convince
\nyour better judgement $13.99 a CD is a good deal (always forgetting
\nfor one critical moment that shipping is the great equalizer). I
\ndon’t recall whether I completely lost it and actually chose Saigon
\nKick’s
\nThe Lizard<\/i> as one of my ten free CDs for a penny, or
\nreceived it in the mail as a result of lapsing on the old “if you
\nwant the featured CD simply do not return the monthly mailer”
\ngame.<\/p>\n
So you buy your six CDs in three years meeting your “club”
\nobligations, a jaded mail order consumer exhausted by two years of
\nboth sending back Columbia House mailers and returning damnable
\nfeatured CDs to sender…and they’ll still track you down like the
\nIRS promising not to use the mandatory send-back mailers if you
\nrejoin! I don’t know…that first experience was enough. I’ll let
\nSaigon Kick along with some other regrettable Columbia House CDs
\nstand as a monument to my gullibility.<\/p>\n
I’d say
\nThe Lizard<\/i> was Saigon Kick’s attempted artistic tour de
\nforce. Unfortunately it’s anything but, and it takes only a glance
\nat the back cover to see these guys were proud members of the
\nposeur all-star team. It’s really too bad their craptacular single
\n“Love Is On The Way” allowed them to remain on MTV long after they
\nwere blackened and bruised like a 3-week old banana. In other
\nwords, they were around long after everyone left them behind with
\nthe other confused bands that were obviously mystified by Jane’s
\nAddiction’s legit arena rock. Where Jane’s had the air of
\nknowledgeable junkies with style and originality, bands like Saigon
\nKick came across as manufactured stopgaps spanning from Warrant to
\nNirvana. In short, Saigon Kick is but a thankfully long forgotten
\npop thing.<\/p>\n
I still possess
\nThe Lizard<\/i> only because the used-record stores I visited
\nwith this vivid green CD clutched in my paws (for a hopeful two
\ndollars) already had at least three of the beauties in the racks.
\nThus I have owned the awful document Saigon Kick left for posterity
\nover a number of years now. And I’ll tell you this: it still sucks.
\nIn fact, it sucks almost as much as N’Sync and The Backstreet Boys
\ncombined. Saigon Kick established a standard for sucking long
\nbefore our current crop of mainstream fashion victims arrived to
\ncarry the torch.<\/p>\n
The first track is aptly titled “Cruelty.” You can tell from the
\noutset guitarist Jason Bieler is the mackdaddy of this group, what
\nwith the mammoth guitar part that swells out of the mix to dominate
\neven the huge, Bonham-wannabe drum sound. Sadly it’s a poor
\nrendition of another quasi-instrumental song. I’ll let you guess
\nwhat band that song might be from. Plagiarism must be why Bieler
\nlooks so pained in a publicity picture from that time.<\/p>\n
In fact, much of the album is made up of derivative,
\ndirection-less spasms on guitar and vocals. Those spasms, however,
\ndo not even compare to the band’s incredibly lame attempts at
\ndramatic song titles. The following are a lasting testament to
\nbeing out of touch:<\/p>\n
“Hostile Youth.” You know; it’s what the docile youth became
\nafter they spent their allowance on this album.<\/p>\n
“Feel The Same Way.” As who? You’ll never know because you
\nalready hit the fast forward button.<\/p>\n
“All Alright.” This name obviously took a while.<\/p>\n
“Freedom.” You’ll free yourself of this track quickly. Only to
\nrun into the “God Of 42nd Street”. Talk about some paint-by-numbers
\ncrap.<\/p>\n
“Chanel.” Like the perfume? The Kick boys play at their most
\nartsy on this tune, and (dare I say it) it’s probably the only
\ninteresting tune on the album (of course it’s a Beatles
\nrip-off).<\/p>\n
Did I mention the photo on the back cover? The picture of
\nguitarist Bieler is one of the funnier bits of Spinal Tap
\nserendipity I’ve seen in a while.<\/p>\n
I gotta jump back to “Feel The Same Way” for a minute. I didn’t
\nmake it very far into this track before wanting to put a .38 in my
\nmouth, but it has one bit of lyrical honesty that caught my eye in
\nthe CD booklet: “call me a man with a view that’s wild \/ call me a
\nman with a mind like a child,”…I mean, that really says it
\nall.<\/p>\n
But this review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the epic
\n“Peppermint Tribe”. Who came up with that trifling title? Never
\nmind the music, because honestly, I can’t remember if it’s the song
\nthat starts with really distorted guitar chords or the song that
\nstarts with heavily distorted guitar chords.<\/p>\n
“All I Want” is pretty scary too, what with its European
\ntravelogue themes. And if you’re a dumb ass like me you’ll remember
\n“Love Is On The Way.” LIOTW (as I fantasize the song might be
\ncalled on some Saigon Kick fan page), you might recall, was the
\n“big hit” off the album and is very mellow in contrast to the rest
\nof
\nThe Lizard<\/i>. And it uses some interesting note and chord
\nchoices, so naturally the band did not write the original. The
\nbottom line is it still sucks.<\/p>\n
Then there is “Body Bags”. Obviously a political statement
\nright? Possibly, but see if you can decipher these sophisticated
\nlyrics: “Marilyn was the finest sleeper \/ J.F.K. was the youngest
\nbleeder \/ Luther died the bravest dreamer.” I really can’t dig up a
\nbetter gem of generic fluff than that to describe the whole gestalt
\nthat is Saigon Kick.<\/p>\n
Obviously this was a ripe target. I don’t know what record
\ncompany executive thought they could get away with this insult to
\nrock and roll – but they did. I’m guessing there are still hundreds
\nif not thousands of copies of this album available at your used
\nrecord shops – especially if your local store is run by a lazy old
\nhippie who doesn’t purge his inventory very often. You can probably
\ncheck out this laugher for under five bucks if you’re into
\ntorturous self-abuse.<\/p>\n
Interestingly enough, Saigon Kick may still be kicking even in
\n1999. BEWARE! (Oh, and as for the grade – they had a hit single, so
\nthey deserve the plus!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":28042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7601],"rating":[11211],"class_list":["post-39435","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-saigon-kick","rating-rating-f-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39435"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}