This is a spoken word comedy album by Dallas McLaughlin who is apparently a big deal in San Diego where he has been a Radio celebrity and stand-up comedian, as well as part of The Aquabats! Super Show and a key member of Bad Credit, which leaves me at a slight disadvantage listening on the other side of the pond, as some of the local references pass me by, but It's no more mystifying than reviewing records sung in German or Italian or any other language even if at times American is a true mystery is to understand.
The album begins with Radio Radio that has a Dallas McLaughlin radio ident intro that leads into Dallas telling us what it was like to be a radio presenter, bragging how he had a uk import of an obscure early Robyn Hitchcock record, before we get a rundown for how he became the radio legend he now is, if you live in range of this shows in San Diego. He comes off as someone who started out taking the piss out of the whole station he ends up working on, like another Ricky Gervais a total radio prat, saying he loves any crap, he'll even shill that the new Blue Nile record is totally cool, of course he speaks of more American trash than British rubbish.
He ends up as side kick to a Steve Wright style afternoon asshole, while getting co-opted and becoming a part of the team, he was there to rip the crap out of. He moved onto a second station where he had to be the Nicky Campbell afternoon asshole, who couldn't help being a bit honest about playing Sublime, who must be like Toploader, as that band never crossed my ears, he wishes he can get fired, but who wants a tea time DJ be like that, as he goes off the rails that he never wanted to be on, of course he got the better cool shifts where you can actually play music you like. As always happens to this kind of guy he eventually got canned that helps launch his next project.
The Jerk is a tale of being a Comedic Jerk, he name checks local comics that I've never heard of and that American staple of evening talk shows, before working with one of The Kids In The Hall with connections to Saturday Night Live and the process of being a stand up when Steve Martin and Paul Simon show up to see you play in a small dive bar. Yeah he loses his mind, grovels on the floor when he's sent to ask them backstage. We then get a review of the rest of the night and how tongue tied they all got.
Mime Time opens with an obscenity laced rage against being a mime at Sea World with what it's like to have to be part of that kind of cheese ball, knock 'em down physical comedy in the grand tradition of Larry Curly and Moe or the Marx Bros crossed with Carry on comedies and an episode of Flipper with help from the Banana Splits, playing to up to 12000 people a show for 11 years, the big time, but working as a mime when you're a comedian is hard apparently, all he really wants to be is San Diego's answer to Lewis Grizzard and here he is day after day miming for the kids at Sea World, the shame the shame, what he does to keep interested, right up to the point of getting spectacularly abused by a so called boss who was nothing of the sort. Before he got to start training the Biffs.
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Local Failed Celebrity is the tale of selling a new show and fouling it up inside four months, as someone whose never been to San Diego and knows nothing about the local sports scene or the inanities that go with sports talk shows. He was working on this sports show as the Aquabats were ending. Can he get the show made without going down on that scion, with a name not too dissimilar to Dallas' surname, how the pitch meetings go and your original idea gets mutated into nothing of the sort. They get canned on the day the show was meant to air so all the hard work went nowhere into pilot hell or did it.
Bad Credit is the half hour long digital bonus track about all the bad bands that went nowhere he was in when he was young, everyone trying to be the next Crash Test Dummies or Kriss Kross white boy hip hop rappers. As Bad Credit took off the shows get wilder and wilder as they become more like Limbomaniacs (who are still one of the worst bands I've ever seen)! Then all the things that make a band go wrong, when things work well, no matter how bad things get as Methodist Man walk out, then all the way through to the reunion tour. That and of course the bands classic Bill Gates Owes Me $5 closes it out.
We then get all sorts of weird interlude noises around the 20 minute mark and it's like the old days waiting for the hidden track to kick into life and wondering if it's worth the wait. Mostly the bonus stuff is library music. And eventually we find out why he spends time with Kevin and how much it changed him as The Jedx Remix Of The Jerk really gets going.
Find Out More at https://dallasmclaughlin.bandcamp.com/album/i-didnt-start-the-fire-and-other-lies https://www.dallassmclaughlin.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/@dallasmclaughlinstuff
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