It hurts me to see the out-and-out trashing this-here Mickey LP has received, because it’s one of the few genuine, non-ironic garage-rock attempts at The Stooges’ throne I’ve heard since I started reviewing music. And believe me, there are warehouses full of unsuccessful attempts at just that. Rock’n Roll Dreamer isn’t a great record, but then again rockin’ shit-heap punk like this doesn’t have to be “great.” Singer Mac Blackout rails on about getting kicked out of a house/apartment, spits “do you wanna dance?” platitudes, and undeniable is the fact that anyone who made it through the whole Epitaph/Honest Jon’s/Fat Wreck Chords era has heard these exact riffs pumped out by acts like Dwarves — albeit at faster tempos — and they’re even YELP’d in a similar manner. The Clash factor in here and there, as do MC5 and other groups you might expect from what I’ve mentioned already, but the manner in which Mickey super-splice everything together is of its own devices.
What’s more, the band members themselves are so uncool they must, somehow, be pulling some sort of prank here. Their names are the culmination of decades of cringe: the aforementioned Blackout, Mick Swagger, Dirty D, Christmas Woods, and, most importantly… BRENT. Songs own monikers like “Summer Night,” “Kids Crazy in Love,” and “Baby We’re Gold” (OH MY GOD). The album jacket image has everything you might want from a punk/biker stereotype except baby-pin piercings and fake firearms. Leather junkie jackets, fuckin’ headbands, fuckin’ greasy, curly-Q hair — one look at this album cover and you just know 95% of the arbiters of Trend will dismiss it without even piercing the plastic. That’s how it is these days; if you don’t have a pyramid or a laser beam or a crystal necklace or a fucking, a fucking angular grid consisting of Tetris-like columns and shapes on the cover, you might as well place your balls gently into a fruit picker’s pail and be done with it, because you’re finished.
The lyrics, which seem… not good at first, remain so; however, they’re fun. Check this little nugget out: “Got my head up the skirt of the little town flirt.”
I mean, really? I keep returning to my original point: This is so bad it must be at least decent. I’ve been spinning Rock’n Roll Dreamer for a few months at random times in between kosmiche “vunderlands” and other experimental shit, and it never fails to bring me back to earth with its big, dumb riffs and fat, hairy man-arms it keeps hugging me with. Albums like this cause me to look forward to the day Tiny Mix Tapes ditches its grading system (I’m actually one of its staunchest supporters, but it’s certainly heartbreaking to have to put a number on a musician’s dreams at times), as the 2.5 mark I’m giving it is going to seem out of place attached to the words above. However, there are a lot of redundancies here, a lot of little missteps, endearing as they are, that drag this little grease ball down to earth, forcing me to lay down the wood, as it were. There’s also a bonfire-in-the-backyard quality to it all. It’s fun while it’s happening, but afterward you kind of feel like a dumb ass (or at least I always do). Take the whole package for what it’s worth, I guess. Later gatorskins.
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