When I was just a young teen in the early 1980s, there was an exciting and totally original – and popular in some areas – radio show like none other in the history of radio.
It was called The Dr. Demento Show. Dr. D played unusual, offbeat, comical, and downright zanny songs for two hours every week. In fact, Weird Al, some say, got his first following and beginning of his astronomical fame on the Dr. Demento Show.
Over the years, with the decline of alternative radio, and take-over of commercial radio, Dr. D’s Show was relegated to the Internet.
If The Dr. Demento Show was still on radio stations around the country – as it was for most of the 1980s – Dr. D and his Devoted Disciples would likely be fans of the music by the Worcester, Massachusetts duo called Deadheads (not those Deadheads), consisting of Groady Guss and Animal Anderson. They have been buddies since they were in junior high school.
During the summer, the duo has dropped a high-octane, quirky, and loveable single, “God Grant” as featured on IRC.
The Deadheads’ new album, Fun With Harmonica, features 12 mostly frantic, off-the-wall, strangely melodic, and memorable songs that are unlike just about any other band you’ve ever heard.
Fun With Harmonica opens with the roaring, kinetic single, “God Grant.” This was the duo’s first single from the album and one that we featured during the height of the pandemic.
Therefore, the boys put the album drop on hold for a little bit. But now it’s time to spin these dozen tracks.
“Do My Dirty Work Scapegoat” is marked by bumbling, tepid rhythms, and the swirls of vocal tracks followed by the crazy “Ass Savage,” complete with grunts, sound effects, and screeches of voices and musical notes.
“It connotes a scenery of sexual references that are not quite obvious other than that,” says Guss. “Of course, the usual frenetic pace of the music and voices are present. The song also can invoke a feeling of being on an LSD trip with jungle animals in the midst.”
Next up on the exciting Deadheads’ new album is the menacing “Snake Oil Shuffle” offering a minute and a half of strutting piano and drums that are followed by “Demon: Dark And Rich” with beeping sounds, odd voices, and noise from television shows in the background on; add to that swirls of high-octane synth keys that add even more mood to the track.
When songs and current events collide it’s always very intriguing. On “Murder Hornets” the guys – as you may have heard for yourself – take a news headline and for a quick minute and a half (most of the tracks are under two and a half minutes) emerge with a fast-moving, trippy, percolating instrumental followed immediately by the silly, hip-hop-inspired tribal drum beats of “Ant Camp.” Those two tiny under-two-minute tracks seem to honor the insect world in a way that we’ve never heard before.
By this point, in the middle of the album (minus bonus tracks), some listeners are probably enlightened, intrigued, and even moved by the duo’s short, original, and fast-moving tracks.
If that is the case, we urge you to continue and soak up the second half of the album at your convenience. We were set and totally tuned in, playing Fun With Harmonica on our new Bluetooth Edifier speakers (great brand guys).
More avant-garde – perhaps insane – beats, musical cues, strange effects, and more make-up tracks with Haiku outro lyrics by Bonsai Faku on “In The Company of Cocks” (interesting title but try to figure out what it’s really about); “Set The Table,” and the album closer, “Blue Plate Special” which uses 1950’s doo-wop musical signatures mixed with the typical background style vocals of the zany Massachusetts duo.
The duo’s lyrics, which are a whole other article by themselves, are printed right on the page for each track via their Bandcamp page.
A kaleidoscope of sounds, energy, motion, instruments, and vocals. Fun With Harmonica is also one of the staff’s favorite surprise DIY albums of 2020.
The album was recorded and mixed at Mr. Harard’s Woodshop & Studio. Get additional music and merch at www.deadheadsmusic.com .