Lunachicks - Cookie Moshter

I let my kids pick out the next two, enforcing a sense of randomness on this whole enterprise. I'm afraid that if left to my own devices, I'd do all of the really good ones first, and lose interest in converting the crappy stuff, and then I'd be forced to abandon this whole blog thing by Christmas. As for the boys, they can read, but these albums have no meaning to them. No context whatsoever. They've only just realized that these are kind of like CDs, except that they go on that other machine next to dad's desk. Of course, my youngest picked this out. Because..."It has cookies. And a cool guitar." This sums up his worldview pretty much perfectly, I think.

This is another 7" from the ex-gf box o' Riot Grrrl singles. Y'know, the Riot Grrrl thing had a lot of bands that flat out could not play. (I have their records! I promise!) And I don't say that to be mean, or sexist, or any of that. Riot Grrrl was just another incarnation of the whole punk DIY thing, only with an added gender requirement. Any time you have a DIY movement, you'll have people who are really, really enthusiastic, but they just aren't very good at doing it themselves. There's this initial phase where enthusiasm gets confused with talent, but then, eventually, talent wins out, even if that's not how the DIY thing is supposed to work.

So, what I like about this band; as graduates from a performing arts HS in New York, they knew what they were doing. They could play. And while they could do the political/gender stuff as well as any other band from that scene, they were more than happy to just rock out for 2 minutes, too. And that's pretty much what this single is. Two 2-minute long songs with minimal lyrical content; the B side is a 5-word song. And both will leave you blistered.

Cookie Moshter (Monster) is great in that the bass player, Squid, does a top-notch impression of the Sesame Street character, and, at its core, it's a song about subtraction. A less scalding version would be more than appropriate for the show.

Fun fact: One member of this band went on to be in an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band, Lez Zeppelin. Just one step closer to my prediction 20 years ago that there would be an all girl AC-DC cover band named "Hell's Belles" someday.

A: Cookie Moshter
B: Complication
Enjoy!