Ragin' Full-On...
Track listing:
  1. Simple Mustache Man
  2. Moses & Rudy
  3. Beans
  4. Arabnophobia
  5. Double Cheeseburger
  6. Monsters Of Metal
  7. Drug Money
  8. You Will Be Moppy
  9. Doin' The Shep
  10. The Sickness Song
  11. I Smoke A Lot Of Weed
  12. Your Crotch
  13. The Food At The Party Was Incredible
  14. Shank-Shank Is The Worst
  15. The Awful Truth About Kid Hickorous
  16. I Want The Birds
  17. Pedro The Parrot
  18. I Sleep In The Nude
  19. Bobby DeNiro's Beauty Spot (Live)
  20. Simple Mustache Man (Live)
  21. Veni Vidi Vici
  22. The Stallion (pt.3) (by Ween) MP3 (3.46MB)
This was our very first tape, and was begun in October of 1997 and completed the following March.
  • Simple Mustache Man was first recorded in a different version by Charles, at the prompting of Rob Feature's paraphrasing of a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt. Also in our minds during this time was the passing of comedian Chris Farley.
  • Moses and Rudy finds its origins in the backyard of the 13th Street Apartment in Modesto, CA, where the Rock Group first convened. Our neighbors across the ally were a scary couple of fellows who would show up at parties and band practices asking if we needed a timbale player, or if our keyboard was available for them to borrow. I think maybe they were murderers.
  • The first song recorded by Dickie and Charles together was Beans. Originally we had planned a concept album featuring songs about all varieties of beans, but this was as far as we got.
  • Arabnophobia Hmm...I believe this was recorded on the same night as Drug Money. It's just another silly fake foreign language gibberish track and there's not a good story behind it, but man are those synth-toms kickin'! Actually, I think we were ripping off Vallejo by Ween.
  • Double Cheeseburger is another of the very first songs we ever wrote. Late 1997, the house on 13th Street. Plugging two keyboards into a little line mixer and stealing the chords and first lines from Simon & Garfunkel's Homeward Bound. This was back when Dickie was driving his little yellow Carman Ghia with the stuck accelerator and moldy carpet. Man, I loved that car!
  • I wrote Monsters of Metal while I was at work one day, actually a couple of moths before the Rock Group got under way. It was pretty much my first vocal track ever, so I double tracked it to make it sound twice as bad. Contains references to both Chachi, and Rush's Tom Sawyer.
  • Ahhhhhhh....Drug Money has since become a 'staple' of the live Rock Group. We've taken th liberty of adding two new verses that aren't even on this recording!!!
  • You Will Be Moppy is bit complicated to explain...I think we were watching 'Sling Blade' and playing a goodly amount of Super Mario Bros. back in the fall of '97. Somehow, in our minds, equatedBilly Bob Thornton's character with Mario, the Italian plumber. We reinvented him as an oracle of sorts, with the ability to predict future trends. This song with its hypnotic funky bass line, sounds a bit like a seance.
  • Doin' The Shep, recorded in November 1997, introduced many elements that have since become Rockgroup signatures. The character in Doin' The Shep is a bizarre hybrid of Super Mario, a Speak and Spell machine, and Billy Bob Thornton's character in Sling Blade. The Shep is actual dance step devised by Dickie, and is based on the old NES Super Mario Bros.
  • The Sickness Song is pretty much what it sounds like. We were just foolin' with the delay pedal playing keyboard drums by hand and playin Super Mario Bros. 3 back in the fall of 1997.
  • I Smoke A Lot of Weed For this one we decided to each take a guitar in hand and play two completely unrelated parts. The lyrics are in dialogue form. Dickie, lacking a proper microphone, sang through an old pair of headphones. Recorded in Kid Hickorous's room at Castle Burkenstein.
  • Your Crotch Late 97. 13th Street. Dickie at one end of the keyboard, myself at the other. Steel drums. Originally titled 'Your Crotch is My Favorite Part of Your Body' until we realized we didn't actually want to say that.
  • The Food At The Party Was Incredible exists in two movements. In the first section we are lamenting the fact that our pizza had not been delivered yet. I believe it was a crisp autumn Sunday afternoon, so we were most likely watching football. The lyrics for the second half were found by me several days earlier, while at work. I think somebody had left their English assignment behind. Rob Feature set up the 7/8 beats, and Dickie recited the descriptive essay. Includes samples from Better Off Dead.
  • Shank-Shank is the Worst Being the musical geniuses we are, we decided that if we ran everything through the Big Muff distortion, we would make the heaviest song ever recorded. Guitars, bass, drums, and voices all went through the Big Muff, making this our most difficult song to listen to all the way through. We liked it so much that we played it twice in row for this recording. The lyrics are about cigarettes and gigapets. And boners.
  • The Awful Truth About Kid Hickorous isn't much to speak of. It's got some creepy whispers, rubber-band synth-bass, and heinously flanged drums. It is scandalous.
  • I Want the Birds was written by me about that little fat kid that used to be on those Target commercials. I like it, personally.
  • Pedro the Parrot is a children's song, written for Dickie's preschool students. It's completely harmless and intended for use with hand puppets. I'm glad that we recorded this song on the particlular cassette tape that we did, because in doing so we taped over the now nearly non-existent The Drunk Song, which was really just Dickie playing bass while I yammered on about how drunk I'd gotten off of a single gin and tonic. Man!
  • I Sleep In The Nude occurred to us one night when we were hanging out with Sylvestre Stabone drinking malted milkshakes and playing The Legend of Zelda. This song is a bona fide classic of lo-fi rap. Includes hot dogs and TV theme songs.
  • Bobby DeNiro's Beauty Spot was written for and recorded at the first Modesto AcousticFest which was held at Jizz Rowdy's house on March 1st, 1998. Jesus Christ! I've wasted three years of my life!
  • Simple Mustache Man (LIVE) was once again recorded at the Modesto AcoustisFest. Apparently, a few jerks in the crowd had to ruin it all by laughing at Dickie after his guitar solo. That's why we don't play more shows!
  • When we set out to write Veni Vidi Vici we knew that we wanted something spectacular. We wrote a story about a giant robotic humanoid Speak & Spell machine that floated down from the heavens...
  • The Stallion (pt.3) is a Ween song that we covered and decided to put on here, dude.

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