[Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by (mild) graphic violence, tasteless details and a load of swear words, please abstain.]

The other week I wrote the first part of my “Guilty Pleasures” series (more coming soon) and while surfing the Net around that time I also came across a site that showcased a number of comic strips which altogether seemed to add a visual and textual twist to what I had in the back of my mind (but often didn’t say outright).

“BANDS I USETA LIKE” by “Matty Boy” Anderson might already be familiar to many of you, especially if you are a reader of “Stomp & Stammer” magazine, which I’ve never even heard of, but the strips were completely new to me, and after having spattered my screen with coke and other beverages while in fits of laughter, I thought I’d briefly feature the site here.

I’m not sure if anyone under the age of thirty will get all of these, but someone who grew up with, listened to and bought a lot of music end 70s right into the 90s, Matty Boy Anderson has lots of sickly humorous, often moderately bizarre and mostly dead-on commentary to add, giving a slew of artists and bands his personal “spin” which, more often than not, equals a severe beating or two. Abba, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Asia, Tori Amos, The B-52’s, Bad Religion, The Beatles, Boston, Cannibal Corpse, The Cramps, Def Leppard, Duran Duran, The Eagles, Fine Young Cannibals, Peter Gabriel, Hole, Billy Idol, Billy Joel, Journey, Meat Loaf, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Sinead O’Connor, Oingo Boingo, The Prodigy, The Police, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, Stabbing Westward, Stone Temple Pilots, Supertramp, Van Halen, Ween and XT - none of them manage to escape unharmed, hence the title “Bands I USETA Like”.

He deals, for example, with being ridiculed by his peers because he has Peter Gabriel’s “So” in his possession, talks of his failed attempt to run away and become a roadie for Abba when he was five, correctly quotes the average reply of die-hard Smashing Pumpkins‘ fans, gives us a rather dead-on assessment of fans wearing jackets with album art, tallies up how often Trent Reznor uses certain words (Ninety-eight thousand times? Man!), and he suggests that the only good use for Billy Idol’s hits is when out drunk-driving (with Mexican friends).

Most of the more extensive texts accompanying each panel hold some real nuggets. This one comes from his discussion of Boston: “1994 - My Boston interest had waned due to 80-year gaps between albums. The final nail in the coffin comes in the form of their new CD’s 1000-page insert.” If you then see what the two characters have to say about the useless “Save a something or preserve something else” comments in said booklet, you are thrown squarley back in time to the day you bought the same album wondering about the same things. Later on, he coins the term “Toriamus Sycophanticus” for people all too familar to anyone who’s met them, and lets us know that “Billy Corgan sings like an ocelot in a thresher“. Indeed.

Every single one of these strips has at least one real kicker in it, like the one in which the character learns about the trade value of Journey’s Greatest Hits CD first hand (I swear, something like that actually happend to me, albeit with a Boston CD), has to deal with “sullen, inarticulate” Nirvana fans, is injured in discussions with girls up the street re the opening lyrics in Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” (ouch!), or defends the “Diamond Dave”-era of Van Halen.

To top the whole thing off, Anderson regularly adds side-sweeps at inane packaging (XTC, Trent Reznor’s Broken - Fixed, etc.) which basically mirrors my hatred for interesting but utterly useless design extravaganzas.

Categories: (01) Collecting
Tags: Bands I Useta Like, comic, humor, music, online