Friday Night Record Party : Descendents: Bonus Fat EP

Descendents: Bonus Fat EP

1985

SST Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. My Dad Sucks 2. Mr. Bass 3. I Like Food 4. Hey Hey 5. Weinerschnitzel 6. Global Probing 7. Ride the Wild 8. It's a Hectic World

Welcome to the Friday Night Good Health Roundtable...

It's Friday and it's a good 105 degrees out there, so make sure to nourish your body and spirit with STRAIGHT VODKA IN A WATER BOTTLE!

Give your liver a healthy workout....

"BAAAARRRFFFFF!!!!!"

"Zzzz....Nooo, I'm not passing out...Juss lyin' down, the music sounds sooooo goooodddd....zzzz....."

The right music can enhance any workout...Something uptempo and motivational to keep your pulse rate high and the adrenalin pumping...The editors here at the Friday Night Good Health Roundtable Magazine recommend "Bonus Fat," which is a compilation of the Descendents' earliest recordings, made up of the following releases...

The band's 1979 debut single, "Ride the Wild/It's a Hectic World"...This recording was done before the arrival of Milo, so the vocals are handled by guitarist Frank Navetta and bassist Tony Lombardo...Tony gives us "Ride the Wild," which is an invigorating blend of post-punk, pop melodies and unbridled amateurism...Meanwhile Frank provides robotic vocals for "It's a Hectic World" that suggests that the Descendents could have easily ended up a herky-jerk Devo rip-off rather than the progenitors of caffeinated Cali Pop-Punk...

Then there's the 1981 "Fat" EP, which introduces vocalist Milo Aukerman...Milo is a huge step up, with a vocal style that often reminds me of a very melodic Henry Rollins (if you can imagine such a thing)...This is where the band really clicks into place...It's brevity was unprecedented...5 songs in 4 minutes, with the epic, 2-minute rockabilly/hardcore hybrid "Mr. Bass" (which introduces the topic of fishing, which would become a running theme) taking up half of the EP...

But "Mr. Bass" isn't as impressive as brief outbursts like "My Dad Sucks," "I Like Food," and "Weinerschnitzel"; each one packing loads of personality and entertainment value in their ridiculously brief running times (which are measured in seconds, not minutes)... The band's preoccupation with food and girls begins with those tracks, too..."Hey Hey" foretells the pop-punk style that would characterize their next album (the classic "Milo Goes to College" but we'll get to that later)...

Finishing things off, we have the song, "Global Probing" from the 1981 compilation "Chunks." This is probably my favorite song on this album...It's an even better pop song than "Hey Hey" and it shifts into some righteous, motivational hardcore to top it all off...

Lots of good stuff here and the whole thing clocks in at a lean ten minutes to boot! We love efficiency here! I was going to also do the "Milo Goes to College" post today, but I feel like hitting the beers early...Maybe I'll put up another post this weekend...Oh yea, wasn't I going for some confusing (and weak) Workout/drinking theme today? Well, let's do a few 12 oz. Curls and work on those rock-hard beer guts...