Stud Powercock: The Touch & Go Years 1981-1984

For any Meatmen completists out there -- strange a thought as that might be -- Stud Powercock is pretty much all that's needed for a complete overview of the band's earliest days. It's also about all any random listener needs as well, 39 songs' worth of ridiculously stupid, over-the-top condemnations of anyone not the Meatmen and their own particular vision of the world, simple and catchy enough punk/metal providing a vague hook for the general folly. Besides the We're the Meatmen and You Suck album, there is a slew of rarities and oddities that also appear on the simultaneously released vinyl-only Crippled Children Suck collection and elsewhere to keep one's attention, or alternately to drive one away. Six cuts from the band's original 1981-era demo tape kick things off; the quality redefines "rough" as a descriptive term, but Tesco Vee's ranting on familiar enough songs like "Tooling for Anus" and "1 Down 3 to Go" comes through arguably all too well. After another studio take on "Meatmen Stomp" that originally turned up on the Process of Elimination comp, it's off and away into Blud Sausage, the original Crippled Children Suck, and We're the Meatmen material, including such attractive (?) outtakes as the self-descriptive "TSOL Are Sissies." Tesco Vee's solo Dutch Hercules EP makes up most of the rest of the disc, along with some live 1984 cuts featuring that particular band lineup doing deeply unattractive things to Sly Stone's "Dance to the Music." Hate-filled cartoons, a photo of a used condom with a Meatmen logo on it, and more ridiculous folly rounds everything out. If one really must discover who the only real competition for the Mentors were in the '80s punk rock scene, Stud Powercock will satisfy the need, along with provoking the question about why the discovery needed to be made at all. ~ Ned Raggett