From: Jeff Rollason (d010889c@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us)

(from Rolling Stone 740, August 8, 1996)


THE MOOG COOKBOOK
Relativity 
3 stars

IMPERIAL DRAG
Work/Sony
2 stars

In his landmark 1939 essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," art goon Clement 
Greenberg drew the line separating all that is cool from all that sucks.  
He basically dissed what he termed "middlebrow" (read:  Hootie and the 
Blowfish), championing instead high culture and espousing smart-sounding 
stuff like "purity in art consists in the acceptance, willing acceptance, 
of the limitations of the medium of the specific art."

Greenberg was clearly offering up a futuristic endorsement of The Moog 
Cookbook, a classic in its exploration of unadulterated, all-synth 
kitsch.  Citing no less than Brigitte Bardot, Klaus Nomi and Trans-era 
Neil Young as inspirations, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Jellyfish, Imperial 
Drag) and Brian Kehew take the Moog medium to its extreme, neutering 10 
teen-angst anthems into silly anti-grunge manifestos.  Soundgarden's 
"Black Hole Sun" becomes Velveeta Lounge, the Offspring's "Come Out and 
Play" is 1,001 Arabian Nights on acid, and Green Day's "Basket Case" 
mutates into maudlin Muzak.  Even Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" 
gets trotted out in gloriously deranged futurama.  All told, the record 
is pretty fucking funny, and for once, Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Gonna Go 
My Way" sounds OK.

But what really works is the refreshing transformation that takes place 
when you apply an overabundance of grunge-anathema -- nelly synth pop -- 
to testosto-rock.  If only Manning had worked a similar concept with the 
debut album of his band Imperial Drag.  Instead, he and his Jellyfish 
band mate Eric Dover -- together with Joseph Karnes and Eric Skodis -- 
shamelessly (to their credit) serve up a bunch of glammy schlock without 
really adding anything funky or fucking it up enough.  Tracks like "Boy 
or a Girl," "Playboy After Dark" and "Crosseyed" are competently crafted 
with all the right references (T. Rex, Mott the Hoople) and some 
synthesized whimsy.  But the music all seemed inorganic and snore-mal, 
like a cross between Styx and Yes.  Did we need the reminder?

Greenberg said it best:  "Middlebrow culture reinforces everything else 
in our present civilization that promotes standardization and inhibits 
idiosyncrasy and strong-mindedness."  Your point being?  "It cannot 
master and preserve fresh experience or express and form that which has 
not already been expressed and formed.  Thus it fails."

-- Bill Van Parys