Review of The Broken Record from The Noise by Francis DiMenno

What can I say about a record that made me laugh out loud at least a dozen times? A record that I want everybody I know to hear at least once? A record so much in accord with my own thinking that I can't resist mentioning that me and a bunch of cronies used to get together with a bunch of samplers, turntables, tape recorders, and bizarre records and record similarly twisted travesties until the hours wee? But few, if any of our songs were this funny and well thought out.

Much of the appeal of these aural barrages is in Mike Langlie's knowing manipulation of the cornball aesthetic, distorting or "detourning" it into a madcap nightmare world of evil pap, "a communication containing its own criticism." (See Lipstick Traces by Griel Marcus, 1990 ed., p. 170.) Don't believe me? Listen to "Pussy Cat" or "Monkeyshines" or "Hammer" or "Real Indians" or the instrumental tour de force "Hot Diggety" and "Yippee Skippee" and tell me these aren't truly subversive art of a very high order.