Dig Them Dirty Dorkies!
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Side One:
1. Nerd Rock for Jocks
2. Parry Just Got Married
3. Saturday Night Live Hasn't Been Funny in 23 Years
4. I Don't Play Football (I Play in a Band)
5. Sally, Lisa, and Natalie Portman
6. If I Didn't Exist (Somebody Would Try to Invent Me)
Side Two:
1. Take it on the Chin
2. Girls are Evil Doodie Heads
3. Castle Freak (Look it Up)
4. My Baby's the Lord of the Dance
5. Vivian Smokes
6. Sad Ska Song
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I think that to fully understand The Dorkies newest album, "Dig Those Dirty Dorkies!", we must first take a trip down memory lane and look back at the two albums that brought us to this point...
"A Party in My Pants" introduced The Dorkies (then called Logan Lee and The Dorkies because, as Logan later put it, "It was the 50's thing to do") as a band that knew how to rock and write lyrics that make you laugh. However, "Pants" had another side to it that was much darker and dramatic. While Logan toyed with this side throughout the entire album, The Dorkies remained just that- dorks. This Dork status was taken one step farther with the release of "The Melodramatic Return of David Watts", an album which screamed, "DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND!" and, among other things, "WE'RE DORK ROCKERS, DAMMIT!" However, there's no denying the fact that the dark tone which made "Pants" a cult favorite in my book was rearing it's little spotty head again in "David Watts" and it was painfully obvious that these dorks had deeper issues.
Which brings us to "Dig Them Dirty Dorkies!". Where does it fit into all of this? Well, if you read my review of "David Watts" you'll notice that I didn't think very highly of it. It seemed very repetitive and couldn't decide if it wanted to rock or rawk. For this album Logan has dropped all of that. No more dark underground behind the songs. No more "shout outs" to people he knows. Just plain, simple, in your face RAWK. And I couldn't be happier.
A few things that first struck me about "Dig Them Dirty Dorkies!" when I first got it from Logan yesterday: There were only twelve songs. The past albums rounded out at around fifteen or sixteen songs. Had Logan written a thirty minute punk album? Also, what was the deal with this title? Another bad inside joke or just tasteless fun? I read on.
"Dirty Dorkies" starts off with what is perhaps the strangest opening track of all time, but sets the tone so well for the rest of the album I was amazed. "Nerd Rock for Jocks" is THE quintessential nerd rock song and fits in well on this album of 100% nerd rock. Also, it gives the feeling of a punk sound, something which kept popping up on this mostly short album. It's followed, appropriately enough, with a slightly re-worked version of "Parry Just Got Married", which you may recall as being the first single from this album. The song, as Logan explained, is based on Nerf Herder lead singer Parry Gripp who, while being the biggest nerd in the nerd rock industry, got married (!) a while back. Logan couldn't let that fly so this song was written. As funny as it may be, it's the next track that really begins to show off the albums style. "Saturday Night Live Hasn't Been Funny in 23 Years" is crammed full of so many pop culture references that I lost count. It's also good to see Logan exploring his strange obsession with Chevy Chase that was mentioned in "A Party in My Pants" but largely ignored in "David Watts". This song also brings the first mention of a "girl" into the album, but is used mostly to tell the story and as an excuse to bash Adam Sandler. This is followed by two more VERY funny songs that reference everything from "Where's Waldo?" to the entire cast of "Saved by the Bell". Also, for the first time ever in a Dorkies album, the phrase "Rock it, bitch!" pops up. It's fun to read and nice to see that Logan has taken advantage of the title of the album. Side One comes to a close with the self-centered, but deservingly so, "If I Didn't Exist (Somebody Would Try to Invent Me)". Where else are you going to find Tony Danza and Rocky Horror writer Richard O'Brien mentioned in the same sentience? Not on the new Madonna album.
Side two opens with a song to everybody who has ever had a bad day, "Take it on the Chin". The comedy just keeps coming faster and faster. I actually had to take a short break to calm myself before continuing. THAT'S comedy, America. The next two songs mark the start of the "Your boyfriend sucks" Dorkie songs that we've heard all too often in the past albums, but Logan has never been this original about it. "Girls are Evil Doodie Heads" is THE wackin it song. The chorus is catchy and it's so funny my face started to hurt. I KNEW that this would be followed by yet another "Here's everything that's wrong with you, baby" song, yet I was still shocked to see that Logan decided to be blunt about it and just call the song "Castle Freak"! The comedy keeps coming as Logan compares some poor girl to everything from "that Asian kid in "The Goonies" to "a can of spam". HOWEVER, taking a cue from the line which is repeated after every chorus ("Look it up!"), I looked up the word "Freya" online and found that she was actually the Norse goddess of love and beauty. Logan knows how to work a crowd. "My Baby's the Lord of the Dance" and "Vivian Smokes" (a tribute to 50's style punk songs) bring the album to its quick close and lead the way for the final song "Sad Ska Song". There is no reference in the actual song to it being ska sounding, but it's easy to see that lyrics like this would need to move really fast to get the rhyming right. This was actually my favorite song on the album as it seems Logan put a lot of care and thought into this one, trying to keep the fictional comedic boundary the album has already created from slipping into....well, a sad song.
Overall, this is, with a doubt, my favorite Dorkies album since "A Party in My Pants" and I would have actually liked it better if it wasn't so short. Logan has taken that final step into nerd rock that was begging to show in "David Watts". With this in mind it's only fitting that "Dig Them Dirty Dorkies!" closed with the line "You didn't really turn your stereo up for THAT did you?"
**** out of five
-Christina
Number of times Chevy Chase was mentioned: SIX! Ties with the record set by "A Party in My Pants"!
Number of times the word "Bitch" made me laugh (i.e. "Rock it, Bitch!" and "Bitch
Got Back!"): Four
Names of people you may know who cameo: Parry, Steve, Cindy Lauper, Annalee, Courtney, Spock, Chevy Chase, Chris Kattan, Will Ferrell, Gerald Ford, Ana Gasteyer, Colin Quinn, Jimmy Fallon, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Belushi, Rob Schneider, Horatio Sanz, Ryan, Sally, Kevin, Lisa, Natalie Portman, Samuel Powers, Lisa Turtle, A.C. Slater, Kelly Kapowski, Jessie Spano, Mr. Belding, Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, Emily Deschanel, Tony Danza, Richard O'Brien, The Kinks, Billy Lynn, Blink 182, Ben Folds Five, Nerf Herder, Chixdiggit!, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Mickey Rooney, that Asian kid from "The Goonies", Andria, Freya, The Creeper, Woody Allen from "Sleeper", that blind kid from "Uncle Sam", that Castle Freak, Vivian, Ray, Jay, Christina (me!), and Miss Michigan.
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