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If you’re like me you’re (a) an underweight Italian chronic masturbator with poor posture and (b) delusional enough to believe that life will someday play out like a movie (which explains quite a few awkward Saturday mornings where I wake up next to some guy dressed up like a cowboy- I wish I knew how to quit you, Billy Ray!). However, it is my ever-pressing need to escape the kick in the sack that is my everyday life that has brought me to thoroughly enjoy Tracy Thornton’s Pan for Punks: A Steelpan Tribute to the Ramones. That’s right, a motherfucking steelpan tribute! Just like the music on the Girls Gone Wild ads. Bringing the disciplined/ass-kicking style of a metal drummer (which, I understand from blindly following the accompanying press release, he originally was) to an instrument that says calypso the way emo hair screams no talent.
Pan for Punks is, as I previously mentioned (but will reiterate in order to extend my review’s word count), to be enjoyed with some degree of delusion (especially for those Midwest/ East Coast listeners). The quick-paced, sans lyrics (aside from familiar chants that became as much a staple to a Ramones number as the three-chord progression) renditions of jams including “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away” evokes feelings of nostalgia and whimsy that provide the ultimate soundtrack for activities such as drinking beer, drinking liquor, drinking margaritas, or even driving (drinking is discouraged in such a case).
While numerous listens have failed to whisk me off to a coastal highway in which long, crane shot follows my super-pimp ride as a bikini-clad trio and I speed over to save my elderly uncle’s movie theater or bar or some other piece of land being threatened by whitey, Pan for Punks still briefly gets me lost in fleeting moments of warm optimism.
I recommend giving Tracy Thornton’s Pan for Punks a shot- most of you will be glad to add this one to your current collections. By the way, although I am usually a heavy supporter of pirated media, you should look into buying this (it comes with a music video DVD)- the guy is a steelpannist for Christ sakes, not Diddy. This dude definitely deserves every cent he earns.
(note: Considering Steve received a free press copy from Melissa, he is a total hypocrite)
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