Ever since I first heard it on The Best Show on WFMU a few weeks ago, I've been an admirer of the 1987 album Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-revolutionary America by the Houston-based punk band Culturecide. Tacky Souvenirs is a hugely entertaining mix of vandalism and crap karaoke, consisting almost entirely of sarcastic, sloppy overdubs of mid-80s chart hits. From the righteous fury of the opening track, to the gleeful sacred-cow-slaughter of "Bruce", to satirical highlights like "Love is a Cattleprod" and "Industrial Band", the album is consistently thrilling and hilarious — if best enjoyed in small doses.
So I'm very happy to endorse this Culturecide tribute album by a local electronica outfit called Dork Apostate. Tombstones of an Appropriated Generation takes us back to the mid-1990s, the fabled End of History, when left-liberals gave up all pretence of opposing the profit system, when corporate America discovered that "alternative" was just another market demographic, when affluent nerdy white guys got fed up of people kicking sand in their faces and demanded to be taken awfully, awfully seriously. Tombstones takes the most representative music of the era — corporate alt-rock and britpop — and happily scrawls all over it. Puerile? Yes. Lazy? Yes. Extremely badly performed? Hell yes. But fun anyway.
Dork Apostate would like to thank Youtube for their generous hosting. Since these songs are all shamelessly dubbed over copyrighted content, Youtube blocks access to certain songs in an ever-changing list of selected countries and territories. So it's possible that a few songs are currently unavailable where you live.
1. Regulation Workout for Junior Clerical Staff (3:53)
2. The Miracle of Late Capitalism (3:58)
3. 1995 (4:16) (Blocked almost everywhere)
4. From Our Liberal Benefactors (1:51)
5. The Alternative Identity (5:14)
6. Song 7 (Get It?) (3:26)
7. Music of The Man (4:17)
8. The Irony Express (3:03)
9. The Saviours of Popular Entertainment (4:51)