“Breaking Taboos” - Sally’s Dog.
Album Review
by Clip Tycles
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Sally’s Dog are one of the most successful bands around in these days of multi million dollar sales and enormously expensive video budgets.
“Breaking Taboos” is their third and their highest selling album to date.
Although I haven’t heard the album, I am told this it is an album you wont forget.
With song titles like “Dog Sucker”, “Pick Mine Too” and “Gay Rights For Animals”, I think I know why.
I met the band - Ruff - Vocals, Devo - Keyboards and Pedo on anything else, at their motel room at The Grand Dorchester at the agreed time of time 10.am. to be told I’d have to wait for the band to wake up.
An hour later I was let in to the bands motel room by their manager Peter Mushroom, a tall gangly, wiry, red haired man who is also the head of AntHill Records the bands label.
As I sat in an armchair, he introduced me to the band who were sitting together on a couch eating bowls of cereal in their underwear.
All of the band are heavily tattooed and deeply eye shaded. Their hair in various stages of length and direction and they claim to only have four pairs of pants between them when they go on tour.
The night before, they had played a sell out concert to 60,000 people at the famous Hercules Stadium.
The party afterwards had obviously been a late one as the three of them sat staring blankly at me as I introduced myself for the third time.
I wondered why their manager had said this was the best time to interview the band?
“Uh, listen” Pete Mushroom said in a quiet voice as he leaned over towards me, “the band have had a bit of a rough night so maybe I can answer your questions, that way you can wrap up your interview and get on with your day.
I looked at this man with the silly name and wild, red hair and saw a shrewdness in his cold, blue eyes.
His name may be silly but he wasn’t.
He was the manger of the biggest selling band in the world, who put their multi-million selling albums out on his label, which made him a multi million dollar man.
He knew that the band would be too comatose to conduct an interview at this time of the morning, which meant he got to answer all the questions and control where the interview went.
Shrewd.
As I asked my first question Devo suddenly came to life and began to answer before Peter Mushroom could get a word in edge ways.
ME: “What went into the making of this album?”
DEVO: “Just about fuckin’ everyfin! Our blood, our sweat, our soul!”
RUFF: “.....and our sperm.”
DEVO: “Yeah that’s right, and our sperm!”
While Devo and Ruff nodded in agreement as though they had just got a question right, I noticed Pedo quietly talking to one of his tattoos.
ME: “Why the title “Breaking Taboos”? What Taboos have you broken lately?” I asked hoping to get the interview back on to more comfortable ground.
DEVO: “Oh that’s the name of our favourite porn movie, “Breaking taboos with the Fudge Pack Bunnies”. Have you seen it?”
ME: “No. No I haven’t.”
DEVO: “Oh well maaate,” he said leaning over and putting his arm around me, “We’ll have to give you a copy”, his stale breath whispered into my face.
The other members in the band all nodded their heads eagerly as they agreed I had to see it.
I smiled and hoped they’d forget about it as I quickly asked the next question.
ME: “The album took eight months and six million dollars to make.
Why did it take that long to make and why was it so expensive?”
At this point, Peter Mushroom managed to squeeze himself back into the interview
Peter Mushroom: “Ah well, Pedo kept on getting arrested for exposing himself to all the animals in the zoos we’ve visited while the band were making the album and it cost a lot to bail him out of jail all the time and it also meant we had to keep rescheduling the studio which was fucking expensive, especially when they didn’t supply those nice little finger sandwiches I like. You know the ones I mean?”
I nodded my head and began to ask my next question.....
DEVO: “ I ‘specially like the boiled eggs and lettuce ones, they make me fart terribly they do.”
He laughed as if sharing a private joke with me and I wondered if I was ever going to get the interview back on track.
“Why did Pedo expose himself to the animals at the Zoo?” I didn’t want to know but I had to ask.
At this point Pedo began to cry and buried his face into Ruffs groin who calmed Pedo down with gentle noises and pats to the back of his head.
It was almost serene and beautiful except for Pedo whimpering and moaning like a dog into Rufs groin.
DEVO: Well we love animals and were prepared to stand up and fight for their rights.”
ME: “What rights do you mean?”
DEVO: “Well, like gay animals getting married and having jobs like ordinary people and the right to be exposed to.”
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Devo shrugged his shoulders as though it was something everybody knew and I began to wonder if I was dealing with rational, sane people as I started to get flashbacks of Christopher Bale in American Psycho.
I decided I had enough for as much of an article as I was going to get out of the band and felt the urgent need to get out of there.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the stale air in the room, Ruffs obsession with picking his nose or the fact they I felt very uncomfortable just being there.
I made my excuses and said goodbye but the band had gone comatose, staring at the blank screen of the turned off television on the wall and didn’t notice as Peter Mushroom showed me out the door.
We agreed to have a lunch we never would and said our goodbyes.
I could tell peter Mushroom was hoping I’d write a favourable article but he also knew it didn’t matter.
Good publicity or bad publicity, either way the band would keep making millions, he’d make sure of it.
I know it sounds stupid but as I walked down the hallway to the lift, I felt as though I’d just done something really dirty, broken some inner taboo and I wondered if I’d ever feel clean again.
A week later I received a DVD in the mail titled, “Breaking Taboos with the Fudge Pack Bunnies”.
Amazed as I was that Devo had remembered to send me a copy, I dropped the DVD in the bin.
I sighed and thought how weird the world had become when a multi million dollar selling band like Sally’s Dog can bring out an album like “Breaking Taboos” and no one bats an eye.
How does a band like Sally’s Dog even become the multi million dollar entity they now are.
No one seems to question wether what their presenting to people may be going a bit too far in their freedom of expression, for a band with such influence,
No one questions if this album might be a taboo that shouldn’t be but has just been, broken.