Labels: Boss Tuneage
Review by: Alex Deller
Have to admit that while I’ve been aware of Doctor and the Crippens for years and years and years, I’d never listened to them until now. The rationale? That – and this is one of many ways in which I’m an ass ‘ I generally have a zero tolerance approach to bands that are ‘wacky’, ‘goofy’ or ‘screwball’ and I deemed D&TC to be all of these things. Truth be told, my estimation wasn’t at all off: from the wacky album art, the goofy (and crap) Donald Duck impressions to the screwball lyrics things here often get undeniably daft, and the tales of exploding legumes during their rambunctious live sets don’t exactly dispel my suspicions. Still, the 37 (?!) tracks on offer here go some way towards recalibrating my opinion of them and show me to be some kind of mug, because despite the overall silliness and frequent off moments much of the stuff here is actually pretty ripping, mixing taut hardcore (the vox remind me of Rick Jones veering off on a weird Jello Biafra tip…) and more dextrous moments that are somewhere between thrash metal and the weirder direction that bands like Raped Teenagers, Angry Red Planet and CCM headed off in during the late 80s. True to Boss Tuneage form there’s a shedload of extra stuff here alongside the ‘Raphanadosis’ album proper: a John Peel session from ’89, tracks from the ‘North Atlantic Noise Attack’ comp and the band’s ‘Avant Gardening’ EP, all accompanied by some entertaining and enlightening liner notes. All in all, some pretty solid stuff – don’t be a prune like me and check the ruddy thing out!