King Missile - They

Hay, remember when King Missile wasn't just an innocuous novelty act?
I don't.
In fact, I don't even remember when King Missile was just an innocuous novelty act. Hell, "Detachable Penis" debuted when I was friggin' 4 - a time when the horror of misplacing my genitals could have permanently damaged my psyche. I didn't have 22 dollars to save my life, let alone 17 to toss around into the red for the return of my manhood. Some people could've put a lot of pressure on me to get it permanently attached, but I wouldn't know - even though sometimes it could be a pain in the ass -
I could've liked having a detachable penis.
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN DUN
DETACHABLE PEEEEEEEEENIIIS
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN
etc.

Seriously though, the last significant mainstream movement fizzed out when I was entering Kindergarten. I never "lost my hero", and not surprisingly, never felt any attachment to a genre based primarily on not sounding like hair metal.
But you didn't come here for my delightful observations, you came here to not pay for music created by the band King Missile!

King Missile's golden era was unfortunately short lived, much like a butterfly (that's also on fire), due primarily to founding member Dogbowl's contributions and (apparently) musical directive leaving when he left.
That sentence wasn't very well written.
I wrote the bulk of this post when I was heavily intoxicated with sleepiness, but I refuse to edit since I'm all about giving you the REAL, RAW, UNINHIBITED AND UNCENSORED STEVE HUGHES BLOG EXPERIENCE/EXTRAVAGANZA. I mean, otherwise I'd have to repackage the rough copy on the final copy as a "rehearsal bonus track" or some hokey shit.
What I was basically trying to get across:
OOG, DOGBOWL LEFT BAND AND THEN KING MISSILE NOT SO GOOD EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE THINK VOCALIST JOHN'S LYRICS WERE THE CORNERSTONE OF THEIR APPEAL. THEIR NEXT ALBUM FULL OF BORING, BUT THEY ALMOST AS GOOD LATER. UNGA!

"They" is a wonderfully mellow, silly, and ironic batch of catchy little acoustic ditties that somehow never lose their appeal despite their 3-chord simplicity. The melodies are nothing groundbreaking, but there's something oddly unique about their presentation that elevates this lineup LEAGUES above their contemporaries at the time!
Or not. What the fuck do I know? Did KM even have neighbors of stylistic semblance? Doesn't it seem ludicrous to drop the word "contemporary" into a review without isolating the traits that made these so-called contemporaries RELEVANT?
"Just like contemporaries Big Youth and The Human League, King Missile recorded instrumental arrangements accompanied by vocal emissions!"

The lesson here is: learn to pick out the music-reviewer cliches and ignore them.

It's not much of a stretch to guess that this album is out of print currently, but I'll give you the benefit of the whogivesashit.

http://www.mediafire.com/?m3q2y0vqnzr

If you dig this, seriously check out Dogbowl's solo discography. I'll probably be posting "Tit! An Opera" or "Flan" (which has an accompanying novel I've never read) sometime in the near future, but I'll also probably not be posting it in the near future because I'm worthless.
Cheers!

King Missile - Fluting On The Hump

Y'know, it's a funny thing about the marijuana plant - it turns college kids into drop-outs, drop-outs into King Missile, and The Beatles into The Better Beatles.

Also, in unwittingly oversized doses it has a tendency to make every minor injury a mindscorching descent into agony, a constant struggle to keep one's tongue from retracting into one's esophagus, and breathing terrifyingly arrhythmic to the the erratically shifting sands of time. On the flipside, in doses proportionate to the host's tolerance, it's a boring, easily replicable sense of detachment and hunger that costs way too much.

In conclusion, I am literally the D.A.R.E lion.

But anyway, a few months back, I covered King Missile's first long playing record-vinyl-wax-disc-audio document and heaped on the praise for not only They, but their debut extended playing record-vinyl-wax-disc-audio document Fluting On The Hump. Despite this, I feel like the latter is just too good not to cover in an entry of its own. What we have here is a pretty similar experience to They, what with the poppy, bedroom psych-folk-pop and the bevy of cheesy instruments, but while the LP's humor is silly and momentarily chuckle-worthy, Fluting is generally laugh out loud funny in it's lyrical earnesty and vocal innocuousness. For example, listen to the insane, gruff screams surfacing at the end of "Sensitive Artist", or the dialogue between John and Dogbowl in the bridge of "Muffy", the term "residual wussiness" in "Wuss", and [further evidence to back up the initial claim].

http://www.mediafire.com/?fmxe39qew9z

Unfortunately, this isn't my upload, so the link actually brings you to some other dude's upload of the compilation released by Shimmy Disc that features not only Fluting, but the band's post-Dogbowl exercise in mediocrity known as Mystical Shit. So really, you can either skip through the first 16 tracks, or you can take advantage of the opportunity to gauge the enjoyability of their remaining catalog.

THE POWER IS YOURS.