40. Bloodhound Gang: One Fierce Beer Coaster
When I was in 5th grade I first heard Fire Water Burn by Bloodhound Gang on the Box and couldn’t stop singing it. I know everyone else knew of the song as we all made the donkey noise when singing it, but no one seemed to like it enough to go out a buy the CD. In fact people forgot the song so quickly that most kids in my grade considered them a ‘new band’ when Bad Touch came out 5 years later. So to most people I know they were just a one or two hit wonder but to me they were the soundtrack to my summer of 1996.
One Fierce Beer Coaster became the favorite album of my neighbor Jay, his best friend Scott, my cousin Dave and myself. We’d play that CD over and over again whether we were hanging out by the pool, playing Kick the Can (yes we played that in 1996 as if it were still the 1920’s) or in the car.
The album itself received mixed reviews at best, most critics disliking the ‘sophomoric toilet humor’ (which 11 year old me couldn’t get enough of). I don’t know why childish automatically means bad to critics. Despite the admittedly ‘childish’ humor Jimmy Pop Ali is actually quite the creative wordsmith.
Songs like Kiss Me Where it Smells Funny, I Wish I was Queer (So I could get Chicks) and even Fire Water Burn have very creative metaphors and similes scattered across everything. Using lines like “I’m not black like Barry White no I am White like Frank Black is” and “Chicks dig guys that are queer guys that don’t dig chicks that don’t dig guys like me cause I’m not queer I’m too ugly”
However even among the weird metaphors, sophomore humor and melody lifting (Fire Water Burn uses lyrics and melodies from ‘the roof is on fire’ by Doug E Fresh and This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven by the Pixies; Meanwhile Your Only Friends are Make Believe borrows from Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran) there are two songs that are simply great no matter how you look at it their cover of It’s Tricky by Run DMC (arguably better than the original) and the hip-hop track Boom (featuring Rob Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice).
Boom is packed tight with solid one-liners (‘Like a Kenny Loggins record no one’s ever gonna hear ya’) and a hook that is irresistible. Bloodhound Gang will always be loved for their rap songs more than anything (including another great track on this album ‘Lift your head up high and blow your brains out’) but what One Fierce Beer Coaster introduced was a Bloodhound Gang who could rock as well. None of their albums before or after were able to mix rock and rap and perfectly as this album.
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