Search - Austin Lounge Lizards :: Employee of the Month

Employee of the Month
Austin Lounge Lizards
Employee of the Month
Genres: Country, Pop
 
  •  Track Listings (13) - Disc #1

The Austin Lounge Lizards--so named as to distinguish them from New York's Lounge Lizards and Chicago's Jesus Lizard, not to mention reptilian lounge denizens from everywhere else--has carved its own niche by penning satir...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Austin Lounge Lizards
Title: Employee of the Month
Members Wishing: 2
Total Copies: 0
Label: Sugarhill
Original Release Date: 1/1/1998
Re-Release Date: 2/17/1998
Genres: Country, Pop
Style: Bluegrass
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 015891387420

Synopsis

Amazon.com
The Austin Lounge Lizards--so named as to distinguish them from New York's Lounge Lizards and Chicago's Jesus Lizard, not to mention reptilian lounge denizens from everywhere else--has carved its own niche by penning satiric country/bluegrass songs that compensate for the oft-strained vocals with a venomous wit and deceptively adept musicianship. Take, for example, "Stupid Texas Song," which skewers the Lone Star state's outsized pride in all things Texan with lines like "Our rattlesnakes are the coiliest/Our beaches are the oiliest." Like most comedy albums, not everything here holds up to repeat listens. Still, it's hard to begrudge a band that can rewrite the Beach Boys' "Shut Down" as "Hey, Little Minivan" for soccer moms; visualize the world's drollest grease monkey in "Leonard Cohen's Day Job;" and keep a straight face on a barstool weeper called "The Dogs, They Really Miss You." --Rick Mitchellyes

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CD Reviews

Lizards Lead to Laughs and Leonard
David Zimmerman | Baton Rouge, LA USA | 12/13/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can't estimate how much I've laughed and sang along to the songs in the Austin Lounge Lizards "Employee of the Month". Any anti-Cowboy fan will delight in learning and singing "Stupid Texas Song", a send-up on Texans pride in all things Texan ("if heaven isn't Texas, partner, I don't wanna die!"). The "Beach Lizards" follow up with "Hey Little Minivan", a family-bound hot rod song, complete with my favorite bridge line "Step away from the car! Step away from the car!" sung by the theft-deterrent system. "The Dogs, They Really Miss You" lampoons any number of broken-hearted country love songs (the dogs playing (or not playing) poker, carried over from "Paint Me on Velvet" are featured near the end). "Rocky Byways" tells the story of a "sharp dressed chicken" (from an itinerant bluegrass band) being discovered by Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl at the Piggly Wiggly and somehow it all makes sense. "Love in a Refrigerator Box", the story of what happens when a junior high school couple gives birth to triplets "Velma, Thor and I"--love conquers all as they live in a 20 cubic foot refrigerator box and wear "blown out tires" for shoes. "Leonard Cohen's Day Job" takes a shot at the Canadian troubador, whom I've grown to love after the Lizards directed me to him. The album closes with "The Other Shore", a look at what awaits when we die--as we are reunited with all our possessions, both those wanted and those lost ("earring backs, National Geographics from 1974, crazy cowboy shirts" and many others). This one is a capella and the harmonies are really quite nice if you can hear them over your own laughter. The title appears nowhere in the album, but it still seems appropriate--we can all use a little Lizards laughter as we run on the mouse's treadmill every day."