Careless Carliss and the Cantelope Girls

"They're camping, they're funny and the girl-to guy ratio (thanks to the four Cantelope Girls) almost always favors the women. You may have heard Carliss and the Girls through Comedy Radio Hour on the internet (where they're a big hit), or else through  radio programs like Dr Demento...All of Carliss & Co's songs tend to boast fun lines and joyful playing. Their keyboardist and lead female vocalist, Eleda, is also the primary writer behind these gems..." -Splendid 

This album juggles styles with ease and handles the act with tongue-in-cheek humor. The occasional splatters of lead guitar and unique musical arrangements create songs that are at times stylistically indefinable, bringing to mind the late great Frank Zappa. The music touches on instrumental jazz, 80's style rock, somber organ hymns, and radio ready pop, often working as parodies of the style in question.

Songs range from "REM" (which, incidentally, sounds just like them!) to several unusual and experimental works such as "Attention, Stockholm" and "The Voltage Seems to Hit Me."

Instruments include the standard rock n' roll fare as well as sax, congas and keyboards. Add to this mix the Cantelope Girls' silky vocal harmonies, Rick Carliss' furious and driven guitar style, and an ever-interesting backbone of keyboard textures by Eleda, and you have one rather unique album!

Careless Carliss and the Cantelope Girls - The Ballad of Dr. Fell If you appreciate, at some level, a song like "Puberty Love" (as featured in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes), I think Careless Carliss and the Cantelope Girls would be right up your alley. For me, they make good on every positive notion one might have upon a such-named band: they're campy, they're funny and the girl-to-guy ratio (thanks to the four Cantelope Girls) almost always favors the women.

You may have heard Carliss and the Girls through the Comedy Radio Hour on the internet (where they're a big hit), or else through radio programs like Dr Demento (assuming he's still around). For the most part, the radio attention centers around their obvious single, "REM", as it boasts a nice melody and is 4 minutes of genuine hoot. Rick Carliss, the guitarist and guy singer, dishes out these Eleda-penned lyrics ("We play music like REM/We play music as bad as them") in a nice, casual manner, and it's great when the whole song culminates in a beautiful chorus of "Sorry!". That the group does not really sound like REM, or live up to this confession ("We play music that sounds so lame/Everything we do just sounds the same"), is all to our benefit.

I guess the group mostly sounds like the sort of bands you might find playing at a Holiday Inn Lounge, but this adds adds to the record's charm. It is 66 minutes in length, thanks to the joke they pull by stretching inane tunes (like "The Ballad of Dr Fell", named after a poem which is recited at the song's center) to Iron Butterfly proportions. While dragging out a normal song often opens it up to fair criticism, I can't tell you how big my smile got when these buggers kept saying the same silly stuff over and over again. "Some Whistle", for example, has the band singing - for almost six of its eight minutes -- "I shuffle my feet, I shuffle my feet." That might sound annoying, I guess, but it made me laugh harder than almost anything else here.

Whether their schtick goes long or short, though, all of Carliss & Co's songs tend to boast fun lines and joyful playing. Their keyboardist and lead female vocalist, Eleda, is also the primary writer behind these gems, which address Kool-Aid Kids from Mars and (in their own words) "the role of role models in bowling". I also like how she and the band both salute and stick it to The Organization, a band killed by Palestinian terrorists for refusing to play the "Mr. Ed" theme song. As they say, such events make one wonder when death truly is a noble cause. I think, should their lengthiest songs die while they're playing them live, that they'll die a worthy death.

Some of these jokes probably won't hit you, or the rest of the audience, right away -- but when they finally click, it's bound to cause a great stir of satisfaction in your soul. -Theodore Defosse