Feb 6, 2013

Now Hear This - Awesome Snakes

I'm trying out a new feature on the ol' blog today in an effort to keep it from becoming a gallery of my latest toy purchases. My intent from the start was to share all kinds of interesting things so I'm going to expose you to music you may not be aware existed...

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Man, I wish there were more songs with snake lyrics."? Even if you haven't, you should still check out the band Awesome Snakes.

Awesome Snakes were a two person punk band from Minneapolis that put out one CD (Venom) in 2006. The members were Annie Holoien (aka "Annie Awesome") and Danny Henry (aka "Danny Snakes") who did this as a side project while they were both still in another band called The Soviettes.

One of the things that bums me out about the slow death of music stores was the ability to walk in and just browse album covers. There are more than a few bands I "discovered" back in the day by seeing a cool album cover and deciding to check it out. You can argue that the internet has made this easier but it's nowhere near as much fun as physically flipping through those cardboard sleeves. And its nowhere near as satisfying when you find that one kick ass cover that you can bring to your friends and introduce them to it.

Why did I decide to give Awesome Snakes a listen?
The answer is in their CD cover


If that still doesn't answer the question for you...

It's not really something that's come up much, but I am a huge fan of hair bands from the 80s/90s.
 They even used umlauts in their band name! The band's sound is very simple: drums and a bass run through a fuzzbox. What really grabbed me about them is their use of snakes, sound clips and the random change up between song styles.

It's nothing world changing but I think it's straight out fun. I seem to take an instant liking to bands like this including Cake, They Might Be Giants and The Aquabats because of their original, off-beat lyrics. Like a lot of punk, most of the 15 tracks on this album are under two minutes long. Unlike most punk, just over half the songs have the word snakes in the title!

If you have Spotify, you can listen below.
You can also hear clips on the Venom Amazon page
Just be aware there is the occasional droppage of swear words

5 comments:

  1. I love discovering new music, so I definitely thumb-up this new direction! This band, however...not so much. I'm listening on Spotify as I type this. I love the album art, obviously, but they're a little too garage punk for my taste. I do give them mad credit for having the sheer dedication required to make a whole album of snake songs, though.

    Also, Track 9 gave me this helpful tip: "If you were born to 2 fat parents, you have an 80% of being fat yourself." FUCK!

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  2. The lack of music stores is a bummer but a sign of the times. I can't of the last time I actually bought a CD you just really need them anymore but I look at it now as making them more of "Collectibles" than anything else.

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    1. Yeah I have a huge stand of "collectibles" sitting in my computer room.

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  3. I miss record stores. Although I lived in the country so we had one store and its mark ups were insane. But yeah record stores rocked. I still like looking at really cool album art.

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