I'll probably remember the day I purchased this album for a while. It was the
first day of my Spring semester (something, given that the ending of my fall
semester resembled a train wreck, that did not overjoy me), a week after my best
friend determined that I was not worth talking to, a day before I was to be
confronted with the ridiculous yet terrifying proposition of having to get up in
front on 250 Harvard undergraduates and try to convince them to entrust ME with
teaching them for a semester, a day after I badly fucked up a bleach job on my
hair and right smack-bang in the middle of one of the worst mental states I'd
been in since I was on a plane I was convinced was going down. All of which, of
course, made it about the most absolutely perfect time for me to pick up a brand
spanking new release of Screeching Weasel unreleased demos, outtakes and live
material.


One suspects that I was not the only individual that Ben Weasel hoped would get
a hold of and love this material. After jettisoning the band's rhythm section
four years ago, Ben Weasel has released three albums on behalf of his band - the
first, a record that he personally loved, released on a label that many people
regard as representing everything that is wrong with punk rock today, was panned
by many die-hard fans, the second, a mediocre, amorphous and arguably poorly
engineered effort that undersold its predecessor and most recently, a raw,
unpolished composition that proclaimed its own greatness in the course of the
liner notes and then proceeded to further alienate a good number of fans who
hadn't already departed on account of past events - three albums that left many
hankering after the good old days when Screeching Weasel could be defined in
terms other than a Ben Foster studio project losing what was once an awesome
relevance with every release. Of course, that is exactly what a release of
previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live material is about.


Ben Weasel opens his traditional previously-unreleased-material-release
drawn-out band-chronology by attempting to justify the release of "Thank You
Very Little" on account of the fact that he had "forgot a few great tunes" in
putting together "Thank You Very Little"'s mirror, "Kill the Muscians", five
years earlier. Bullshit. Screeching Weasel needs its own fans back (or at least
buying something they put out) and this is what this release is about. That's
not to say that myself and many other Weasel-worshipping obsessive-compulsives
didn't sing and dance in a daze of merriment upon hearing of the news of this
release, but that is the reason why I believe it ultimately exists.


In any event, I'll now try to help Ben's cause by suggesting, after listening to
this record a number of times, that "Thank You Very Little" is a release that is
very much worth the while to pick up. The material spans a couple of discs - one
of unreleased demos and out-takes running the gamut from '86 to '99 and the
other of a live show and practice session circa 1993 - but is thankfully (if
somewhat pragmatically) priced as a single disc. Ultimately, "Thank You Very
Little" may not quite meet the standard set by its older sibling, "Kill the
Musicians" (which brought together on compact disc, among other things,
fan-favourites and by-now legendary pop-punk tunes such as "Punkhouse", "I Wanna
be a Homosexual" and "The Girl Next Door" [A SW song, dammit!]), but, in so for
as Ben Weasel only had five years worth of outtakes plus a number of
'unintentional (and, to be fair a few other intentional) omissions' to work
with, that is to be expected . . .  and besides, fuck it, a handful of
absolutely mighty fine songs and the sheer joy inherent in getting two discs for 
the price of one more than make up for whatever shortcomings hyperanalytical, 
cavilling, pretentious critics might somehow manage to pinpoint.


Speaking of shortcomings, one of the major ones presented by the first disc of
"Thank You Very Little" is that the songs on it are ordered chronologically.
Thus, for the first few listens (I say first few listens because although for I
quickly reached the conclusion that the first four songs were shit, they are
gradually [as was the case with both the s/t and the B-album] assuming their own
remarkably durable novelty value) one has to cringe through (or take the effort
of skipping through) a couple of wisely overlooked demo recordings (composed of
a scaringly veritable geriatriphobic manifestation of the grave dangers inherent
in penning lyrics before you find a tune and perhaps the worst attempt at a
pop-rock song I've heard since I last listened to something that I'd composed),
an unreleased and rather misguided attempt at a hardcore tune (that still holds
up better than most hardcore) and an impassioned if unimpressive
Boogadaboogadaboogada-era output, before running into even the more listenable
but ultimately superfluous low-fi (see also Cookies n' Hookers "Fuck You Punk!")
pre-takes of tunes that ended up, substantially more polished if a tad enervated
(especially "I Need Therapy"), on such albums as "My Brain Hurts", "Wiggle" and
even, in a couple of cases, "Kill the Musicians" (out-takes from an out-take
album if you can possibly grasp the concept). Also among the first ten
relatively unspectacular songs is the early version of "I Wanna Be a
Homosexual", with, as Ben promised in the "Kill the Musicians" liner notes,
babbling for lyrics and a version of "Cindy's on Methadone" with the Cindy
changed to Shirley.


Upon reaching song eleven, things take a decided turn for the better with the
delightful, familiar tune of "Amy Saw Me Looking at Her Boobs", the fine music
of which appears in the "Fuck the World, I'm Hanging Out With You Tonight" song
by The Queers.


Then - in what can only be described as a truly submlime moment in time - you
reach the first peak of the album and perhaps one of best Screeching Weasel
songs around; the delightful, newly-polished "27 Things I Wanna Do To You." As
Ben fully admits to in the liner notes (and he admits to a lot in the liner
notes [again, not quite as good as that to be found in "Kill the Musicians"],
spilling his guts about his relationship with his significant other [and, in so
doing, about the origins of the subject matter for a number of Screeching Weasel
songs], but unfortunately not about the reasons behind the departure of Vapid
and Panic following the recording of "Bark Like a Dog" - which, given that Ben
seems to desperate to define Screeching Weasel in terms of their presence in the
band [witness this album cover and the "Beat is on the Brat" cover] may be seen
as an attempt to fire-proof a few bridges) the exclusion of this song from
"Wiggle", for which it was recorded, is completely baffling. It is probably the
best song on the disc, and although it lacks the kind of representativeness to
become a Screeching Weasel bona fide fan-favourite, it has quickly become one of
my personal favourites - I get the feeling it could have been the kind of tune
that easily could have made this band famous and my neighbors very angry. The
tune is unadulterated pure pop punk ecstasy - the kind of song that drives one
to crank the stereo to High Heaven, scream at the top of one's lungs and bounce
around the surrounding locality until everything is in pieces.


From that moment in history we proceed through a couple of over-produced tracks
from the "Anthem . . . " sessions that were ultimately deemed fit to be replaced
with the demo versions on the album release, an actually distinguishable (save
the recording quality, this is rather rare on this comp), early but nice version
of "Nightbreed" (to be re-recorded and released on the "Major Label Debut" EP)
with a new bass-line ("[Mike Dirnt's] bass-line was stepping all over the lead
vocal in the chorus") and the two tunes for the "Suzanne Is Getting Married" EP
release previously available only on vinyl (the second of these tunes is a gem).
Then follows a couple of out-takes from the "Bark Like a Dog" sessions (the
first is weak and passable, the second is impassioned and good in, say, the
"Emo" context but ultimately unfit for replacing "Stupid Girl" [I actually like
that tune]) and covers of D.O.A.'s "The Prisoner", The Subhuman's "Fuck You" and
a tuneful track (with a mind-bending chrous) entitled "Suspect Device"
originally recorded by Stiff Little Fingers. All these covers are out-takes from
the unusual (read the insert) "Television City Dream" sessions, with the latter
two to be found on the "naked-girl picture disc."


Then follows a moment second only to that when you heard "27 Things I Want to do
to You" - it is "Can't Take It" - an out-take from "Television City Dream," left
off the album because, according to Ben, "I couldn't write lyrics for it." Count
me in as one who is glad he finally did (and what fucking great lyrics they are)
and released it - another song well worthy of some ear, throat and physical
damage and another song that is so fucking good that it literally makes one want
to scream. "Can't Take It" may well end up to be the second item out of Chicago
to be associated with both the number 23 and greatness. Following that is
another more-than-credible tune with Mike Ness-tinged vocals from the
"Television City Dream" sessions (unlike some of the stuff that actually ended
up on the album) which can also be found of Epitaph's "Return of the Read
Menace" benefit compilation.


To finish the disc off, there is one great original out-take from "Emo" in which
Ben takes pot-shots are streams of political punk and three covers from those
same sessions - one of them of "Dirt" by The Stooges (Ben describes this as the
counterpart to the song by "Bark Like a Dog", but it is not nearly as powerful
or bearable), a passable, though very "Emo" version of "Anchor" by Husking Bee
which would have sat well on the album and another that represents a special
surprise with a special guest in the vein of "I Can See Clearly Now."


And as if that wasn't enough - and believe me, it is more than enough to try and
review in one session - there is the live disc. At it's best, the recording
quality represents a mid-range bootleg and degenerates sharply from there. Add
to that the fact that Screeching Weasel live are not either NOFX live (read:
funny) or U2 live (read: take it seriously) and you have a disc that probably
won't spend a lot of time in my player. The nadir of recording quality of the
disc (and perhaps even in human history if that hasn't been done before :-)=) is
pretty much represented by the five "practice space" tape recordings, which are
so poorly recorded as to be barely listenable (see also Cookies n' Hookers "Fuck
You Punk"), despite the fact that the session contains three other actual songs
(as opposed to versions) that you won't find anywhere else - two of which APPEAR
to be PRETTY FUCKING GOOD - and the irony inherent in hearing, among that bunch,
"Electroshock Therapy" from the ultra-produced "Bark Like a Dog" album.


As for the actual live show; with the exception of Joanie and Johnny - which
includes a hilarious Anthony Kiedis-style rap in the middle of it - the songs
sound much like bad-quality, rough renditions of the album versions. Ben talks
for a while at the start of the live show, and although it was nice to finally
hear his talking voice, he doesn't talk much after that, and never really says
anything funny. Despite it's failings, however, the disc does serve a purpose in
diminshing my distress (because they don't seem to be that good live) at the
distinct possibility of never being able to see Screeching Weasel in concert and
. . . for free, fuck, I'll take it. For those of you that are interested, I have
it on good authority that there are better Screeching Weasel live recordings to
be found elsewhere - although not in Boston . .  .


To begin to wrap this fucker up, "Thank You Very Little" presents, by way of its
shear breadth, a convincing account of the band's progress over the fourteen
years of its existence. And while releases of the nature of "Thank You Very
Little" hanker after times well passed, the compilation does as much to
demonstrate the immaturity and misguidedness of such nostalgia as it does to
service it. For, while over the time and forms in which Screeching Weasel has
existed there have been changes in the band's style (a conclusion borne out by
the compilation) - generally the tunes have become slower, simpler, more chord
based and generally less reliant on Jughead's outstanding talents, especially
since the abortion of The Riverdales project - what the band definitely haven't
got over time is worse. Unlike many bands which play good music, get noticed,
become semi-famous and then proceed to lose their passion for doing anything
and, as a result, are condemned to a marginal career of recording shitty music,
Screeching Weasel's songs remain as impassioned and as infectious as they ever were. 
The catchiness that sucked us all in the first time we heard "Hey Suburbia" is still
there, alive and kicking and very much at the heart of this band's material.


Whether or not "Thank You Very Little" serves whatever motivations Ben Weasel
might have for releasing it (and in truth, despite discussing them at length at
the beginning of this review, I couldn't give a fuck - I do, after all, own a
couple of "Extreme" albums), committed fans will relish the opportunity to get
their hands on "Thank You Very Little" and indubitably come to cherish at least
a select portion of its contents (non-committed fans and newcomers to Screeching
Weasel will, no doubt, be confused by the album and thus are advised to pick up
something else by the band instead, but, on the other, I'd really have no idea
how non committed-fans would react to this album because such a state of mind
is, ultimately, quite alien to me).


So, even if I did come off looking like a nervous wreck in front of 250 Harvard
undergraduates in the course of trying to encourage them to enroll in my course,
even if my hair is bright yellow, even if I do not really know whether I have
any friends anymore and even if I am on target to become a fucking
insanely-stressed mental-case in a few mere months, what the fuck? I have "27
Things I Want to do to You" and "Can't Take It" and an empty room to bounce
around in and, you know what? From time to time, I think that it's shit like
this that ultimately makes the difference.


A little under a year ago, the combination of a Screeching Weasel tape and a car
stereo were the tangible factors most responsible for turning my girlfriend into
my best friend. I wouldn't give up listening to Screeching Weasel for her and
there ain't much I would give it up for. God Bless Technology and I love this
band.