Reggie and the Full Effect
Promotional Copy (Heroes & Villains/Vagrant)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Spring 2001

One of my biggest pet peeves is not knowing what I'm listening to. It's happened with music playing in public places, songs on the radio (a frustratingly more common situation with each passing year) and, on at least one occasion, a tape made for me two years ago by someone who didn't realize that just giving me band names (but not song titles) would drive me crazy. And so it goes with Reggie & the Full Effect's Promotional Copy, only this time I know who's playing (for the most part) and what the songs are called (probably), and I still don't know what the hell I'm listening to.

Showing up in a myriad of disguises (including, it seems, "Reggie and the Full Effect" itself), this side project from members of Coalesce and the Get Up Kids earns points for their sense of humor (this is an album that starts with, "No, so I was like, 'if you're gonna wear the uniform, you gotta sell the cookies,' right?") and keeps them for their tunefulness. There's a lot of dicking around, to be sure; in addition to a hip-hop instrumental, there's also Scandinavian deathcore ("You are not my friend/You are my foe/You are two feet tall/You have got to go," from the closing "Dwarf Invasion"), grungeish heavy metal and country jazzercize. In between, though, are a bunch of amazing pop songs that keep the whole thing from degenerating into one long joke.

The squiggly bits mean that the first real song pretty much has to be incredible, following as it does the opening sketch/gangsta parody of "Bitches Got Stitches," or the whole album falls apart right at the start. It doesn't. Gutting the Cars and attaching the rhythm section for the Cavedogs, "From Me 2 U" fires up the rest of the album and sets the stage for a collection of hyper-distorted but melodic pop songs that seem to know exactly when to hit a minor chord for maximum impact. And "From Me 2 U" is funny, too; coming as it does after Reggie gets shot in "Bitches," its first line is, "Today's your final day."

And what's happening in between these moments of sublime pop? I have no idea. Not one clue. My deep need to explain that with which I'm faced gets the finger and a swirlie. Instead, I can only mention that precisely when "Good Times, Good Tunes, Good Buds" seems to have run out of ideas, it's immediately replaced by the sounds of a redneck spitting on a skipping CD, which then segues into the astounding "Megan 2K." I can merely point out how incredibly jarring it is to hear Reggie show up in the middle of the metallic "Something I'm Not" (otherwise credited to Sean-O-Tronic), which rapidly devolves into a Casio beat being put through all its paces. But I can't account for one goddamn lick of it. All I know for sure is that anything that credits another band is a goof, but even some of these are more elaborate than others; Wade and Wayne Gentry and Band gets a silly throwaway but Fluxuation gets a full-on song, a faux-'80s style synth pop tune with equally faux British accent.

So, really, when all is said and done (which is sooner than you think: Promotional Copy clocks in at less than 34 minutes), there are only seven actual songs here. Seven glorious, hopped-up, adrenalized pop songs that say stupid things like "Girl, you mean so much to me... The way you're wanting me to be is just as easy as 1-2-3" and are not only unharmed by it but turned into tiny miracles. And that, ultimately, is what's killing me, the fact that these things popped up out of nowhere, existing almost outside the real world, giving no indication of what, if anything, happens next. Since I can't believe anything in the brief yet still incredibly bogus liner notes, including (but not limited to) song titles (I wouldn't set your watch by the listed track lengths, either), I don't even know what's happening now. At least if the songs sucked, I could officially not care and move on with my life. Instead, I'm stuck with needing to hear "Ode To Mannheim Steamroller" again and not knowing why.

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