Just got this press release.

THE DIRTBOMBS SHARE "CRAZY FOR YOU" NEW LP, OOEY GOOEY CHEWY KA-BLOOEY, DUE OUT 9/17 VIA IN THE RED RECORDS Photo credit: Vanessa Kitzerow   LISTEN TO "CRAZY FOR YOU" PREMIERED BY SPIN HERE     THE DIRTBOMBS SHARE "CRAZY FOR YOU" NEW LP, OOEY GOOEY CHEWY KA-BLOOEY, DUE OUT 9/17 VIA IN THE RED RECORDS Photo credit: Vanessa Kitzerow LISTEN TO "CRAZY FOR YOU" PREMIERED BY SPIN HERE For about a decade now Mick Collins, front man for the Detroit based Dirtbombs, has been threatening that the “next” record the band would release would be their “bubblegum” album. After a couple of albums of mostly originals, a compilation of singles and an album of Detroit techno covers it would be understandable for someone to think that the bubblegum record either fell to the wayside or was a farce to begin with. Well, at long last here is The Dirtbombs’ bubblegum record – Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey. It would be understandable to assume that a bubblegum record by the Dirtbombs would be an album of cover versions by bands like the 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Ohio Express and The Archies. After all, the band already has two albums of cover songs under their belt which salute specific genres. That is not the case in this instance. Mick Collins has written ten new original tracks in which he pays homage to the sound and style originally popularized in the late 60’s/early 70’s by producers/exploiters like Kasenetz-Katz and Don Kirschner amongst many others. The results are pretty much spot on to Mick’s intention. While the usual Dirtbombs’ double drums, fuzzy guitars and soulful swagger are definitely present, this album is sugary, sun-shiny pop rock that recalls the albums made by Josie & the Pussycats, the Banana Splits and Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution, to name but three. It’s all singalong choruses, childlike themes and a contrived innocence – it’s not the kind of record one would’ve predicted from a guy who once fronted The Gories. The original bubblegum music was basically a cash-in produced in an assemblyline process usually using studio musicians and hired song-writers who dashed the stuff out as quickly as possible and most likely forgot about it even quicker. While The Dirtbombs adhere to some of this original approach by using a list of guest musicians so long there wasn’t room to credit them on the album cover, this album is actually a carefully crafted work that was almost two years in the making. Also not the sort of thing one would expect from the guy who once fronted The Gories. Still, this is incredibly catchy stuff. THE DIRTBOMBS OOEY GOOEY CHEWY KA-BLOOEY! (IN THE RED RECORDS) SEPTEMBER 17th, 2013 1. Sugar On Top 2. Crazy For You 3. It's Gonna Be Alright 4. Hot Sour Salty Sweet 5. Jump and Shout 6. Girl on the Carousel 7. Hey! Cookie 8. Sunshine Girl 9. No More Rainy Days 10. We Come In The Sunshine THE DIRTBOMBS IN THE RED RECORDS FOR ALL MODERN HUT INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT: ELOY@ENABLERPR.COM follow on twitter | forward to a friend Copyright © *2012* *Enabler Agency, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Available upon request unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences     For about a decade now Mick Collins, front man for the Detroit based Dirtbombs, has been threatening that the “next” record the band would release would be their “bubblegum” album. After a couple of albums of mostly originals, a compilation of singles and an album of Detroit techno covers it would be understandable for someone to think that the bubblegum record either fell to the wayside or was a farce to begin with. Well, at long last here is The Dirtbombs’ bubblegum record – Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey.  It would be understandable to assume that a bubblegum record by the Dirtbombs would be an album of cover versions by bands like the 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Ohio Express and The Archies. After all, the band already has two albums of cover songs under their belt which salute specific genres. That is not the case in this instance. Mick Collins has written ten new original tracks in which he pays homage to the sound and style originally popularized in the late 60’s/early 70’s by producers/exploiters like Kasenetz-Katz and Don Kirschner amongst many others. The results are pretty much spot on to Mick’s intention. While the usual Dirtbombs’ double drums, fuzzy guitars and soulful swagger are definitely present, this album is sugary, sun-shiny pop rock that recalls the albums made by Josie & the Pussycats, the Banana Splits and Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution, to name but three. It’s all singalong choruses, childlike themes and a contrived innocence – it’s not the kind of record one would’ve predicted from a guy who once fronted The Gories.  The original bubblegum music was basically a cash-in produced in an assemblyline process usually using studio musicians and hired song-writers who dashed the stuff out as quickly as possible and most likely forgot about it even quicker. While The Dirtbombs adhere to some of this original approach by using a list of guest musicians so long there wasn’t room to credit them on the album cover, this album is actually a carefully crafted work that was almost two years in the making. Also not the sort of thing one would expect from the guy who once fronted The Gories. Still, this is incredibly catchy stuff.       THE DIRTBOMBS OOEY GOOEY CHEWY KA-BLOOEY! (IN THE RED RECORDS) SEPTEMBER 17th, 2013 1. Sugar On Top 2. Crazy For You 3. It's Gonna Be Alright 4. Hot Sour Salty Sweet 5. Jump and Shout 6. Girl on the Carousel 7. Hey! Cookie 8. Sunshine Girl 9. No More Rainy Days  10. We Come In The Sunshine THE DIRTBOMBS IN THE RED RECORDS

9how do you delte eroneous replies?)

SWEEEEEEEEET stuff!!

I KNOW MICK.   WE'RE NOT BESTEST BUDDIES , BUT , I'VE KNOWN HIM WELL ENOUGH , FOR YEARS , THAT THE IDEA OF HIS BAND DOING A BUBBLEGUM RECORDS DOES'NT SHOCK ME AT ALL.....THE IDEA OF A TECHNO ALBUM STILL SEEMS A LOT MORE UNLIKELY. I KNOW , PERSONALLY , I'M EXPECTED TO LOVE TECHNO , RAP , HOUSE , INDUSTRIAL (AS IN WAX TRAX THE LABEL , NOT WAX TRAX , THE LATE , GREAT RECORD STORE....NOT SO MUCH TG OR NURSE WITH WOUND , THO' I'M LOOOOOOOOONG OVER THAT , TOO.), AND DANCE (AS IN , YOU CAN'T DANCE TO IT !) - ANYTHING WITH NO BEATS , NO FEELING , NO SOUL. I DON'T CONSIDER DRUM MACHINES "BEATS" , BUT , I KNOW A LOT OF FOLKS DISAGREE.....I THOUGHT IT WAS HUMOROUS , AND CHALLENGING TO THE HIPSTER MENTALITY (I.E. PEOPLE WHO PROBABLY SECRETLY LOVE TECHNO , ANYWAY.) WHEN MICK ANNOUNCED A (TEMPORARY) FLIRTATION WITH TECHNO......IT DOES'NT SURPRISE ME THAT MICK WOULD GO IN SUCH A DIRECTION , AT LEAST FOR ONE ALBUM , HE'S ONLY SOUNDED MUCH LIKE THE GORIES , TO ME , IN THE PAST 20+ YEARS , WHEN FRONTING THE REFORMED GORIES. THE DIRT BOMBS HAVE CHANGED THEIR GAME PLAN FROM TIME TO TIMES......PEOPLE WERE A BIT SHOCKED THAT HE'D HAVE TWO BASSISTS AND TWO DRUMMERS , VERY , VERY UN - GORIES LIKE , BUT , IT WORKED. THE EARLY DIRTBOMBS RELEASES SOUNDED MORE LIKE NOISE TO ME. NOT PUTTING IT DOWN , JUST SAYING I DID EXPECT SOMETHING DIFFERENT AT THE TIME.  MICK'S MOTIVATIONS ARE NOT SHALLOW , BUT, IT'S FAIR TO SAY HE LIKES TO FUCK WITH PEOPLE'S HEADS. GOOD ON HIM.

BESIDES , BUBBLEGUM KICKS ASS.

I just reviewed this album -- plus the new Black Joe Lewis album -- in my newspaper column

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Sept. 13, 2013

An actual bubblegum album by a serious grown-up band in 2013?

Yes indeed. Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-blooey is a bubblegum album by The Dirtbombs, long promised by the group’s singer and guitarist Mick Collins.

The Dirtbombs are a serious band, right?

In my book they are. Started by Collins in the ’90s following the demise of his previous group, The Gories — an inspired blues/punk/slop band — The Dirtbombs were the best (if not the most famous, which would be The White Stripes) group to come out of the Detroit garage scene.

But bubblegum? Those of you who weren't around when bubblegum ruled the AM airwaves might not know what the term means. Sometimes “bubblegum” is used to describe any vapid teen pop, but that’s not what The Dirtbombs are doing on this album.

According to the All Music Guide, “Bubblegum is a lightweight, catchy pop music that was a significant commercial force in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Bubblegum was targeted at a preteen audience whose older siblings had been raised on rock & roll. It was simple, melodic, and light as feather — neither the lyrics or the music had much substance. Bubblegum was a manufactured music, created by record producers that often hired session musicians to play and sing the songs.”

The true giants of the genre were Buddha Records groups like The Ohio Express (known for hits like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” — yes, there was love in their tummies — and “Chewy Chewy”); The 1910 Fruitgum Company (“1, 2, 3, Red Light,” “Simon Says”); The Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus (“Quick Joey Small”); and made-for-TV bands like The Partridge Family, The Banana Splits, The Archies, and Lancelot Link & The Evolution Revolution.

Now technically, The Archies weren’t human. They were, in fact, cartoon characters. And the Banana Splits were human, but they were humans dressed like cartoon animals.

But even more out-there is the fact that Lancelot Link and his band were trained chimpanzees dressed in wigs and hippie costumes who appeared on Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a live-action Saturday-morning kiddie show in the early ’70s. An album of their music was actually released back then, and a video of the Lancelot Link song “Wild Dreams (Jelly Beans),” posted in a recent Ooey Gooey preview piece on Spin.com, shows these chimps indeed sounded a little like the Dirtbombs do on their new album.

Back during the great bubblegum scare, I was a little older than the target age group for this stuff, and for the most part I didn't share Collins’ affection for it. In fact, I hated the stuff. But little by little, I began to see at least a little value in the genre. Wilson Pickett had a hit with The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar.” A few years later, The Talking Heads covered “1, 2, 3, Red Light.” Meanwhile, The Dickies, an L.A. punk group, did a magnificent version of The Banana Splits theme song. And The Cramps covered “Quick Joey Small.”

And now The Dirtbombs have bubblegum on the soles of their shoes. They didn’t do covers of bubblegum hits. Instead, as Collins explained in an interview in Ghetto Blaster, “I wasn’t trying to make a period piece; I was more seeing if I could pick up where bubblegum left off ...”

If nothing else, Collins and crew capture the weird essence of many bubblegum elements. Just look at the song titles: “Sunshine Girl,” “We Come in the Sunshine,” “Sugar on Top,” “No More Rainy Days,” “Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet,” “Hey! Cookie,” etc. I don’t know whether I’m in more danger of sunstroke or a diabetic coma after listening to this.

There are several songs that — apart from the candy-coated lyrics — don’t sound like a big stretch for The Dirtbombs. “Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet” is one of those, and so are “Sugar on Top” and “It’s Gonna Be Alright.” Collins’ guitar is righteously raunchy in these songs, even if the melodies are poppier than your usual Dirtbombs tune. And “Hey! Cookie” sounds like, well, a garage-rock number. It would have fit seamlessly in early Dirtbombs albums.

Mick Collins playing with The Gories Lincoln Center, NYC, 2010

But other tunes sink deeper into the bubblegum goo.

“We Come in the Sunshine” owes a big debt to “Good Vibrations,” but there also are strange components such as the Bobby Sherman-style horns and vocal harmonies that sound closer to The Cowsills than The Beach Boys. “The Girl on the Carousel” is a dreamy slow dance featuring an oboe.

But the biggest leap is “No More Rainy Days,” which, after a minute or so of what sounds like an Oompa Loompa march, goes into a weird interlude featuring the voice of the sun. That’s right, the actual sun, whose droning rumble was recorded by a solar observatory run by Stanford University.

I’ll admit, these tunes all are fun and catchy, even if the childlike lyrics and lollipops and rainbows start to wear down a listener used to grittier themes. My main beef is that this is the second genre exercise in a row for the Dirtbombs — the previous album, Party Store, being a tribute to Detroit techno bands. I just hope the next album by this band I love so much is less gooey and has more ka-blooey.

Also recommended: 

* Electric Slave by Black Joe Lewis. This is the hardest-edged record so far in the short but thrilling catalog of Lewis, an Austin native who, according to a recent piece in his hometown paper, recently moved to Montreal.

Unlike his previous two albums, this one is released under Lewis’ name alone, not with his band The Honeybears. The horn section is still there, but the soul and funk elements of Lewis’ early work are less apparent.

Also missing are any obvious crowd-pleasers, such as the funny spoken-word segments like “Mustang Ranch” from previous albums. I’m not saying crowds won’t be pleased. Electric Slave is raw, punk-infused electric blues rock. Less jive and more wallop.

The album starts out with “Skulldiggin’,” which has such a distorted, fuzzed-out bass that in a just world, every obnoxious kid with a weapons-grade car stereo would be blasting this at every intersection in America.

Black Joe in Santa Fe

“Guilty” is a frantic rocker with tasty guitar-sax interplay. The nearly seven-minute “Vampire” sounds like a stripped-down cousin of Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song).” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins could have done this one.

Two other standouts are the highly-caffeinated “Young Girls,” which reminds me of Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, and “The Hipster,” a ferocious cruncher built on a mutated “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” guitar riff and incorporating some lyrics of “Wang Dang Doodle.”

I bet the Electric Slave song that gets the most airplay is “Come to My Party.” I hope a lot of new fans respond to that invitation. Black Joe Lewis always throws an amazing musical party.

Blog bonus: Lotsa videos this week






And a little history for you, kiddies:
Talking Heads liked bubblegum when bubblegum wasn't cool


These chimps rock!

Love their previous gritty garage records, was a bit non-plussed by the techno outing, but for me this is their best so far! Totally love the sweet summertime drenched pop harmonies.

I agree. This is my favourite Dirtbombs album ever. Top 10 of the year for sure.

Sorry if this comes up twice. The Cramps were great fans of Bubblegum , too , when much of their audience would have been too old to remember it....

The first song they ever recorded , and , apparently , figured out at all , was "Quick Joey Small" by The Kasenetz- Katz Singing Orchestral Circus".

Lux Interior once said that he liked the early Talking Heads "When they sounded more like The 1910 Fruitgum Co.".

I LOVE this record, and the Dirtbombs are one of my favs. Much love to Mick, Ko and the gang!

Great band and great record. I can't stop to listen to thge first two songs...so full of style!

i JUST PICKED UP THE DIRTBOMBS' BUBBLEGUM ALBUM , AS WELL AS THE LAST STOOGES ' ALBUM. WHAT CAN I SAY ? I'M SLOW.

But , Bubblegum revival is in order , tho' Lava Sutra (Whose great CD should still be readily available from Whitehouse Records, cheap.) flirted with it. Better than that , they got her digits !          oF Of course , The Ramones were chewin' out a rhythm on their bubblegum. I first liked them because they reminded me of The Ohio Express and Tommy James and The Shondells.

The Cichlids were also a funny and good rockin' band , seeped in the GUM.

Some say Glamwas a return to bubblegum . Sweet started out with early Bubblegum hits , "Funny Funny", "Papa Joe'' (Calypso Bubblegum), the great non - starter "Lollipop Man", and , later , "Little Willy " and  "Wig Wam Bam"....... Gary Glitter and Mud stuck to formula , but it worked.

IN A WAY , IT was British Bubblegum , but you could say that already happened with The Troggs' "Hip Hip Hooray" and THE eQUALS' 
lAUREL AND hARDY".....

BTW - GG ALLIN "GIMME SOME HEAD". Definitely Bubblegum.  Any song that says Gimme twice or more is up for Bubblegum status , likE "Gimme Gimme Gimme Some" by The Skunks and SOns of HERCULES.

GUM ! GUM ! GUM ! (Anyone remember that Wrigley's Spearmint Gum ad?.)