Brian Setzer Marked For Death

Fuck "Fuck the Police" or "Cop Killer." The most offensive song of all time is "Santa Drives a Hotrod" off of the new album Dig That Crazy Christmas from the fine soulless mooks of the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Having recently took a seasonal job at a certain bookstore to pay the bills, I am reminded of the drawback to selling your soul to a corporation, even if it is a somewhat forward thinking one. That drawback is a little thing called rotation discs. Having worked other retail outlets and chain video stores before, I have been subjected to many, many rotation discs that play the same fucking thing over and over.

But nothing brings out the empty cheer quite like Christmas. Thanks to the the season, the current rotation disc has one particular song on it to draw my eternal ire - "Dig that Crazy Christmas" from the same man who brought us a varied career of bending himself prostrate with such fine songs as "Bloodless Pharoahs" by the Bloodless Pharoahs, "Rock This Town" by the Stray Cats and that obnoxious entry into the utterly irrational swing revival, "Jump Jive n' Wail." By the way, copies of Mr. Setzer and his orchestra's masterpiece of froth, Dirty Boogie, can be found on amazon for the still-too-high price of $0.49.

What such a career proves to me is that like Stalin before him, Setzer is a man possessed of no soul who will use any propaganda tool in his power to motivate his own career. Unlike Stalin, Setzer has thankfully stuck with music. Music is a lot easier to ignore than mass, politically motivated murder. But when punk was the thing, Setzer doddled along in a little unit called Bloodless Pharoahs. Then he joined the Stray Cats and homogenized the rockabilly that punk bands like X and Gun Club were legitimately experimenting with. When Royal Crown Revue and Cherry Poppin Daddies were the new thing, Setzer was there too. It seems with every trend destined to fade away, Setzer manages to weasel his little head in until he has devoured the soul of it completely.

For a few years, he has stuck with the swing thing, though his two Christmas albums have been just as uninspired as the rest of his career. So what's next, assclown? How about some dreads and reggae, or a keytar and some new wave? Are you going to release a rap album like Dee Dee Ramone did? Not fadish enough. No, whatever the next incarnation the sock puppet for Satan takes will be infinitely more stupefying, but in the whole mess of it, he will still refuse to disappear.