John Bellows is officially invited to all of my birthday parties from now on. I just think he’d make a good presence there, getting into the food and booze, goofing around with all kinds of funny voices and impressions, and making a general drunken mess of himself while causing a scene. And I’d want for him to do all that, because that is something that must be done at a birthday party. Because it was going to happen anyway. Someone has to be the asshole, screw things up a bit. It is as inevitable as rock and roll itself, and that’s why there’s Fast Hits. Fast Hits is a karate kick in the teeth. It’s a cartoon cat & mouse chase. It comes out of nowhere, it smarts like a motherfucker, and it is kind of a circus. There’s tastes of everything from Sebadoh to Kiss to Tom Waits on this highly enjoyable cassette tape, and more, and it’s all lined with a fuzzy notion of that word that is best when it exists as a noun, “gnarly.” Yes, John Bellows’ raging assault of power chord craziness is gnarly, but it is also a gnarly. It hasn’t showered in a while, it’s got patchy stubble all over its face. It just took six 5-Hour Energy™s, it is off to the races and you are in its way. And it will run you the fuck over. Even what is passed off for as a ballad here in “La La La La La” will kick your ass, and you’ll thank it for the favor.
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