The Unboxed Set (1980-1988)

It's possible that the Angry Samoans are an acquired taste. But I wouldn't know about that. I liked them from the first time I saw them along about 1983 on an old episode of the USA Network's "Night Flight," razzing Peter Ivers unmercifully just before exploding into such fare as "Steak Knife" and "Todd Killings" (about murderer Skipper Todd: "He's killing time, Todd killings!"), all elbows and knees and grimacing blasts of sound. Shortly after that Peter Ivers was murdered, but I'm pretty sure that was just a coincidence. Maybe it's that I'm naturally partial to rock critic bands—I also like the Pet Shop Boys and Pretenders. The AS are very funny, mocking all the usual stuff (mediocrity, conformity, narrow-mindedness, etc., etc.), while celebrating all the usual stuff (psychotronic movies, their own natural yet criminally overlooked superiority, so on and so forth), all of it in ways that skate dangerously, disturbingly close to bad taste and worse. For example, do they hate homosexuals or do they hate homophobes? It's a pretty close call but I have to go with the latter, if only because that's what I want to believe. As ever, YMMV.