When the mighty Killdozer finally decided to call it quits in 1996, they embarked on the aptly titled "F**k You, We Quit!" tour, from which this live album is culled. When I say "culled", I mean recorded in one night at The Unicorn in Milwaukee, WI.

A brief (!!) history:
Killdozer came together in 1983, long before the advent of the "grunge" movement, which would ultimately hurl many of the people with whom they worked into the limelight. For example, their long-time (and, no doubt, long-suffering) producer Butch Vig went on to do a little record called Nevermind for a band from the Pacific Northwest who were mildly popular in the '90s. They also worked with Steve Albini, who also did some work with the same as-yet-unnamed band. Just for kicks, let's call them Nirvana.

Anyway, while it's my fervent belief that Killdozer was the catalyst for the much-needed change that came over the musical landscape in the early '90s, many would say that they were simply the greatest, noisiest, most intelligent (yet, in a strange way, anti-intellectual) band ever to come out of Madison, WI. From their first album, Intellectuals are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite, through their classic masterpieces Snakeboy, Little Baby Buntin', 12 Point Buck and the amazing collection of '70s pop nuggets aptly entitled For Ladies Only, Killdozer managed to maintain a strange balance between angry punk, sloppy rock and musical comedy.

To me, the acerbic wit and twisted lyrics of growling vocalist Michael Gerald was always the core of the outfit. I still remember quite clearly that day in 1987 when a coworker slipped her headphones over my ears and said, "You've gotta hear this..." The opening salvo of "Hamburger Martyr" (a disgusted "F**k you" followed by the loudest, sloppiest guitar riff ever recorded) hooked me for life. The rest of the song goes on to describe the mindset of a disgruntled fry cook ("You call this a hamburger?!! Hell! I could make a better hamburger with my a**hole!"), with parallels to Christ-like martyrdom. It looks silly in print, I know, but as a sort of warped punk rock musical comedy it works. Even after the 1990 departure of original guitarist Bill Hobson (his guitar work on their cover of Don McLean's "American Pie" stands among my favorite musical comedy moments), the lyrical quality remained constant. His songs teeter between hilarious and disturbing, covering such wide-ranging topics as May-December romances ("Don't Cry"), grain elevator explosions ("The Ballad of my Old Man"), law enforcement ("The Pig was Cool") and shooting oneself in the penis ("Man of Meat").

I'm still not sure exactly how to go about describing their sound, but imagine a drunken Creedence Clearwater Revival accidentally turning their amps up all the way and letting Ed Gein, Tom Waits and Charles Manson share the mike.

OK, here's the actual review:
For a live record, the sound quality ain't bad. It's no Exit, Stage Left or The Song Remains the Same, but what do you want? It's a live Killdozer album, fer chrissakes. If you can find a copy of the old Little Baby Huntin' Live video, you'll see what really bad sound quality is. Here, you can just about hear the bass and guitar as different instruments, rather than a muddy din, and the vocals cut through cleanly (yeah, cough, "cleanly").
As I mentioned earlier, I was a Bill Hobson man, so I've never quite loved Paul Zagoras' guitar work, but he does a fine job here.

They've put together a decent selection of material from their last two studio albums (Uncompromising War on Art... and God Hears the Pleas of the Innocent), sprinkled with gems from the earlier masterworks ("Man of Meat" and "Space:1999", for example) and the obligatory cover songs (Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks"). For my money, I would have preferred they end with the lighter-lifting splendor of "American Pie" to close the set, but at least they get a decent sing-along out of "Knuckles the Dog" and the final words on the CD harken back to my first introduction to the band. Yes, "F**k you", indeed!

In short, a decent farewell from a great band that will be missed.

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Waking up