Richard Cheese

Richard
Cheese Silent Nightclub (Surfdog Records;
September 2006)

For those who have never experienced Richard
Cheese and his band Lounge Against the Machine, this
holiday-themed CD may not be the most opportune starting point.
It’s thick with the cheese that makes
Cheese the best mock-rocker on the planet — yes, I dare say a
better and certainly more prolific pseduo-cover singer than Weird
Al — but it’s got too many Christmas tunes to be played around the
house outside of winter. (Of course, even the holiday tunes,
especially the original “Christmas in Las Vegas,” are appropriate
at all times if you’re enough of a Cheese-head.) I’d recommend one
of the earlier Cheese albums for the neophyte, such as Apertif for Destruction or I’d Like a Virgin.

That disclaimer aside, prepare for yet another reliably
ridculous, nonstop funny fest of Dick Cheese smacking up and
flipping down all the songs you already love. This time ’round we’ve got the DK’s
“Holiday in Cambodia,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Modern English’s
“I Melt with You,” Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” and, of course,
Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” On the Christmas tip, we get those
barking keyboard dogs doing their best “Jingle Bells” and an
assault on Charlie Brown’s “Christmas Is Here.”

Nothing is sacred to Mr. Cheese and his crew, who give a whole
new spin on the world of popular music as we know it. It may seem
like a joke, but the music is tight and the singing is solid. Play
this in front of grandma and she just might dig it and rock out to
Vanilla Ice — by the chestnuts roasting in that open fire, no
less.