Wiggle (1993)
TRACKLIST- Hanging Around
- I'm Not In Love
- One Step Beyond
- I Was A High School Psychopath
- Crying In My Beer
- Slomotion
- Like A Parasite
- Joanie Loves Johnny
- Second Floor East
- Automatic Rejector
- Jeannie's Got A Problem With Her Uterus
- Sad Little Girl
- Ain't Got No Sense
- It's All In My Head
- Teenage Slumber Party
- Danny Is A Wimp
- Going Home?
- Fuck The World
*Track 18 only appears on Asian Man CD and Recess vinyl
LINEUP
Ben Weasel - Vocals
Jughead - Guitar
Danny Vapid - Guitar/Backing Vocals
Johnny Personality - Bass/Backing Vocals
Dan Panic - Drums
PRODUCTION
Recorded by Mass Giorgini at various times between June-August 1992 at Sonic Iguana, Lafayette, IN.
Produced and re-mastered by Mass Giorgini.
LINER NOTES
Stupid, puerile and anthemic... that's Wiggle. I'm not sure about Asian Man, but I'm aging man. I should have grown outta this punk rock crap forever ago but there's something seriously wrong with me. I'm way old enough to be your dad (probably) and came to Screeching Weasel fairly late. For some reason I thought they were just another bunch of snotty, no-hoper type Ramoneabees. The MRR connection might have been to blame but no matter because I saw the light, heard the light, whatever works best for you. They had the chops, the songs and the chutzpah. Wiggle indicates that these guys should probably have been roped in to write for the latterday Ramones records. There's a wicked sense of fun and fuck you to their work. It's funny too. The dysfunction of their Queens-spawned peers has bled into their work. Not in a sanitized, copycat kinda way but more like a transfusion. The sickness of the popacious angle which SW was capable of is palpable. The many stadium filling pop punkers owe an incredible debt to Ben Weasel and his vision. Like the techno crowd owe to Suicide even. It's that stark, but most, if any, of these people aren't characters like Ben. They aren't driven. They don't have a pathological need to keep chipping it out. There are harmonics going on in this joyous teenage racket that make what's left of yer hair stand up. This is quasi-doo-wop punk as opposed to the p(L)op punk that Ben Weasel is charged with causing. I've been reading Ben's books, too, in and around putting this together and that's some damned entertaining stuff also. You ain't dealing with some scenester here - some fly by night, bandwagon-jumping shape shifter. Ben Weasel is an original. He's not backward at coming forward and he's prepared to put up but never shut up. When I see groups like Busted and McFly on the charts here in the UK I wish they would just cover some Weasel or Queers songs rather than come up with wishy-washy derivatives. Those parasites would earn many kudos in my book if they'd cover "Like A Parasite" fer instance. "Joanie Loves Johnny" and "I was A High School Psychopath" are crackers too but "Jeannie's Got a Problem With Her Uterus" pretty much takes the enchilada. This stuff isn't for folks of a nervous disposition and is way beyond yer average SLF knock-off. With a little imagination you can temper what might on the surface sound like a Jake Burns, rough as a bear's arse rasp and it becomes an instrument, like the guitars. The sound is shouty and unadorned, the way the best rock'n'roll always was and will be. The fine line between the real McCoy and career opportunist commodity is now a chasm. Here you can hear what I consider to be the very dogs bollocks in the craft we fought in the '77 punk rock wars for. Wiggle is just the tonic for that "angular guitar piffle" pup the biz is trying to slip to the kids. Get it straight up you if you can't dig that. - Lindsay Hutton The Next Big Thing BEN WEASEL: Wiggle was recorded and mixed over the summer of 1992. I don't know how many days were actually spent on it, but I'd guess somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty or thirty. It was ridiculous. When the drums were finally done - and they seemed to take forever - Johnny Personality went back and did all his bass lines over, and he and Mass Giorgini spent a lot of time analyzing every note. The guitar tracks followed the same pattern. By the time I was standing in front of the mic getting ready to sing. I had psyched myself out; I couldn't sing like myself and I couldn't figure out why. I went from loving the songs to hating them and back again every half hour. As if uncertainty wasn't creating enough doubts, we knew that Lookout's Lawrence Livermore - who had only agreed to us recording with the as-yet-unproven Giorgini because Mass had offered to do the whole thing for 500 bucks no matter how long it took - would be criticizing every note. On top of all that, we felt like we were supposed to make a better record than My Brain Hurts, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary self-imposed pressure. As it turns out, the record came out fine. There are a lot of good tunes on the record, but I think of it as two different records - the one that's sort of re-doing My Brain Hurts and the one that's moving on. DANNY VAPID: I wasn't sure about trying out a new studio. We ran into Mass Giorgini in Pittsburgh while both of our bands were on tour. Mass was just getting into recording and he suggested recording the next Screeching Weasel record in Lafayette, Indiana free of charge. The only band he had ever recorded was his own. After initial struggles and steadfast determination Wiggle came to life. Sonic Iguana ended up becoming the studio in the Midwest for recording punk rock records. We had also made a life long friend in Mass Giorgini. Wiggle was the second SW release on Lookout Records. The popularity of the band was growing in the suburbs of Chicago and places like Berkeley, California, home of Lookout and the Gilman Street Warehouse. The goal was to deliver a recording with the same spark and attitude as the last. Songs like "Automatic Rejector," "One Step Beyond," and "I'm Not In Love" had the same aesthetic that became part of the SW spirit. Wiggle was a little more diverse than the previous record. Maybe the new wave influence was a bit strong in songs like "Sad Little Girl" but it felt good at the time and we rolled with it. Punk rock fans had started to embrace this "new" sound, calling it "pop-punk.” We just tried to laugh, vent, and entertain ourselves with songs that were catchy and fun. JOHN JUGHEAD: Wiggle could have been my favorite record if it hadn't been plagued with an incredible amount of pressure. We had just completed My Brain Hurts and with the release of that record our audience increased quite a bit. That combined with some lucky timing caused a large audience to take notice of us. We felt like Wiggle, which originally was going to be called Ack Ack Ackadack, had to top the last record. This pressure was pointless. The record was going to be what the record was going to be. But because of our obsessive mixing and remixing of this record, we all lost what the record should have sounded like. I still can't listen to this record because of my frustration with how it is mixed. Hopefully this new mastering will once again allow me to listen to this record. This was the record I think we spent the most time on in rehearsal. Vapid, Panic, Personality and I used to stay before and after our "official" rehearsal and just do stupid jams. We would imitate different styles, like 80s New Wave, Cock Rock, and Metal. Some of these riffs made it into songs on the record, like "Automatic Rejector" and "Sad Little Girl" Ben would walk in and we would rehearse his new songs, and sometimes he would ask us what we were playing. Vapid would show him, and then they would work together to come up with a complete song. It was great to watch those two work together. They spoke on a level that I didn't understand. They just exchanged looks or few words and then they would both piece together some great pop music.