tBS: Peter Bohovesky Review

[Torgo Sedler]

Peter Bohovesky

*WARNING* - Some of the words contained in this review are of the type
of word that some people have been conditioned to find offensive.
However, as there truly is no such thing as a bad word, the ideas behind
many of these are actually quite filthy.

Anyone still reading at this point is really just asking for it.
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We were all young once (hell, some of us still are), and we all did
things for mind-bogglingly stupid reasons. Much of the music that shaped
the "deformative" years of my misspent youth was purchased for different
reasons. Sometimes we wanted something to play at parties, sometimes we
needed to crank something at deafening volumes behind a locked bedroom
door that would make our parents shake their heads in disgust and say
"I'm telling you mother, the boy isn't right." Oh heck, I purchased a
copy of Ted Nugent's "Double Live Gonzo" for one reason and one reason
only. Ted said "fuck", and other choice words several times and it was a
plenty good reason to separate me from my limited funds to own a copy.
It seems stupid now, sure, but some old habits are hard to break.

Even in my mid thirties, I can still be easily swayed to buy an album
with songs about geriatric genitalia, masturbation, and having the pride
and ability to take an enormous crap.

The name Peter Bohevesky has been in my personal vocabulary ever since I
discovered the unique band "The Brain Surgeons" and fell in love with
their weird and somewhat off-center style of music. In 1997, this Brain
Surgeons guitarist released a bizarre collection of music simply
entitled "Peter Bohovesky". Before purchasing the CD I had no idea what
the musical style of it would be. I half expected it to be much like The
Brain Surgeons, but I can't lie; it was a sick and depraved curiosity
about the twisted song titles that pulled me in for a closer look.

There are eighteen songs on the hour long CD, and while on the first
spin many of them sounded very much alike, it was after a few plays that
I started to fall in sync with the different music styles on the album.
Mr. Bohovesky has certainly listened to a few Frank Zappa albums in his
day, as I see Zappa's influence somewhere on better than half of the
collection. Mix that up with a healthy pile of Weird Al Yankovic and
vocals filled with layered harmonies, and you have an album my mother
would certainly love to hate.

On the cover of the CD, which features a strange looking profile of
Bohovesky, Peter gives us a "warning" and an "explanation" about the
songs contained within. The warning I can understand, but his reason for
creating this album almost sounds like an apology for creating something
of extremely poor quality. Referring to it as a "turd in a bottle" cast
into a sea of people who have not appreciated his "real" music, I think
sells this uniquely wonderful album a bit short. Yes, most of the songs
ARE about some extremely sick subjects, but the musical songwriting is
nothing short of brilliant.

Peter does all the vocals on the album, with a peppering of guest
musicians doing what they do best, including the one and only Albert
Bouchard slapping the skins on a few tunes. The album kicks off in a
beautifully sick manner with a reworked version of The Brain Surgeons
song "Donkey Show", a song about a woman with the vaginal chutzpah to
have intercourse with a donkey. While not as hard hitting as the
Surgeons version, the song is a nice inclusion in that the lyrics are
somewhat different. Song styles range thereafter from the  Satriani-like
jamming on "Pichones" to the soft and mellow horn section on a serene
caressing of the senses called "Grandma's Vagina". "Tanked up and Horny"
had me howling with laughter the first time I heard it, as Peter starts
the song with a sound bite of one of my all time favorite lines from one
of my all time favorite movies, "Blazing Saddles". The lyrics are kindly
provided, and Bohovesky has also seen the need to give a few songs a bit
of eye opening explanation as to how and why and where they came from.
"No Meat" stems from an experience Peter had when he tried to have
simultaneous sex with two lesbians, only to have them "have at" each
other instead, leaving Peter to relieve himself in the traditional solo
method.

But that is not saying that the entire album is silly (silly being a
euphemism for pornographic and grotesque). There are a few songs that
are on the borderline of strange but don't quite plunge themselves over
the silliness cliff. "Last Laugh" deals with having a shrewish and
pestersome spouse who sucks the life out of your soul (that almost NEVER
happens in real life though), and songs like "Let Go" (NOT, I repeat NOT
a remake of the Blue Oyster Cult song) and the acoustic gem "Nothing
Good" seem almost deeply philosophical in comparison to the more lewd
songs on the album.

My single petty complaint about the album is in the song order. The
album almost seems to be laid out in three separate "sections" due to
song content. Starting off with a run of songs that one might call
"suggestive" but that never really let loose into over the top "filth",
the album then goes into it's "middle", a more serious side. Having that
out of the way, the last five songs or so on the album are tunes that
were obviously written to be outright assaults on our good taste, all
averaging under two minutes each. The album, as fantastic as it is,
would have sounded much better if the song order had been tossed around
(no pun intended) to stagger the short and crude songs with the longer,
more musically oriented, guitar driven numbers. Regardless of order, the
final song on the album "Auto Erotica" always makes me chuckle, shake my
head, and wonder if the wonderfully demented Mr. Bohovesky drank his own
bath water occasionally as a child. This song, which is basically a
twist on the main riff from the classic "No Particular Place to Go",
deals with the joys of masturbating.... while driving around in a car
with a constricting noose cutting off one's windpipe.

Ok, maybe this album isn't for everyone.

So this review can serve as either an invitation or a warning. If you
can get past the totally tasteless lyrics (or embrace them as I have),
you will find a musical masterpiece filled with unique and somewhat
quirky sounds and wonderfully distinctive song writing. A rare album
that will undoubtedly be harder and harder to find as it gets older,
this CD was certainly "bigger" than I once imagined when I chuckled my
way through the song titles. But like Peter says in "Bobby Floats a
Fence Post", a song about pinching a turd so immense that it's a MUST
for people to gather around and look at....

"Sometimes the little things in life, turn out quite colossal."

Robert "Torgo" Sedler
Torgo has left the building.......
***********************************************
Torgo at norwich.net     DrTorgo at hotmail.com
http://welcome.to/torgos
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