Punky Brüster

Cooked On Phonics
HDR, 1996

A few years after Green Day and The Offspring introduced a new generation to pop-punk and racked up album sales in the tens of millions, the baton was passed to another bunch of kids with simple guitar riffs and attitude to burn who went on to change the music industry forever under the name of Punky Brüster. Well, sort of. That's the plot of satirical concept album Cooked On Phonics, a rock opera following the fortunes of an unpopular death metal band who get tired of playing to empty rooms and decide to reinvent themselves as a punk rock band to earn some money instead.

Each song follows the players as they go from pretending to be menacing occult figures from central Poland to posing as angry kids with a chip on their shoulder. Their first task? Learn how to write a punk song. "I've got to be more punk/ And forget about writing love songs/ Because even though I'm a middle-class white Canadian/ God knows I've been done wrong," the singer convinces himself. From there on in it's smooth sailing for the band, who hit it big with an ode to wallet chains and become the new darlings of "the biz".

Having been around for a couple of weeks, Punky Brüster get nominated for a "Granny" award. Despite a few bumpy patches before the ceremony (such as when a member takes an adoring fan home only for her discover a heavy metal poster in his bedroom and storm out in disgust), the group triumphantly take out the Lifelong Achievement Award For The Best Punk Rock Band. On stage the band thank "all the pioneering punk bands of 1994" in voices squeakier than those of Alvin And The Chipmunks before launching into a truly woeful acoustic emo song that morphs into a surprise death metal offensive. Fade to black.

Obviously, Cooked On Phonics was intended as a statement on the shallowness of punk rock at the time. It was written by metal icon Devin Townsend, of the band Strapping Young Lad, who bragged that the whole thing only took him a few days. However one of the most amusing things about it is that the punk rock songs aren't half bad, whereas I don't think much of Townsend's actual metal work. The album was a big hit in Japan and almost nowhere else. The following year Blink 182 went platinum with Dude Ranch.