The Song of the Day is:
The Presidents of the United States of America – “Lump”
From the album The United States of America (1995)
Lump sat alone in a boggy marsh
Totally emotionless except for her heart
Mud flowed up into lump’s pajamas
She totally confused all the passing piranhasShe’s lump, she’s lump
She’s in my head
Chris Ballew
Perhaps an obvious choice today, obvious if you’re still hip to nineties nostalgia. It’s President’s Day, and in the interest of bipartisanship (what’s that?), let’s just play a goofy, but potent, sampling of punk-pop: The Presidents of the United States of America’s “Lump”. Despite the bands title, the Presidents don’t make any overt attempts to be political, they mostly seem to be interested in light-hearted fun, which of course, their three most famous songs are. There’s the catchy ode to Georgia produce in “Peaches”, the Ohio-centric one-time theme to The Drew Carey Show “Cleveland Rock” (a cover of a song by Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter) and “Lump”. “Lump” is a fever dream hallucination about a benign tumor, based on the experiences of lead singer Chris Ballew. Somehow, it managed to be one of the most fun songs of the dour 1990’s rock scene. The was conceived as a pastiche of music by the Buzzcocks, a wonderfully melodic British punk band, to which I’d say that the Presidents partially succeed, though I would say that their own sound and style factored into “Lump” too much to ever be a carbon copy. Outside of possibly “Song 2” by blur, this is probably the most hard-driving mid-nineties ere alternative rock that can be packed into 2 minutes. The Presidents were a trio consisting of the bald-headed Chris Ballew on vocals and bass (a striking look when long grungy hair was all the rage), Dave Dederer on guitar and Jason Finn on drums. Their sound lies somewhere between the Buzzcocks, the Minutemen, Cake, They Might Be Giants and Primus. Though most people probably haven’t heard a song of theirs since their 1995 self-titled debut, they have put out six albums before their disbandment in 2016. Despite the fact that the wide majority of people don’t know a whole lot of his music, that doesn’t mean that Ballew hasn’t been working. His discography is massive, with three solo albums, a number of guest appearances, and a whooping 20 albums since 2009 of children’s music. These children’s albums are under his stage name Caspar Babypants. The Presidents of the United States of America also have a cultural benchmark that separates the musical legends from the also-rans: a “Weird” Al Yankovic parody. In one of his most over instances of cultural dating, Yankovic performed “Lump” as (Forrest) “Gump”.
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