One Perfect Song: Maximum Detail
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Songs can take many forms. Some are engineered to be an anthemic single. Some are the perfect opener or closer (for an album or a live show). One Perfect Song is an ongoing series in which I highlight a song that always grabs my attention when I hear it.
Previously on One Perfect Song:
Today’s Song: Maximum Detail by Beehive & The Barracudas, from their 2001 album Plastic Soul
I’ve been trying to figure out for a while how best to fit Beehive & The Barracudas into a piece: I don’t have a good Album Story. Greatest Hits was considered and rejected. I suppose the most ‘Cudas thing to do would haven been to deviate from the norm and cook up something unique, custom, bespoke, singular. You can’t put them in a box, after all!
But, let’s be honest, it turns out I was too lazy to go the Greatest Hits route.
Well, that’s only partly true. The main thing is that each of their albums works best as exactly that - an album listened to in order - so chopping them up would kill the vibes.
There are a lot of great ‘Cudas songs, ranging from their weirder stuff (e.g. Changes, Deb’s Purple Vein) to the more straightforward stompers (e.g. Are You Queer? Funky Mongrels, I Feel A Feeling) but my choice for ONE PERFECT SONG is Maximum Detail.
This song both captures the band at their simplest and most effective AND is also a perfect encapsulation of the overall mystique of Beehive & The Barracudas. (More on that in a sec…)
It’s a song about two lovers from the towns of Blight and Coalville, sung with a Johnny and June vocal style, that captures a heartfelt sense of longing all while keeping it wrapped it within the wierdo ‘Cudas style and knows not to overstay its welcome with a 2:13 time.
As much as I like that song, what I really wanted was to write about the purposeful mystique that is built into Beehive & The Barracudas.
It’s kind of like that game Maniac Mansion - there’s a bunch of different characters involved but never all of them together at the same time, there’s whole bunch of weird things happening throughout and takes a while to figure out who’s who and what’s what.
But you’ll have a good time figuring it all out, and the weirder elements of the whole thing really grow on your over time.
The key player here is of course GAR WOOD, who must be the lowest profile possessor of a galaxy brain on the planet. The man has a flawless discography, covering 30 years of awesomeness.
He’s also the guy caught perfectly barreling this tube. Suffice to say, I’m a huge Gar Wood fan1.
The ‘Cudas is not all Gar, though there are two other starting pitchers:
“Dirty” Dustin Milsap is the Garth to Gar’s Wayne (or the Wayne to Gar’s Garth, either way is good)
Traci Haze (RIP) was the straight up star of the final ‘Cudas record (Pure Commotion)
Then you’ve got the rotating arms coming out of the bullpen: not one but two members of Rocket From The Crypt (Jason “Commotion” Crane and Andy Stamets) and one member of the Red Aunts (Kerry Davis2), and the various other people that are involved. I’m not even sure that I know how many other people have been involved.
That said, the humans making this art are not the characters that matter the most, because across 5 albums, the ‘Cudas have embedded their own universe within these songs. And creating universes - in any medium - is something I truly love, whether its the 8000 year span of history Frank Herbert gave us in his Dune series, the time-is-a-flat-circle, history constantly starts over world of The Legend Of Zelda or the theatre-of-the-mind insanity of Scharpling & Wurster’s fictional town of Newbridge.
The ‘Cudas give us a fully realized world, with people, places and things. There are bands-within-bands-within-bands: The White Apes (who even put out their own album), The Insects and Sheena Desiree and the Haze. There are people who, I imagine to be the imaginary managers or producers or hangers-on of some kind: Frankie Fen-Fen, Derek Snee, Sheena Desiree, James, DJ Gene “the Jean” Adams and who even knows else.
Most importantly, there are the towns with names so silly, but also somehow real on the surface: Blight, Michigan3 and Coalville (no state identified, but I’ve always assumed Ohio?).
While I understand that many people find the idea of a niche band, playing an undefinable genre of music (“psycho soul at it’s most primitive”) while creating their own reality to be the very definition of obscure, I find the level of creativity and commitment to the bit to be very much in my wheelhouse.
And the commitment to the bit extends beyond the music. There’s the (very much NSFW) album cover for Cock Ready. There’s the merch stand with 15 different t-shirt designs, none of which are for sale4. There’s the wigs, the standees, the ape masks, the sunglasses, the collage art that replaces faces with other faces and the really weird but very on brand videos.
This is the true magic of Beehive & The Barracudas. It’s an enigma, wrapped in a band, covered with a collage of dicks. It’s not a band or music - it’s conceptual art, across a full-spectrum of media5. What’s not to love?
Until next time, sit back, relax, delve deep into your favorite fantastical universe6, stay up all night with Derek Snee and allow Beehive & The Barracudas to !~LET YOUR APESOUL FREE~!
Maybe not quite as much as my pal Simon.
As noted in the RIP Dan Sartain piece, I met Kerry at a Dan Sartain/Two Tears show once and she seemed shocked that someone wanted to talk about the ‘Cudas. I asked her what the creative process was like and she said it was caffeine and tecates, in Gar’s home studio/basement.
The first time I ever met Gar, at a Hot Snakes show, I was very stoned (this is pre-Google Maps) and I told him “I spent a long time looking at a map of Michigan, and I think you made Blight up, its not on there” and he laughed and seemed happy that the dumb idiot talking to him went to that level of effort.
I was too drunk to understand that this bit was more classic Cuda’s weirdness the first time I encountered it and the very nice lady running the merch booth was more patient with me than I deserved. (I’m not painting myself in the best light in the footnotes this week, huh?)
I’m not sure if it’s perfect or even more bizarre that they wrote the single best protest record during the George W. Bush years (Pure Commotion).
I’m still choogling my way through the outermost expanses of the Dune series.
Don't leave out their most recent drummer extraordinaire, The Dutch Threat! Keeping the whole thing locked down for the last few years and overall great human.