Oysters

  • Oysters
  • Green Eggs and Ham (Taang!) 1985 

Imagine for a moment what the Replacements would sound like nowadays if Bob Stinson were still in the band, and Paul Westerberg had increased his drinking tenfold. They might sound a bit like the Oysters, a Boston-based one-album cult wonder. Green Eggs and Ham is a delightful alcohol-soaked platter; a mesh of sloppy playing, incompetent production and slobbering vocals that makes the same sort of effort to blend pop-punk with other styles as Hootenanny. Entirely free of seriousness, each song hits the devil-may-care punk-rock bullseye. Toe-tappers like “Reeperbahn” and “Headhunter” are enough to gouge a special memory groove, but the confessional “On Special” — extolling the virtues of a local chainstore — is singularly entertaining.

[Ian McCaleb]