Before you get your grubby hands on this grubby album, go check out Heath Franklin’s Chopper in Repeat Offender. It will be barreling into the The Yarraville Club for one show only as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival on Saturday, 4th April. Tickets are priced at $35 and bookings can be made via the official Melbourne Comedy Festival website.
When you’re tasked with reviewing an album by one of Australia’s most notorious underworld figures — and if you’re so inclined to think, one of it’s most maligned treasures — one must immediately consider questions about strategy. Namely, how the hell do you review an album by Chopper Read?
The late great film critic Roger Ebert was of the opinion that good criticism should be relative. He famously said that when you ask if Hellboy is any good, you’re not asking if it’s good compared to Mystic River, you want to know if it’s good compared to The Punisher.
While music criticism is an entirely different kettle of fish for obvious reasons, similar considerations need to be made. If your mate wants to know if the new Kendrick Lamar album is any good, they’re not asking if it’s good compared to Beethoven.
Ideally, they want to know if it’s good compared to Kendrick Lamar’s last album, or alternatively, whether it’s good compared to some great benchmark release of the genre. In the case of Lamar, something like 2Pac’s All Eyez on Me.
So what does one use as a benchmark for Interview With a Madman, Chopper Read’s largely undiscovered rap album? Well, despite being a — ahem — “hip-hop” record, one certainly couldn’t compare it to the rest of the genre (well, maybe Ol’ Dirty Bastard).
Instead, it’s probably safe to say that Interview With a Madman‘s place in the canon of modern music is somewhere among other so-called “transgressive” releases. You know those albums that basement-dwelling record obsessives are a little too protective over?
Interview With a Madman‘s most obvious parallel would be Lie: The Love and Terror Cult, the infamous debut studio album from Charles Manson. In the case of Manson, the album was a fairly innocuous collection of mediocre folk tunes, some catchy, others not so much.
It’s the risk you run with these sorts of ventures – the only notable thing about your album becomes the fact that it was recorded by a famous screwball. Of course, it’s not like Chopper Read is wont to care about artistic or even personal integrity.
It actually makes reviewing the album easier, because you’re forced to focus purely on its merits as a piece of music, because make no mistake, this album is simply another cash grab from a man who’s lent his dubious name to everything from movies and children’s books, to beer.
So what are its merits as a piece of music? Imagine your dad rapping over some gangster rap beats that came pre-packaged with a piece of music production software to demonstrate how well it can kinda sorta replicate what you hear on the real albums.
Read has no talent for slinging rhymes and while it’s highly likely that he did not pen any of the lyrics heard on Interview With a Madman himself, he struggles to stay on beat. Of course, one wouldn’t expect him to have on-point timing, but even Manson could sort of play guitar.
Truthfully, the most rewarding part of the album really is the song titles, which range from the tongue-in-cheek (‘The Way They Pop Off’ has sinister connotations for anyone familiar with Read’s bio), to the gruesome (‘Razors In The Soap’), to the cheesy (‘Law of the Streets’), and the obvious (‘Cutting Off Me Ears’).
Obviously, no one would listen to Interview With a Madman because it’s a rewarding musical experience. You want to hear it because of the name that’s on it and corollary to this, for all the gruesome lyrical gems assuredly strewn throughout.
The problem is that there really aren’t any. Somehow, Eric Bana’s timeless portrayal of Chopper in the eponymous film is more compelling than hearing tales of cut-off toes and sliced-off ears from the man himself.
Even Read’s rapping has a sort of pub poet, limerick charm to it, but the lyrics themselves, well, it’s all stuff we’ve heard before. By the time you get to ‘The Way They Pop Off’, you’ll find yourself groaning, “Alright, we get it, you cut off your ears!”
This goes on for an exhausting 27 tracks, though quite a few are obligatory skits. If you want the Chopper Read story, with all the gory details, in a way that isn’t mind-numbing, go get one of his many, many books.
