`You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals/so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel." You don't have to be an avid viewer of nature documentaries to know what The Bloodhound Gang are referring to in their hit single, The Bad Touch. And you don't need a degree from Beavis & Butthead University to appreciate the puerile humour in songs such as Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny and I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks . . . but it helps.
The Bloodhound Gang are singer Jimmy Pop (he's to blame for most of the lyrics), guitarist Lupus
Thunder (he's the band's resident devil-worshipper), bassist Evil Jared Hasselhof (the deadly spawn of Rowdy Roddy Piper, Lee Majors and Dee Dee Ramone), DJ Q-Ball (he boasts his very own probation officer) and Willie The New Guy on drums (whom nobody cares about because he's the new guy). Together, they are a post-modern Porky's, a weird, alternative Wayne's World, a sick twist on the Bart Simpson psyche, and their popularity is growing faster than mould on stale pizza.
The Bad Touch has spent numerous weeks at the No 1 slot, getting lots of daytime airplay with its lyrical double meanings. Ireland has always had an affinity with the novelty song - just look at Richie Kavanagh, Dustin or this year's Eurovision entry - so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that we've taken the Philadelphia band to our hearts like slugs to a soggy sandwich.
"That just explains that the quality of music has declined so much to allow us to have the top position," says Q-Ball. "We'd like to thank all the people who are putting out crap music and allowing us to be No 1."
It's a sunny summer's afternoon in Dublin, and Q-Ball is sitting outdoors, sipping a Guinness and relaxing before the band's first Irish appearance in Vicar Street later that night. The Bloodhound Gang are on tour to promote their new album, Hooray For Boobies, doing a European Blitzkreig which promises lots of teenage kicks and nasty onstage tricks. Parental guidance is futile.
With such a repository of repulsive songs (their next single is an ode to their favourite porn star, Chasey Lain: it will definitely not make it to daytime radio in its unexpurgated form), it's easy - and justifiable - to write off The Bloodhound Gang as a bunch of rock 'n' roll bozos, riding high on the whole rock 'n' roll thing, but offering nothing remotely meaningful. Q-Ball concedes that maybe The Bloodhound Gang are unlikely to wrest Radiohead's `serious rock' crown from them.
"We were called a novelty act for a long time, and for a while we were referred to simply as `the mammal band', but I'm glad that we're over here because the exposure is great and when we throw out the next single and start playing shows, then people will see that we're more than just that one song."
At their Vicar Street show later that night, The Bloodhound Gang show the enthusiastic, mostly teenage, crowd just how much more they've got. Onstage, Jimmy Pop toys suggestively with a banana, pretending it's Ronan Keating, offers free Tshirts to any guy who strips or any girl who will "make out" with him onstage, and invites one volunteer to neck lots of CocaCola and then throw up all over the singer. Sadly, things don't go according to plan: the girls get coy, the guys bottle out, and the cola drinker pukes too soon.
Oh, and the band play some songs, too, such as Along Comes Mary (a song about marijuana), Three Point One Four (chorus: "I need to find a new vagina") and Mope (containing samples from Relax and Rock Me Amadeus), but these are largely fillers for the between-song antics, or excuses to jump around and act stupid. The overall impression is of a motley crew of misogynistic, beer-swilling geeks, obsessed with messy sex and atrocious 1980s tunes. It's great entertainment altogether.
"None of us will ever tell you we're great musicians, because we'd be lying to you," Q-Ball admits. "How we get away with that is, we jump around a lot onstage, we involve the crowd, we do stuff that people don't have the balls to do or just don't wanna do. And that's all it is. You just gotta keep the humour aspect of it. It's not even a show, it's more like a circus. A lot of our fans say they'll never miss any of our shows, because the songs may be the same but the way that we sing 'em , the way we put other people's songs into them, and what happens onstage is never the same. Anything you're scared to see - it may just happen."
America has a tradition of novelty acts, from Tom Lehrer to Weird Al Yankovic right up to The Jerky Boys, so The Bloodhound Gang can be proud of their laughter line, which includes fellow Philadelphia jokers The Dead Milkmen. Along with Blink 182, The Bloodhounds represent a mongrel mix of punk, hip-hop and humour, a pie in the po-face of post-grunge, a Dumb & Dumber alternative to Pearl Jam, Hootie and Stone Temple Pilots.
"I hate all that type of music - I loved Nirvana but I hated all the other stuff that came after them. They were all up each others' asses with this rock star image, but just because they work on a three-foot-high stage, now all of a sudden they have to be a god? It just doesn't make sense."
If Jimmy Rabbitte asked The Bloodhound Gang, "What are your influences?", these are just some of the answers he'd get: Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Eminem, Notorious B.I.G. and Slayer. Take all those ingredients and more, toss 'em into a blender, and you have the rather unsavoury concoction that is The Bloodhound Gang. Be careful, though: you might be dragged onstage by the band and forced to drink it down in one go.
They may not get taken seriously by the rock intelligentsia, and their records are unlikely to figure in critics' best-of lists, but The Bloodhound Gang believe they have earned respect by having hits, having the courage to put dreams of rock cred aside and just playing immature and asinine rock 'n' roll. Eddie Vedder wouldn't dare dabble in the realm of the novelty song, and Billy Corgan would rather have his teeth pulled than sully his lyrical CV with a vaguely humorous line.
"We're doing this to have fun, not to be remembered, and if we are remembered, then that's just another accomplishment," says Q-Ball. "We don't consider ourselves musicians - we consider ourselves entertainers. When we started out, we were dissed by a lot of serious musicians. They'd go, what is this crap? But as soon as you have a hit, now the respect factor comes in. I met Eminem, who is my total hero, and I found that he had the same respect for me."
And what happens when the novelty wears off? "You mean if our jokes aren't funny anymore? I'm scared of that, yeah, but we're sure not going to have a 20-year reunion tour. We'll probably put out two more albums, call it quits, and the money I've made I'll invest in my future. That's all."
Hooray For Boobies is on the Geffen label. The Bloodhound Gang release their new single, Ballad Of Chasey Lain, this month
