ANGRY JOHNNY

"HOPPIN' MAD"

1. The Great Killville First National Bank Robbery 2. Hell Come To Killville
3. Roscoe 4. Iron City Girl
5. Binky & Stinky 6. No One Was Around
7. Betty Jean 8. Chuck Weed
9. Charlotte 10. What Are We Gonna Do About Mamma?
11. George Monroe 12. Mary Lou
13. Michael O'Driscoll 14. Tommy Gun Jones
15. I Wanna Tell You A Story 16. Tennessee Air Wars

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Being a compilation, this is a record of mood swings, as if Angry forgot to take his meds.  HOPPIN' MAD runs the gamut from giddiness to despair, and back again. 
In THE GREAT KILLVILLE FIRST NATIONAL BANK ROBBERY, Angry is just casing the joint before the big scores of High Noon in Killville, Indian Motorcycle Song, and Henry -- although the "hero" of this song actually gets away with it, a fortune that favors few in Killville.  Even rarer is the happy ending for BETTY JEAN, who finds love in the most unlikeliest of places -- Dewey's Bar.  BINKY AND STINKY have a much more typically Angry night on the town, but the standard brawling and gunplay end in one great punchline -- "It's flirting with danger to puke on a stranger, much better you puke on a friend." 
HELL COME TO KILLVILLE is a '50s B-movie in two minutes and change -- think CCR's It Came Out of the Sky, with zombies to boot.  Angry's mistaking of Alice Cooper's line, "Held up in the intensive care ward" in The Ballad of Dwight Fry as "TENNESSEE AIR WARS"' results in a flight of fancy about a Dixie dogfight with Alabama.  CHUCK WEED is just as silly as the first time you smoke pot and laugh for hours on end.
MICHAEL O'DRISCOLL, TOMMY GUN JONES, and GEORGE MONROE are pure yellow journalism, Angry as crime reporter.  WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT MOMMA? is straight out of Devil's Rejects: The Musical, as if Otis and Baby Firefly managed to get Captain Spaulding to shut up long enough for them to record a creepy duet. This cinematic approach continues in the noirish CHARLOTTE and the first-person-shooter MARY LOU.  I WANNA TELL YOU A STORY does so better than the rest -- weighty with tragedy, chilly detail, and a central mystery that Angry asserts can never truly be solved.  "There ain't no moral so don't look for one." 
ROSCOE is one of Angry's most thoroughly convincing murder ballads, pitting brother against brother to the deep-rooted authenticity of a balalanka strum.  Songs like this are the reason listeners often assume that Killville must lie in the Deep South.
HOPPIN' MAD would never play on vinyl, because it is virtually Scratch-free, but when Satan finally does turn up, it's for the topper NO ONE WAS AROUND.  An unremittingly bleak, jangley nightmare about suicide and indifference, this is one of the darkest -- and most effective -- songs Angry has penned.
Given the schizophrenic diversity of the music and moods on this disc, the cover is particularly appropriate:  Angry in a comical bunny suit, a PBR in one hand, a sawn-off shotgun in the other.  This is the dichotomy of Angry Johnny:  One can never be sure just what the man is capable of.  You don't know whether to laugh, or run for your life.  You might want to do both.   I'm fairly certain he couldn't pull the trigger with those bunny mittens on, but I wouldn't want to find out... 

DON ADAMS