Cooked on Phonics

Infobox Album | Name = Cooked on Phonics
Type = Album
Artist = Punky Brüster

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Released = 1996
Recorded = 1996
Genre = Metal / Punk Parody
Length = 58:36
Label = Hevy Devy Records
Producer = Devin Townsend

Concept

Cooked on Phonics is a comedy concept album from Devin Townsend designed to make fun of bands who sell out their roots to make a quick buck. The album follows the journey of fictional death metal band Cryptic Coroner as they discover that they can make much more money performing pop punk, and become the music business's little babies, Punky Brüster.

The story

The album begins in a club called Malone’s where Polish death metal act Cryptic Coroner take to the stage, only to break a string and find themselves improvising pop punk to keep the crowd from attacking them. This introduces the first musical number ‘Recipe For Bait’. Lyrically the song is a crack up as the death metal act spells out their distaste for playing punk. A couple of the albums true highlights are the follow up numbers ‘Fake Punk’ and ‘EZ$$’. The songs are strong enough to stand up on their own, and lyrically really stand out as some of Devin’s greatest sarcastic genius moments.

The spoken word narratives between songs help tie in the concept with the meeting between the band and their old death metal manager rating as one of the silliest (And funniest).

‘Metal Dilemma’, as the name suggests, is as close as the album gets to metal (Especially the ‘Heavy metal now!’ and ‘Give me one more metal yell!’ moments), while ‘Oats, Peas, Beans, & Barley’ has punk/metal written all over it.

‘Wallet Chain’ (Delivered by the classic Indian delivery postal man) is a cheap stab at punk attire, while ‘Heinous Anus’ is a disturbing side effect from nerves after being nominated for a "Granny" Award. The classic scene where Punky Brüster’s vocalist/guitarist Dr. Skinny brings home a groupie who rejects him in disgust when she finds out he is a fan of heavy metal is portrayed perfectly in ‘Heavy Metal Mama’, while ‘Crusty’s At The Ivanhoe’ sees our hero drowning his sorrows following his denied access.

Onto the "Granny" awards, introduced by Entertainment This Hour’s P.J. Littlepricky (revealing guest performances by Anne Murray and Deicide); it is soon revealed that Punky Brüster are the winners of the Lifelong Achievement Award for the best punk rock band (name checking the pioneer punk bands of 1994).

The album then ends with the band performing their most serious number, ‘Picture Of Myself’.

The hidden tracks at the end are confused on some printings of the album cover; ‘The Girls Next Door’ (A piss take of The Ramones), ‘Larry’s O’ (Nice Ministry rip off at the start, but soon moves into some more serious music) and ‘Metal Heads Are Punk Rockers’ (More tributes to The Ramones) obviously couldn’t be made to fit into the albums compact concept, but are just as worthy as tracks on their own.

'Larry's O' is also notable for the spoken commentary by Devin just before the outtro, in which he cynically explains that the entire record took "a week and a half to write, six days to record, twelve hours to mix... maybe we'll even sell a couple of copies, and I'll be able to buy a car or something...the fact that I beat you at your own game blows my mind..." before launching into a very metal-sounding breakdown and outro.

Track listing

#"Recipe for Bait"
#"Fake Punk"
#"EZ$$"
#"Metal Dilemma"
#"Oats Peas Beans & Barley"
#"Wallet Chain"
#"Heinous Anus"
#"Heavy Metal Mama"
#"Crusty's at the Ivanhoe"
#"Picture of Myself; The Girls Next Door; Larry's O"
#"Metal Heads Are Punk Rockers"

While the CD lists, "10. Picture of Myself, 11. The Girls Next Door, 12. Larry's O", these songs are one track on the album.

Album notes

*"Punky Brüster thanks: no one, we're punk so... uh... FUCK THE WORLD!! (Or something)"
*"This album is intended as a cheap stab at the morons who take this kind of shit seriously."
*"Dedicated to the collective environmental genius that is McDonald's"

Miscellanea

‘Cooked On Phonics’ managed to climb its way to number three in the Japanese charts. Because of that success, the album was never commercially available outside Japan for many years, with fears that fans of Townsend’s work wouldn’t understand the jokeFact|date=May 2008.