I first heard a song by Airbag accidentally. I was trying to locate an album and found myself on the website of some European Record shop, whose name escapes me. But as the site came up on the screen I got an earfull of Roswell 1947, the first song from Quien Mato a Airbag?, their 3rd album which I still have not picked up. But I was mightily impressed with their punk pop majesty.
And I like the fact that they sing in their native tongue--so many European punk bands choose to sing in English, which I guess is becoming the modern idea of having a language like Esperanto. Of course here in the Americas, maybe our Esperanto will in fact be Spanish.
But the music stuck in the back of my head someplace. Unfortunately, it seems like there are about 50 bands called Airbag. There is a Scandinavian one, and another one that appears to be an Argentinian boy band. So I was a little confused as to which one was the right one for a while. I think that I may have originally thought that these guys were Italian.
About a month ago I picked up their first record, Mondo Cretino aka "Super Jerk". It came out in 2000 on Wild Punk Records. And it does not disappoint--if there is any disappointment, it can mainly be attributed to my High School knowledge of Espanol, long lain dormant. I have to consider this to be at least a minor masterpiece in the Punk Pop canon. Sure, they doesn't sound terribly original, but they sound great.
Adolfo: Guitar and Vocals
Pepe: Bass
Jose: Drums
Mondo Cretino is a loud, fast, tuneful exposition of the Ramones style, with a fair dollop of California Sun via the Beach Boys. They even do Surfing Airbag, a surf style instrumental. Because of the vocals, in my ears they sound a bit like Indianapolis' Sloppy Seconds with the SAP button on. They need no stinking editors--only one song clocks in over tres minutos, and that's about Batman Comics, so its quite understandable.
Though some of the short tunes actually approximate the speed of hardcore, their pop sweet tooth is evident of their slightly sped-up but basically reverential cover of Don't Worry Baby by the Beach Boys. Sounds nice to me, and the song was reintroduced to me a few years ago by Alex Chilton, who performed a snippet of the song, which was placed to the end of the Ardent Records anthology which came out a few years ago. Ran shivers up my spine.
Album starts with a classic song, Marta no es una Punk, which is right out of the Ramone songbook ala Sheena is...., and you get an idea of what these guys are about. I hear that like a lot of bands, their more recent material has shifted more to pop end of Pop Punk, but for me that's really conjecture, as this is the only album I've heard.
I definitely recommend Mondo Cretino for its energy, and hearing Punk Rock sung in Spanish is pretty cool for me. This album seems to be the easiest one to get a hold of these days in disc form (though and odds and sods record of theirs came out recently Versiones and Rarezas), but as far as mp3's are concerned getting their music probably isn't so tough at all now. So if you like what you hear, give these punks a shot.
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