The Australian band TISM (which stands for This Is Serious Mum) played
comical dance-pop on their 26-song double-LP
Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance (1988), generally closer to
Oingo Boingo than to the
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
Their dubious sense of humor is on display in the martial synth-pop of
Defecate On My Face
(Laibach for the musichall),
but many of the jokes became rapidly outdated.
Morisson Hostel is simply eight minutes of the singer hurling insults at Jim Morrison over cacophonous guitar and bass jamming.
Anyway, this is the fun counterpart to Inxs.
Their quirky musichall matured with
the 24-song Hot Dogma (1990), where they often sound an update of
Frank Zappa to
galopping Existentialtism (perhaps their best song ever) to the macabre
Pus of the Dead and to the keyboards-driven
Let's Club It to Death (which could be a lost
J. Geils Band ditty).
Adding a more dynamic and virulent drum-machine,
Machiavelli and the Four Seasons (1995)
unleashed the clownish polka of Ol' Man River on hordes of helpless punks
while the mock-emphatic Greg The Stop Sign sounds like a preview of
Chumbawamba's Tubthumping.
The jokes are less musical on
www.tism.wanker.com (1998), whose songs rely too much on the lyrics.
Shut Up - The Footy's on the Radio,
The Men's Room and Thunderbirds Are Coming Out are third-rate
material compared with the first three albums.
The sprawling 31-song De RigueurMortis (2001) is full of brief spoken-word sections and lacks a highlight.
The best satire on their
The White Albun (2004) is The Revolution 9 parody Cerebral Knievel but the catchy ditty that became popular on alternative radio was
Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me.
