Tested
by Austin Nash

Lollipop, no. 36, June 1997

Sinning is a full time job. I know this from not having a job. And I sinned a lot because I had too much spare time. Now I just sin all the time that I have. Like right now. I'm listening to punk rock, Bad Religion in fact, and drinking Miller High Life out of a can, the one with the wide mouth.

It was halfway through my approximately 100,257.5th swig of beer (I'm not joking, being sober is easy, try being drunk all the time, hah!!! I thought so) that I had the Revelation that nothing is really revolutionary anymore. We humans have invented everything. Anything you think is new is just a perversion of something else when you look more closely, which is why more bands claim Bad Religion as an influence than any other band in history, except maybe the Beatles. I always thought the Beatles sucked dick (oops, a sin). I've got no soul.

When Bad Religion came on the scene and started doing what they were doing, they were really, in my asshole I mean, opinion, the first revolutionary sound since Peter Gabriel left Genesis. Those guys all know what it's like to be revolutionarys, which is why I wonder why Phil Collins doesn't listen to "Ssu-Ssu-Ssudio" over and over after rubbing shit all in his hair while watching the blade spinning on the table in the moonlight. What a fag, can you picture that? "Come on kids, give your uncle Phil a kiss." That dick ruined everything.

Bad Religion has painstakingly recorded for us, yes, you who are not worthy of the rock that rolls from the opening of this cave, a 27 cut (aggregated from roughly 1800 different takes) live album from their 1996 tour venues spanning around the globe. This album is truly LIVE. I read a painful account, the memoirs of some tech nerds, on how they placed all the mics, wasting no tracks on crowd, crap about splitting signals and mixing console's and basically, these guys got all rudimentary and righteous on us and we are now tripping through the crunchy kitchen of some Amish guy. Sheeezz.

It really is a great sounding recording, and plenty of it. If you are a follower, pick up the tail of the shroud, it's on fire.