The Split Knee Loons - Loon Knee Tunes (2023)

When the cat's away the mice will play, but few rodents ever amused themselves with the kind of surreal and silly antics that the Split Knee Loons did in kitty's absence. The cat involved here was Ian Gillan, and Loon Knee Tunes collects up the craziness that the rest of the Gillan band got up to when his back was turned. The Loons released a sole 45 in their day, a four-song EP available only through the Gillan fan club. It's included here in its entirety along with 16 other hilarious sweepings off the floor that presumably comprise every salvageable recording the Gillan members' alter egos made. Needless to say, the Loons were not a serious project, but a decidedly comic one whose laugh-out-loud faux history is told in the enclosed booklet. The music reaches the giddy heights and deep abyss of the absurd, as the Loons meander madly through genres, spoofing as they go. You name it, the Loons try it on, a Gilbert & Sullivan-fashioned operetta, a fairground circus, barbershop quartet, supper-club jazz, funky disco, ragtime, R&B, and, of course, some truly mind-bending metal. Samson gets a pasting, as does the Gillan band itself, with covers of the theme to The Third Man, a ragtime version of "Dixie," a loony tune take on "Let's Dance," and a string-drenched "Runaway" taking the group to new comic lows, the vocal on the latter delivered by what sounds like a clucking chicken. The originals are even more surreal. A barbershop quartet laments the lack of business; "Ooh! You Make Me Dork" screeches the frontman of a ridiculously over the top metal group; "I've got scars," a Mark E. Smith sound-alike boasts over swirling synths; and by the time "The Vikings Salute" themselves with a yodeling chorus over a reggae rhythm, listeners' heads will be spinning...if they haven't already exploded. Good for a laugh, but few beyond hardcore fans will want to put themselves through this comic wringer more than once or twice.

Review by Jo-Ann Greene