In more than 25 years of performing, Green Jelly - pronounced "Green Jello" - the comedy-punk band from Kenmore, N.Y., has angered more celebrities and corporations than a person could count with two hands.
The band has managed to rub many people, such as the Ramones, Metallica, Kraft Foods and Hanna-Barbera, the wrong way through their satirical lyrics, stage antics and long-form music videos.
Green Jelly's visit Wednesday night in Lubbock, however, went off without a hitch, and it's safe to say no one at Jake's Back Room left unhappy with the band or their tourmates.
People who arrived early were treated to the sounds of the Radioactive Chicken Heads, a nine-piece punk group from Orange County, Calif., who wear chicken masks while performing. The leader, Carrot Topp - a giant carrot wearing sunglasses - riled up the crowd with R-rated banter in between songs and vocals reminiscent of the Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra.
Rosemary's Billygoat took the stage next, and the group of metal-loving rockers sported black attire and goat horns. The leader began the act by walking around the venue on stilts and singing foreboding lyrics. Although the Billygoats displayed a darker tone than the previous band, song titles like "665 and a half" and "Pizza of Darkness" (featuring an unforgettable lyric about possessing a "Pepperoni Pentagram") kept the hilarity intact.
Headliners Green Jelly showed up in masks portraying Elmo and the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street and entertained a crowd of more than 150 people with a skit showcasing the characters participating in acts of debauchery that included sex, drugs and public intoxication.
Green Jelly began every song with a short sketch from the band's leader who donned a new outfit from various hits in the band's back catalog. Characters included Martha Stewart, the "Rockin' Rabbi," a "sacred" cow who donned a Jesus Christ robe, and caricatures of the Flintstones, which set up a Sex Pistols parody titled, "Anarchy In Bedrock."
The song "Cereal Killer" featured the now-notorious Toucan Son of Sam, a Green Jelly character that prompted legal action from the Kellogg Company in 1992. Also, the group performed a song they penned for the classic video game Maximum Carnage, and they performed "The Bear Song," a Green Jelly classic featured on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack.
The band ended the evening by inviting everyone in the crowd to wear masks and join the band on stage for its call-and-response Billboard-charting song "Three Little Pigs," arguably the Green Jelly's biggest hit.
Throughout the evening, the bands had one similarity: what they lacked in musicality they made up for in circus-freak showmanship.
A plethora of one-liners, song setups and tunes that required crowd participation kept the Back Room patrons on their feet. Green Jelly are now veterans of the comedy-punk genre, but they still know how to steal the show the same way they did in the '80s. It isn't hard to be entertained by this energetic band. All that is required for a good time at a Green Jelly show is a sense of humor (and not being an A-list celebrity).
At the end of the night, it didn't really matter if concert goers liked punk or metal; this show was not about the music, but the message. That message was delivered repeatedly throughout the night by the MC who encouraged the crowd to go to the bar.
"It's funnier when you're drunk," he said.
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