They Hate Us... Cuz We're Beautiful

Back in 1978, the San Francisco band Little Roger & the Goosebumps came up with the genius idea of setting the words from the Gilligan's Island TV sitcom to the music of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." It was such a perfect fit — certainly better than that silly idea of playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon alongside a screening of The Wizard of Oz — that Led Zep's lawyers quickly clamped down on the release and stopped it in its tracks; it soon disappeared forever (well, of course it has since been resurrected on the web). One web site even credits "Stairway to Gilligan" as being the first so-called "mash-up" recording, and Robert Plant has reportedly called it his favorite Zep cover, even if he was partly responsible for its demise. But that was then. Nearly three decades later, Little Roger & the Goosebumps, following a long hiatus during which the band's mainstays took on other work, returned. It would be great to say that They Hate Us Cuz We're Beautiful contains music as clever and well-executed as "Stairway," but that would be a fib. The album consists mostly of innocuous, standard-issue, lite pop/rock, often verging on the generic and sometimes falling over the edge into lounge territory. That's a shame because there is no shortage of talent in the band. Bandleader/songwriter/guitarist Roger Clark certainly knows his way around a hook, and his longtime partner in the group, strings player Dick Bright, has exercised his chops with everyone from James Brown to Ella Fitzgerald. Tommy Dunbar, who contributes guitars, keyboards, trumpet, and vocals, was a member of the excellent '70s-era Bay Area power pop band the Rubinoos. Some of the tracks here — apparently they were written over the past three decades — offer lyrical sparks ("Who Died and Made You King?," and the title track) and others present formidable performances (the a cappella "Fifteen Minutes More," "Down to Mexico"). But for the most part, They Hate Us Cuz We're Beautiful plods, never really delivering on the promise this band showed back in the days when they were getting served with injunctions