Tu-plang

''Tu-Plang'' (ตู้เพลง Thai for ''Jukebox'') is the debut studio album released by Australian rock band Regurgitator. It was released in Australia in May 1996, where it sold well despite receiving little radio airplay.https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/90s/1996/BB-1996-06-22.pdf It was later released in the United States on April 22, 1997.

At the ARIA Music Awards of 1996, the album won two awards; Best Alternative Album and Breakthrough Artist - Album. In 2012, Regurgitator performed the entire album along with ''Unit'' on the Australian RetroTech tour.

Background and recording

After making two EPs, the band chose to record the album in Bangkok, Thailand, to the quandary of its label, Warner Music, which was uncertain as to what terms A&R executive Michael Parisi had contracted."Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden" by Andrew Stafford, Published by University of Queensland Press, 2004, p.28

/ref> Ely later said, "We didn't want to do it in just any old place, so we had a tour in Europe and Japan booked and our drummer Martin said, 'let's stop in Thailand on the way and check out some studios,' so we did and we found this place."

Producer Magoo (Australian producer), Magoo later said the studio, "was wned bythis guy ho was in the bandCarabao. He was described to us as the local, Thai, Bruce Springsteen. He had this compound in outer Bangkok. We'd drive there and it's in the middle of all these slums. There were wild chickens running around everywhere. There were open sewers and stuff like that."

Lyrics and musical style

In a September 1997 review of ''Tu-Plang'', Alex Steininger of American site ''In Music We Trust'' described Regurgitator as being Australia's answer to the Bloodhound Gang, who are known for their comedy rap rock style. He said, "from offensive lyrics to funny lyrics, it's all covered here". Others have also compared the album to the band Ween, due to its variety of styles. The album has elements of funk metal/rap metal, cocktail music, dance, dub, Indigenous Thai music, industrial music, hip hop, Muzak, pop rock, punk, surf rock, turntablism and spaghetti western music.

Song information

* "G7 Dick Electro Boogie" contains samples of street sounds in Bangkok. Yeomans later said, "I think this song small claim to fame is attributed to the 'gang-rape a cripple' line nicely taken out of context by a few bored conservative factions floating around at the time."
* Track 4 is a Muzak version of "Couldn't Do It" off the band's first self-titled EP.
* "Blubber Boy" is an up-tempo version of " Blubber Boy" off the band's second EP, ''New''.

Touring and promotion

They toured with a wide range of bands around the album's release, including thrash metal bands and indie bands. During 1996, they also opened in Australia for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, where bassist Benjamin Ely comically wore a dress. They followed the Red Hot Chili Peppers shows by touring with Japanese avant-garde band Boredoms.https://www.regurgitator.net/bio They then did their first U.S. tour as guests of God Lives Underwater, followed by a Japan/Australian tour with New York band CIV. Frontman Quan Yeomans refused to tour the United States more than three weeks at a time, which led their American distributor Reprise to quickly lose interest in ''Tu-Plang'' following its April 1997 U.S. release. In addition to being released in the U.S., the album was also released in Japan around this time.

Reception

In 1997, ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' described the album as, "an album that leapt from rock to rap, from fun to funk, from thrash to surf rock (a la Dick Dale), and it did nothing less than announce the arrival of the most significant band in Australia today. More successfully than any of their peers, Regurgitator showed they were committed to pushing the boundaries of contemporary music through their marriage of technology and pop." ''The Age'' said in 1996 that the album "at times resembles a net surfer's wet dream, skipping from one style to another, sometimes mid-song," and noted Yeomans' sardonic lyrics. They later voted ''Tu-Plang'' as one of the greatest albums from the first 50 years of Australian music. In 2018, Australia's ABC referred to ''Tu-Plang'' as "the peak of weird in Australian music".https://www.abc.net.au/listen/doublej/music-reads/features/how-the-90s-was-a-good-time-for-weird-music/10317204

Less flatteringly, AllMusic said the album was, "an utterly misbegotten funk-rap-metal fusion which, much as the band's name implies, offers merely another rehash of the usual genre fare." The song "Pop Porn" was singled out for being, "so overboard in attacking rap misogyny that it reaches levels of offensiveness beyond anything actually in the true hip-hop canon."

Track listing

# " I Sucked a Lot of Cock to Get Where I Am" (Q. Yeomans)
# " Kong Foo Sing" (Q. Yeomans)
# "G7 Dick Electro Boogie" (Q. Yeomans)
# "Couldn't Do It" (Happy Shopper Mix)" (B. Ely)
# " Miffy's Simplicity" (Q. Yeomans)
# "Social Disaster" (Q. Yeomans)
# "Music is Sport" (Q. Yeomans)
# "348 Hz" (B. Ely)
# "Mañana" (B. Ely)
# " F.S.O." (Q. Yeomans)
# "Pop Porn" (Q. Yeomans)
# "Young Bodies Heal Quickly" (Q. Yeomans)
# " Blubber Boy" (Riding the Wave of Fashion Mix) (Q. Yeomans)
# "Doorselfin" (B. Ely)

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Release history

References

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ARIA Award–winning albums
Regurgitator albums
1996 debut albums
East West Records albums
Reprise Records albums