The Gynecologists

 
 
 

UNDER APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR JUNE 2016:  THE GYNECOLOGISTS 
 
 
 
The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2016 is THE GYNECOLOGISTS, a truly wild, truly outrageous punk rock band from Indiana whose bandleader Tommy Afterbirth “came up with the idea of recording and pressing the vilest gross-out novelty record EVER”. Which of their 30-some songs he meant is difficult to know for certain – probably it was the one about The Brady Bunch that he was already working on, “Sex Orgy with the Bradee Bunch” (the misspelled name was probably used to avoid potential lawsuits). The boys used the record label name Vomit Productions for their first release, where the front cover included a photo of Tommy Afterbirth’s own dog’s poop.
The best info on the band comes from the voluminous liner notes written by John Barge for the compilation CD, Hoosier Psychopaths (2007); Barge had been in a punk rock band called the Panics. The original version of the liner notes – including the quote given above – appears on a website on Indiana music called www.musicalfamilytree.net .
 
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Even by punk rock standards, the bandmembers’ names in the Gynecologists were inventive: bandleader and chief songwriter Tommy Afterbirth (lead vocals), John Wilkes Booth (keyboard player turned guitarist), Simon Scrotum (bass guitar – he was also an insurance salesman), and Milburn Drysdale (drums). Milburn Drysdale (played by Raymond Bailey) was the banker who lived next door to The Beverly Hillbillies family; in this classic sitcom that was filled to the brim with colorful characters, he was probably my favorite of them all. By the time that their 1984 release, A Goat . . . You Geek came out, the new bass guitarist named Kid Death (who is from Oregon) had improved their sound as a “a much more straight forward kick ass punk rock band”, as John Barge put it.
 
As far as I can tell, they only ever took one photograph of the Gynecologists; it is immediately identifiable from the stovepipe hat worn and the electric guitar held by the namesake of the real John Wilkes Booth who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Its first appearance was on the back cover of their debut release, Feces and Psychopaths, where the bandleader Tommy Afterbirth had the appellation “M.D.”.
 
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Tommy Afterbirth is credited with all of the deranged lyrics on the songs by the Gynecologists. Their cheesy covers of hit songs like “Brandy”, “Shape of Things to Come”, “We’re an American Band”, and “Ride Captain Ride” also suit their gonzo style; another song that they recorded was a 1973 hit by Bobby Womack called “Across 110th Street”.
 
Mostly, the Gynecologists mined pop culture – “Aunt Bee” (a character on The Andy Griffith Show), “M.A.S.H.E.R” (based on the long-running sitcom, M*A*S*H), “Love and Haight” (a reference to the center of hippiedom in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco) – news stories – “McMartin Preschool”, “Kent State” – and bodily functions – “Bloody Kotex”, “Gotta Piss”, “Peanut Butter Prophylactic” – as the subjects of their songs. The “Psychopaths” side of their first release, an EP called Feces and Psychopaths (1981) includes songs about Rev. Jim Jones (who was also from Indiana) called “Jimmy Jonesand the child-killing mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, “John Wayne Gacy”. Another song, “Dahmer’s Diner” refers to the cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
 
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The Gynecologists are probably best known for Sex Orgy with the Bradee Bunch; I have a vague recollection of having heard the song previously, though I have no idea where. The Brady Bunch has an unusual premise for a sitcom: A man with three sons marries a woman with three daughters. I don’t know whether this was intended originally, but the males and females are not related to each other, so it wouldn’t really be incest for any of them to have sex with each other – not even within the context of the show, never mind in real life. Wikipedia never brings it up, but this was a definite undercurrent in the show that was on a lot of (dirty) minds. As notoriously randy as actors and actresses are, it is not surprising that plenty of rumors and scandals have seen the light of day.
 
Suffice it to say that everyone in the sitcom seems to put in an appearance – even the family dog. One girl’s best friend is her vibrator, one of the boys is a chronic masturbator; that’ll give you an idea of how the song goes. The song starts with a flushing toilet to boot.
 
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Song lyrics are hard to come by on the Internet for songs by the Gynecologists, and what is being sung is usually hard to understand. John Barge quotes some of the song lyrics in his liner notes. For instance, “Ron and Nancy” imagines sexual antics not far removed from those envisioned in Sex Orgy with the Bradee Bunch: “Even Ed Meese got a piece!” In Kent State, Tommy Afterbirth sings: “Those traitors don’t even deserve a decent burial.” As Barge puts it: “Those who seek succor from politically correct song lyrics will find little sustenance here.”
 
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Most of the lyrics for one of their songs, “Infant Doe” are printed on the album cover of Bukkake Hit Parade. The story is of the tragic end of a deformed baby and is probably something that was in the newspaper. Infant Doe was performed straight, though in their inimitable style, and shows that the Gynecologists had heart. The song is included on a compilation album called The Master Tape, Vol. 2.
 
Born with Down Syndrome 
His parents wouldn’t take him home
They didn’t buy him a casket 
They threw him in a cardboard box (the song actually says a “Hefty bag”)
He was anonymous 
He had no esophagus 
He’s infant Doe
 
A subtext in a lot of punk rock music is the idea of being at the mercy of forces beyond your control, even from the beginning of life. This is particularly true of the legendary public-access program, New Wave Theatre that was a Los Angeles punk-rock showcase and so much more. In a future post, I will give a tribute to this show; thus far, I have not really done justice to New Wave Theatre and their host Peter Ivers (who wound up being murdered in a case that has not been solved to this day).
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As taken from the John Barge liner notes about the Gynecologists: “The story begins in a small unnamed redneck town south of Indianapolis where Tommy [Afterbirth] grew up. Tommy’s gateway drug to punk rock was his father’s drive-in movie theater, which, along with such prosaic family fare like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, thrilled the local yahoos with garish horror films and cheap psychedelic biker flicks during the sixties. From this Tommy learned to love the seedy underbelly of pop culture with a fixation that bordered on compulsive.”
 
Tommy Afterbirth has some notable milestones in his life besides the Gynecologists. He was quite the athlete in his younger days; he competed in a statewide basketball free-throw shooting contest, finishing in second place. The winner of that contest, Steve Alford is a true basketball legend who led the Indiana University Hoosiers to the 1987 national championship and was the school’s all-time leading scorer at the time. Alford currently serves as the coach of the UCLA Bruins, the position previously held by one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, John Wooden.
 
Tommy Afterbirth also has an entrepreneurial spirit; while he was still in high school, he started a record store. He recruited the other bandmembers in the Gynecologists from a local heavy metal band called Stone Edge; they were mostly a covers band but had one original song to their credit, a put-down number called “Dog Face” that was included on the first release by the Gynecologists. Tommy even convinced a local minister to loan them a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a synthesizer for their first recording sessions.
 
Tommy Afterbirth has surprising connections to the Republican Party and actually served as an official delegate to the 1976 and 1980 Republican National Conventions. Although he and his family were on the receiving end of some of his band’s songs – such as Ron and Nancy, “Young Ron” and “Nancy Reagan on Crack” – Tommy Afterbirth boasted of having shaken hands with future President Ronald Reagan on two occasions; and, while at the 1976 Republican National Convention, he bought a beer for future President George H. W. Bush. The name of their third release, Kinder, Gentler Nation (1989) is taken from Bush’s acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention. For one album cover, they even went so far as to paste Nancy Reagan’s head on . . . oh, never mind. Then again, their feelings about the other party are apparent in their song, “Democrats Suck Donkey Dicks”.
 
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The most comprehensive compilation album of the Gynecologists, a CD called Hoosier Psychopaths on Gulcher Records, has 30 songs, including each of their recordings in order; besides the two I have already discussed, they include two cassette-only releases, A Goat . . . You Geek (1984) and Auto-Erotica Asphyxia & Various Moldy Turds (1994). According to John Barge, their latter album included a host of other guest musicians and characters: Dave Death, Bob Tangleweed, Lumpy Repellant, Kevin Drake, Buster Hyman, and Frankie Camaro. (The Bukkake Hit Parade liner notes have several other “special guests” in their list: Ricky Retardo, Mrs. Food, Bejhan Mirhadi, and Tina Chang). There are also a half-dozen unreleased rarities on Hoosier Psychopaths; three show two titles, so there might be nine actually.
 
The vinyl album by the Gynecologists that I have, Bukkake Hit Parade (2002) – “bukkake” is a term used in Japanese pornography that is appropriate, but I will let you look it up if you wish – has a different name for the drummer, Pippy Longstocking. (Pippi Longstocking is a popular character in children’s literature having unusual pigtails who was created by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren). Despite the apparently comprehensive Hoosier Psychopaths, and unless some of their songs have multiple titles, the 13 cuts on Bukkake Hit Parade include more than a few songs that aren’t on the CD: Nancy Reagan on Crack, M.A.S.H.E.R, Dahmer’s Diner, Across 110th Street, and “Sally Struthers’ Tears”.
 
The omission of Sally Struthers’ Tears is particularly surprising, since it is one of my favorites by the Gynecologists (along with Across 110th Street). After her run on All in the Family, Sally Struthers made a series of commercials for the Christian Children’s Fund charity where she would often be shown crying. Despite the mercilessly mocking tone of the song, Tommy Afterbirth manages to capture the way she would plead for help for these children at a cost of “pennies a day”.
 
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Bukkake Hit Parade by the Gynecologists is on an Italian label called Rave Up Records; the album is Volume 26 in a long series called American Lost Punk Rock Nuggets that was started in 1999. The Discogs website shows the full list of 79 albums, including 3 that were released in 2015; I guess there are even more to come.
 
There are songs by the Gynecologists on albums in two long-running punk-rock compilation album series: Killed by Death #18 (Sex Orgy with the Bradee Bunch) and Bloodstains Across the Midwest (“Gym Gerard”, based on a TV personality), with the cover of the latter album having a crude drawing of the famous photograph from the 1970 Kent State University shootings.
 
(June 2016)
 
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
 
 
(Year 7 Review)
Last edited: April 8, 2021