A few years ago, there was a show on VH1 called "When _ Ruled the World."  It was a pretty good show, as every episode featured stories, interviews and footage about a band or some other pop-culture phenomenon during their respective peak years.  As a longtime Kiss fan, "When Kiss Ruled the World" stands out in my mind as one of the better episodes in the series.  Back in the mid to late 1990s one of my favorite bands was a Chicago-area act called The New Duncan Imperials and for a while there, NDI really ruled the world as far as I was concerned.  I guess a lot of cool stuff comes out of Chicago.Around 1994 or so, NDI videos were in heavy rotation on our local cable access channel.  Some of the guys at the station were big fans of NDI and at one point, NDI even played a huge, three-hour extravaganza concert that was broadcast live from the Miami Valley Cable Council studios.  To this day, that show is pretty much the best thing I have ever seen on public access television.


Clips from NDI's Video Trash
including the full video
for "Motel 666"
NDI had a decent following in Dayton some years ago and Gem City Records used to keep their stuff in stock so it was easy to buy their full-length CDs .  They played quite a few dates in eastern Indiana and western Ohio area back in the 1990s.  I saw them live for the first time at Canal Street in Dayton in the summer of 1994 (I think) and Thomai and I caught them at shows in Dayton, Columbus, and Indianapolis over the years that followed. Once, we even drove from Dayton to Broadripple and back in one night just to catch NDI.  They were touring with Mojo Nixon at the time and we even managed to get a spot in the front row for the entire NDI set. Pigtail Dick signed my Harmony Les Paul before the show that night.  Unfortunately, all I had with me was a very old purple Sharpie and the ink has long since worn off the guitar.  I had the same guitar autographed by all the Melvins in 1995, which is a tale for another day.  Hopefully I can get Pigtail Dick (or maybe even the whole NDI crew) to sign the guitar again someday.

There is really nothing like a New Duncan Imperials show.  It's a high-impact act with all kinds of visual stimuli to accompany all the great music.  There's all kinds of props and effects and some of them – like the mechanical "Velourabeast" head – are there to help tell a story, while other things – like the leaf blower that's been converted into a giant toilet paper streamer gun –  are just part of the show because they're flat out hilarious.  Plus, there's always all kinds of giveaways at the shows (the band and fans alike lovingly call this stuff "free shit") including stuff like, matches, frisbees and t-shirts.  The interaction between the band and the crowd is really the cornerstone of the NDI live show experience.  I have seen Pigtail play wailing guitar solos while standing on the tables at Canal Street and I remember standing under Goodtime as he bodysurfed over the crowd at the Broadripple show.  Those things are really, really good memories for us.

NDI has always been about much more than funny lyrics and catchy songs.  There is some fantastic musicianship in their work.  Pigtail Dick is fantastic with singing and all sorts of crazy on-stage theatrics and he is an accomplished guitarist as well.  Truth be told, he's really one of my favorite guitarists of all time.  His licks are some of the most intense and blistering pieces imaginable, effectively fusing old-school country western influences with blues and punk.  And nobody plays a riff like Pigtail.  Skipper is just a terrific bassist and he's extremely witty and talented on the mic as well and once in a while he breaks out a kind of unusual instrument called an "oral piano" (that's what it's called on the CD liner notes, anyway.)  All the proof you need about Goodtime's drumming abilities lies in the fact that his drum kit is basically three pieces – unless you count the gigantic kettle drum, of course.  The fact the GT gets such a massive, Tommy Lee/Eric Carr quality sound out of such a small kit speaks volumes about his work as a performer.  
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Cover art for my mix CD
When NDI Ruled the World


When I heard NDI released a new album called End of Phase One and that they are preparing to launch a tour celebrating their twenty year anniversary, I pulled together my entire collection of NDI CDs, tapes, vinyl and video tapes and decided it would be as good of a time as any to create the ultimate NDI mix CD.  It took me a really long time to pick all my favorites and pare them down to fit on one CD, but I finally settled on a decent mix of my favorites from their major releases while also including some obscure gems from EPs, singles and videos.   I call my mix CD When NDI Ruled the World and I think the selections in the mix show why NDI was such a big deal to me all those years ago and why I still love to listen to them today.  My cover art for the CD features the members of NDI standing in the forefront of K. Yuon's painting A New Planet.

Here's the track listing, with a bit of info about the songs:

1.  Motel 666
2.  Pensacola 99  from the album Hanky Panky Parley Voo!
Released back in 1990, Hanky Panky was NDI's first full-length album. I can't say for sure if this was the first NDI album that I ever bought, but I do know that the video for "Motel 666" was the first NDI song/video I ever encountered.  The song is quirky and heavy at the same time and the video really captures that.  "Pensacola 99" has all the elements of an NDI classic, including some raunchy lyrics, a memorable riff and wailing guitar.

3.  Feelin' Sexy from the Feelin' Sexy EP
The Feelin' Sexy EP was NDI's first actual record and it was released in 1990 before Hanky Panky.  I absolutely love this tune and I picked the EP version over the Hank Panky version because of the EP version features an absolutely blistering guitar solo.

4.  Rockin' Daddy from Video Trash
I'm not really sure if the title of this song is really "Rockin' Daddy," but the words feature prominently in the chorus.  This is a really unusual live performance NDI did for a local news station in Canada.  Check out that "oral piano" I mentioned above because Skipper plays it in this song.

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The Hymns of Bucksnort
5.  Got Our Shit Together
6. Pitch A Fit  from the album Hymns of Bucksnort
The 1991 album Hymns of Bucksnort is my all-time favorite NDI album.  "Got Our Shit Together" is kind of like the a ridiculous anthem for overconfident people.  "Pitch a Fit" is a song that NDI opened with now and then during some of the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas shows, but the best thing about this version is that they play a low-volume rendition of the entire theme from "What's Happening!!" (one of my favorite TV sitcoms ever) at the end of the song.  It's played on either an accordion or that oral piano-thing with an "a cappella" bass line.  Sweet.

7.  Waste Your Time
8.  The Freshman 15  from the album Sticky
The 2000 double CD Sticky has a really different sound from a lot of the older NDI albums and the evolution and improvement of both their skills and their production is really evident through and through on the entire album.  "Waste Your Time" is a song I would definitely want to cover if I had a band of my own.

9.  Overserved (Danny Bonaduce Show)  from the album Fried
I think the Fried collection of B-sides and oddities was released in the late 1990s and I am guessing this track was cut in 1995 or so.  It doesn't get any weirder than having NDI perform a live acoustic set with Danny Bonnaduce playing rhythm guitar while Skipper yells out the chords for him.

10. Lenkkimakkaraa!  from the album The Best of Mikhael Jackson
The Best of Mikhael Jackson was released in 1993 and it's a "greatest hits" of sorts that features a couple of rare and previously unreleased tracks.  This song was supposedly written after NDI's huge tour of Finland (no joke!) in honor of some kind of Finnish sausage-related delicacy.

11. Good Men Are Pukin'  from the album Live, Rare and Bad
Live, Rare and Bad is a 1992 collection of B-tracks, commercials, live stuff and other odds and ends.  "Good Men Are Pukin'" is a straight-up classic, especially because you can hear Pigtail shouting out instructions to Skipper about his effects pedals before and after the main solo.

12. Female Voodoo
13. Can't Hardly Wait  from the album Fried
More terrific rare tracks from Fried.  The live version of "Female Voodoo" is one of my favorite Pigtail Dick solos.  It's got an Ace Frehley kind of simplicity about it in that there aren't many notes, but the playing is just absolutely fierce.

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Back cover for the
Queen of Venus
single
14. Dollywood  from the Queen of Venus 7" single
A truly weird song from 1992.  Every time I finish listening to it, I want to immediately play it again.  We took a trip to Gatlinburg in 1999 and I couldn't get the song out of my head the whole time we were there.


15. Tilt-a-Whirl  from the album Loserville
Tilta-whirl kicks off the 1993 album Loserville, but NDI used to close shows with this song and absolutely tear the house down.  I love the guitar effects for the solo -- heavy fuzz, a wha-wah pedal and maybe some kind of flanger-like effect going on there.

16. I'm Your Boogieman  from the album Fried
K.C. and the Sunshine Band's material sounds much better when it's NDI playing the stuff.

17. Queen Of Venus
18. Fan It And Cool It  from the album Loserville
"Queen of Venus" is probably what you would have gotten if H.G. Wells had written some songs for the Guess Who.  "Fan It and Cool It" is a great sing-along song.

19. Power Tool  from the album Sticky
In one of the radio interview clips on Live, Rare and Bad, Pigtail tells a DJ, "There are worse things that you can call us besides 'riff rock'...but not many worse things."  Here's one of the most tremendous NDI riffs ever.  And it just keeps going and going and going...

20. I Never Got Anything Off Of You from the album End of Phase One
End of Phase One is NDI's most recent album, released just this year.  "I Never Got Anything Off Of You" features a driving riff that is reminiscent of another great song  from Fried, "Takin Out the Trash."

21. "Oh My God We're Fucking!"  from the single Oh My God We're Fucking!
Not sure of the release date of this single, but I'm guessing it was 1996 or 1997.  One of the funniest NDI songs ever.  It's even better when it's performed live and you don't have a clue of the premise of the song until the first chorus hits.  Hilarious.

22. Driving Nails In My Coffin
23. If She Wasn't On Blocks  from the album The New Duncan Imperials Live
One time I called into Gary Burbank's awful "Stump the Band" radio show and I stayed on hold for over half an hour hoping to get his in-studio to play "If She Wasn't On Blocks" on the air.  then the show ended and they hung up before they got to me.  In my book, that's compelling evidence that Burbank's show absolutely sucked.

24. It's Popular  from the album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas
"It ain't good, it ain't bad, it's popular."  It's funny because it's true.  In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas was released in 1995.

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We're in a Band! (EP)
25. We're An American Band  from the album We're in a Band!
One of the best ideas for a concept album ever.  We're in a Band was NDI's 1994 EP that featured five cover songs and all of them had the word "band" in the title.  "We're an American Band" was another of NDI's encore tunes from their live shows and I remember that they closed the first show I ever attended with this song.
 
26. Jägermeister  performed live at the Miami Valley Cable Council Studios
This is hands down my favorite NDI performance ever.  It's a massive, in-your-face encore from their epic set at the MVCC studios back in 1994 or 1995.  It's just a phenomenal ending  to any NDI set, complete with a dazzling guitar solo and an hilarious Pigtail Dick story that goes absolutely nowhere.  Burning this audio to CD from my old, grainy VHS copy was a blast.  I had to get a little creative in my efforts to remove some of noise from the aging video tape, but then again, if I cleaned it up too much then it wouldn't be nearly as cool

Happy 20th anniversary, NDI!