Richard Cheese - Sunny Side of the Moon: Best Of

The Sunny Side of the Moon: The Best of Richard Cheese isn’t so much the best of Cheese as it is a re-recording of his original (and out of print) Lounge Against the Machine along with a few smash hits like Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby’s Got Back” and Disturbed’s “Down With the Sickness,” and a few new songs, like the Ying Yang Twins’ “Badd.” However, those revamped songs from Lounge include songs like Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie,” the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right,” and “Badd” is worth the CD’s price alone. There are a few notable absences, like Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and System of a Down’s “Chop Suey,” but more importantly, this is the first Cheese album that doesn’t have any bad songs. The worst is probably Young MC’s “Bust a Move” or The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah,” but it’s hard not to admire the many different rhythms Dick finds to use in his lounge covers (i.e., swankification). The production value is also superb, which shows just how well Cheese can be when it’s so deliciously bad. The best of Cheese usually comes from his rap parodies, and Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” is about as good as it gets (though “Badd” blows it out of the water in raunchiness and its ironic clarity). But since Sunny Side has six years of albums to draw from, the final mix also illustrates how well Cheese can do from sampling songs within songs, like he does in Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls.” The in-song skits are still mostly misses, but they’re only noticeable in Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and it’s not as if he lingers on a bad joke¬—there’s too much music to parody. This sampling of Cheese also keeps the tempos mixed, showing that whether you make a song up- or down-tempo, it’s all about the execution and energy, both of which he’s got. Then again, when you croon the most venereal of lyrics, how can you not get a laugh? There’s no way material like this won’t be funny once it’s swankified and out-of-context: “I love the way she dance/she look like she fuckin’ herself/Shorty do a number/just touching herself.” Of course, Cheese is only good if you know the songs, so I’ll condense the rest of the album into this little ditty for you: Don’t be a “Creep,” you “Freak on a Leash.” When you come “Closer,” I feel like you’re going to “Rape Me” because it’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Look, I know you’re “Hot for Teacher” so why not just “Come Out and Play’? I admit: that doesn’t seem to make much sense. But this is the exception to the rule, and if you haven’t heard these songs before, The Sunny Side of the Moon is an awfully nice place to visit. [www.iloverichardcheese.com]