Now this, kids, is Lo-Fi. This is the punk stank that the little anime girl trying to study hears through her walls, late on a Friday night — or let’s face it, it’s probably a Wednesday pre-gaming sesh.
Of course, you’ve gotta open an album with a little arty noise intro to let people know that you’re serious as fuck. Pearl Jam did it in Ten and Vs., so this is our homage. With a cassette four-track, you are using the two stereo tracks of both sides of the tape at the same time. Side A: left and right; Side B: right and left. You flip the tape, then everything’s backwards. That’s what I did here for the center track.
Flip it. Record some e-bow noodling. Flip it back the right way. Boom! Spooky shit.
Listening to the opening lyrics, you can probably guess where the inspiration for this song came from...
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / It’s waxed meat, it’s inedible / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Eat your beef candle, it’s not a vegetable
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a mad cow, now snap into it / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a beef nazi, I got your kosher Right Here
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / After Armageddon, what will the cockroaches eat? / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Won’t be in a can, it’ll be waxed meat
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a mad cow, now snap into it / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a beef nazi, I got your kosher Right Here
Oh Beef Candle, you’re so sexy / You make me so hot / Oh Beef Candle, you’re so big
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a mad cow, now snap into it / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a beef nazi, I got your kosher Right Here
Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a mad cow, now snap into it / Beef Candle, Beef Candle / Was a beef nazi, I got your kosher Right Here
1997: personally at the time, I had never had a Slim Jim — a streak I’ve continued to this day — but the ubiquitous commercials featuring “Macho Man” Randy Savage made everyone aware of the existence of this heavily processed snack food. Someone remarked that they looked like they were made of wax. It’s not hard to thread that needle of where to lyrically go from there. Although I used the phrase “waxed meat” twice, which is just lazy song writing.
The bass riff was just something Harry kept playing over and over, and we turned it into the song. Being novices at our respective instruments, that bass line was a revelation of simplicity held within the constraints of ability. From there we all followed along and threw in our own goofy whims.
“Beef Candle.” Beef comes from cows. Let’s make a sort of “moo” sound with the guitar. The foodstuff — more stuff than food, probably on the molecular level — has a very phallic shape, and since this was rock & roll, I felt my high school virgin-ass had to give tribute to the rawk gods and their sensual origins from rocking and rolling cars, hence the spoken word bridge we credited to “Scarlet Fever.”
She was a friend of ours in school with red hair. Lived down the street from where my mom lived — where we had a lot of our band practices, and where we were recording on my 4 track. At the time, she was dating the guy who would become our rhythm guitarist in the future, taking over my duties after promoting myself due to the departure of the lead guitarist featured on these recordings.
I don’t think I wrote out what I wanted her to say, except she had to say “Beef Candle, you’re so big.” There wasn’t anything prurient in our intentions with the obligatory 90s spoken-word interlude, it was purely driven by comedy, not hormones. Perhaps a nod to “Rocket Queen” due to our friend John being a Guns ‘N Roses fan — he did come up with the name for a band, after all.
I can’t remember if I exactly replicated the words when we played it live, or if I did the Jim Morrison Oedipus thing. But every time I listen to that part it always makes me laugh. It’s so stupid.
Once we got old enough to start drinking and playing in bars, we began to feel a little silly playing this song in front of other adults and other bands that were very serious about the whole Music Thing.
And we had serious moments to us. We weren’t a comedy band. We were all friends that passed a lot of our time together trying to make each other laugh. It was fun to play music, so why not have some fun songs, you know? I mean, lots of our influences had their own fuck-around songs where they were having fun, too.
One aspect of humor in the 90s, of course, was trying to shock people. The words “beef nazi” are just nonsense and not offensive at all by themselves — the word “nazi” does have a totemic weight to it that perks your ears when you hear it.
I mean, after that dipshit decided to try to sneak a fucking Sieg Heil into Trump’s inauguration, there have been copycats thinking they’re goddamn hilarious out there, doing that shit in public.
Fuck ALL nazis! That’s why “I got your kosher right here.” You know... Here... My dick. Beef Candle. Slim Jim’s are not kosher, by the way, that’s why nazis are free to choke on either one...
As an opening track thesis statement, it’s a driving song. Far from being a peak where it’s downhill from there, and not a valley that we’ll have to fight to get everyone back up the hill for. It’s not one of the “singles” — one of our more poppy songs that we would end up playing for the lifespan of the band.
You save that for your second track.
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