Review: The Vapids – “Charm School Dropouts”

Mom’s Basement Records/Surfin’ Ki Records, 18 September, 2020

The Vapids dig into the buzzing Ramones pop punk thing, holding tight to their punk rock bonafides on the repress of 2001’s Charm School Dropouts.

Charm School Dropouts is The Vapids doing some of their best work.  These Canadians avoid nuance like the plague, digging deep into driving tough Ramones-indebted punk rock.  And on Dropouts, The Vapids decide to just blow everybody up with some blistering punk rock.

The songs on Charm School Dropouts don’t need a lot of words to describe them.  It’s pretty much no frills punk rock.  There are no attempts at nuance and there are no experiments.  The Vapids mission statement on Dropouts is simple: keep the guitars set to buzzsaw, the drums driving, the bass pulverizing, and the vocals sort of melodic but tough.  My favorites of the bunch also work in some memorable hooks along the way.  “The Bad Lieutenants” is probably my favorite.  It messes around with a great Ramones riff and does a fun spell-out section calling out Johnny Terrien (of Johnny Terrien and the Bad Lieutenants, an Ontario-based band).  “In For The Kill” does a bunch of downstroking with fast chord changes at the end of each verse section while singing catchy (and creepy) sniper fantasy lyrics.  “Monkey Beach” opens with a guitar that seems ripped from “Glad To See You Go” and does some more quick-change riffs that provide the goods while “Tommy Ramone” gets even more obvious in the Ramones-aping (check the name), with a sort of biographical storytelling of Tommy’s life growing up in Forest Hills/Queens.  And “Satellite Debris” does the quick-change guitar riff thing that destroys everything in its path and ends up feeling like another fierce Ramones song.    

Another Dropouts favorite, “Product Of Your Family”, has some hooks that remind me of HEAD’s “Always Know Your Enemies (Better Than Your Friends)” (or, since “Product” came first, maybe I should say the HEAD song reminds me of this one).  Anyway, the song has a really fast intro and outro while going a little more mid-tempo in-between, and it’s really cool.  “Pocket Full Of Nails” also has the same HEAD connection with some thundering tom rolls that demolish the intro tossed in for good measure.  And “When The Lights Are Out” kicks off with an awesome rhythm to start and one of my favorite riffs on the record, ascending and going way high on the bridge, pairing it all with some more menacing and murderous words.  It’s song after song of pure punk rock, and it hits right with me.   

The Vapids Charm School Dropouts isn’t into any kind of compromised pop punk.  This record is pretty tough and punk with enough hooks and melodies to bring me back for more.  The Vapids just want to kick out the jams, and on Dropouts, they do just that.  This is a good choice to go revisit. 

Favorite song: “The Bad Lieutenants”

Favorite moment: the outro of “Product of Your Family”

Favorite whatever else: I love the biographical “Tommy Ramone”