Sicko - Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy - Green Vinyl (/250) & Green w/ Black and Yellow Splatter Vinyl (/250)

Top Drawer (2024, Reissue)

30 years after their first full length was released, Sicko is reissuing all of their albums on vinyl and CD. These boys have put out some really important records to me and over the next few Fridays I'm going to be writing about each of them (Maybe not on Black Friday, but we'll see how that goes). In the 90s, Sicko was part of my holy trinity of pop punk bands that also included The Mr. T Experience and Zoinks.  I still obsess over all three to this day.

Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy was Sicko's second album, but it is the one that was their current release when I started listening to them.  I have this oddly vivid memory of the exact moment it happened at Flipside records.  The conversation had turned to The Mr. T Experience and I was asked if I had heard Sicko.  When I said no, Alan pulled the CD out from the little mini section of new release CDs that was sort of built into the cash register area.  You had to look down at this box to see the spines.  He laid the CD on tope of the others and the cover art struck a chord in me.  After a few songs were played on the record store stereo, I went home with that CD.

That was the beginning of Sicko becoming one of my very favorite bands.  To this day, I could argue that Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy is my favorite Sicko album.  If I look at things analytically, is it their best one?  I'm not sure as you can make an awfully strong argument for either Chef or Boss as being the technically most proficient with a higher concentration of great songs per square inch.  But what those albums don't have for me is the enormous emotional pull that seems to link me to the first album that gets me into a band.  It's happened with almost every band I love, and for Sicko, this is kind of the one.

It sure doesn't hurt that the album has "Wave Motion Gun," "Mom," "Snowcone" and "Bad Year" on it, which would be tough for me to make a list of the best Sicko songs without including.  It also has a song about OJ Simpson on it, which does look a little different 29 years later, but at the time I thought was pretty amusing.

Like You Can Feel the Love in this Room, this reissue has been remastered and everything sounds better because of it.  Once again, the vocals shine on this version and makes it the definitive vinyl version to have.  It also has a bonus track, "80 Dollars."  This was originally on the split 7" with The Mr. T Experience and is another one of those songs I'd put on the Sicko Mount Rushmore.  

It's funny that for the last reissue I said it was jarring that "Pain In The Ass" was put in the middle of the record.  For this one, I actually would have preferred it if "80 Dollars" had been put on before "Weasel Of Doom/Lady '95" as it feels a little tacked on after what is an obvious album closer.  Once again we have plain colored vinyl and a splatter variant, each limited to 250 copies.  I think the plain green vinyl color is the winner again, even if maybe it doesn't pop as much in the picture.

It's hard for me to say enough good things about this album.  Not only is it a great album on its own, but it was a hugely influential one for me that opened my eyes to a band that would mean the world to me for decades after the fact.  I've always felt that you can't put a price on memories like that, but apparently if you go to the Top Drawer website now, the price appears to be $25.  A bargain.

Sicko - Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy:
https://sicko.bandcamp.com/album/laugh-while-you-can-monkey-boy-remastered