Didjits

Purveyors of revved-up, tastelessly funny trash-punk, The Didjits were an atypically straightforward part of the Touch & Go stable, as well as an utterly manic live band. Their sound was mostly speed-blur garage-band punk with a dash of Ac/dc-esque hard rock, but their true inspirations were rock & roll wildmen like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, not to mention the guitar heroics of Chuck Berry. Most Didjits albums were virtual catalogs of rock & roll sleaze and vice -- sex, booze, drugs, violence, death, Satan, and the like -- all rolled into a smart-alecky, Midwestern white-trash act. Whether he was being jokey, offensive, or just plain bizarre, lead singer/guitarist Rick Sims' sense of humor could only be described as indelicate, leading to charges of sexism and racism from journalists with little patience for tongue-in-cheek political incorrectness. In truth, they sent up white-trash culture much more than they embraced it, but did so with such gleeful immaturity and abandon that they often made things pretty convincing.

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