Exclusive: Singles – Citizen Dick – Smarter Than You Review

Have you ever wondered what the full review of Citizen Dick’s album said? Jeff was trying to spare Cliff’s feeling, but we won’t. We keep things going for Singles Week with the full review!!

CITIZEN DICK
Smarter Than You (LP)
Real Clever Records

Once again, when the Cliff Poncier begins swinging… you know what you’re in for. More pompous, dick-swinging swill from a man who has haunted the local scene for much too long. You wish that Cliff would move to another town, like Minneapolis or Los Angeles or New York. A town where he could disappear into the masses and not stand out like the relentlessly mediocre talent that he is.

Mediocre? Well, that’s probably a rather kind term for the kind of music that Poncier’s new band purports to play. This is Seattle grunge rock at its predictable and painful best/worst. Slashing guitars mesh with sonically ‘treated’ vocals to create a kind of desperate preening, prodding and chugging mess. Mark Arm probably dreams about music like this, and then wakes up grateful. In fact, Citizen Dick makes groups like Gruntruck and Sadhappy sound like geniuses.

The very cover of this album makes me want to piss blood. There is Poncier, his arms spread like a scabarous messiah, begging to be appreciated. I remember when Poncier met my sister at the Central one night. He called her answering machine for a month straight, leaving yearning and dull-minded, semi-pornographic messages of love. And my sister is not good-looking. It makes you wonder about Poincier, and it makes me wonder about me. Why my life has come to this. Reviewing the music of a puss-faced immature pussy hound with a fake wig for hair.

And that’s me being kind.

This music makes me ill. This music makes me bored. This music makes me… get up and walk around and wonder about the state of oil in this country that it can be wasted producing vinyl that masquerades as the newest aural offering from the Dickster himself… Cliff Poncier. It’s a waste of cardboard too. The cover, designed by Poncier, revels in all things Cliff. Which is to say, it blows.

I remember his last band, the heavy metal ‘poseur’ band, Poncier. I went to see Iggy Pop play at the Paramount and somehow they had hoodwinked themselves onto the bill. They played three songs in the same key, with Cliff standing out front in ripped jeans, saying the same thing in between each verse.

“Love me.”

Cliff, if you are reading this review… go no father before realizing one thing. You are talentless, and this is a very bad review. Ooops. That’s two things.

Then there’s the music on this penile piece of poop. The LP begins with “Mist of Pain,” a song that reminds me of the sheen covering me right now. Check out these lyrics.

Feel the rain
Dig my pain
Grieve
Grieve
Grieve for me
Mist of pain.

The music is a monotonous ringing blast of slashing goo. And it rolls right into the next piece of shit song. It’s called “Stomach of Chaos,” a tune during which Poncier apparently got sick and erupted in mid-song. The sound is preserved in the music, and it’s the most real moment of Poncier’s career. Even the man himself can’t handle being that near Cliff Poncier. Somewhere, something is right with the world.

But you wouldn’t know it from “Doghouse Blues,” the show-closer in the band’s disgusting-but-mercifully short live performances. I saw Poncier dining in the Doghouse once. He was eating a grilled cheese, and I haven’t been able to have one since.

“Louder Than Larry (Steiner)” is his next, and as a friend of Steiner I know they ripped off his best equipment and haven’t given it back since the night of Eric Johnson’s benefit. Poncier is also spreading the rumor that Steiner takes a lot of acid, which is untrue about Steiner but true about Cliff… or at least his mother to have produced such a damaged offspring.

This review is actually getting enjoyable.

“Touch Me I’m Dick” is local Seattle humor which isn’t really funny.

“Rebound” is the same song that Poncier has been trying to peddle for years. He performed it during his brief stint with the Roger Fisher band, and now it makes its appearance on this disc. Check out these lyrics if you doubt that the English language is heading into the toilet.

Wrote this song
The night she blew me
What a line
It’s mine.
Don’t know ‘bout love
Catch me on
Catch me on
Catch me on
Rebound

“Can’t Go Three Days (W/O Drinking)” will live on in my memory as the worst spoken-word recording ever. To hear Cliff Poncier reciting his own poetry sans backing is about the worst thing you could ever commit to memory. Kill the brain cells that ever retain a memory of this. It’s that bad.

“Bust of the Boz” is one of those ‘joke’ songs that makes fun of Brian Bozwell, but at least Bozwell gave something back to the town and did something Cliff Poncier just can’t seem to do. He left.

Cliff Poncier will never amount to anything more than a dying ember in a scene that didn’t spawn him and will never give him a home. He sings about women and himself and himself with women and I don’t want to hear about it anymore. That’s it. This is the last time we will ever write about him again. He is so mightily, so colossally ridiculously impudently awful that I may never say his name or write his name again. Let this be the last time you ever deal with this music or these words… Cliff Poncier.

Other than that, there was able backing from Stone and Jeff and drummer Eddie Vedder.

– Mike Vinson